Family Chores in 3 Steps — with printable!
Update July 2023: Looking back at old posts is always fun. I wrote this in the fall of 2021, and this system continues to serve my family, and I hope it encourages you!
Do you desire peace in your home far deeper than clean surfaces and ordered closets?
I know I do.
While those things do bring me a level of peace, I love what Kendra Adachi in The Lazy Genius Way says:
“Efficient systems fail to deliver if they’re implemented without kindness.”
I am grateful to say that after years of struggle and restarts our family usually reflects realistic daily rhythms of work and rest in a loving and functional home.
We don't get this perfect every day, and I still obsess about straightening my throw cushions instead of connecting with a child’s heart—but we are all growing!
Prioritizing tasks and tidiness over hearts and connections is the opposite of a soulful life, so I continue to trust God to work on my control-freak, perfectionistic heart.
As I said on my welcome page:
The goal isn’t perfect order or squeaky clean (confessions of a recovering perfectionist) but rather peaceful rhythms!
All that to say, we can have order in our home and hearts when we work together as a family.
Develop a family chore system from scratch or refine your current system with three steps!
1) Decide
2) Design
3) Delegate
The beauty is that the weight does not have to fall on your shoulders. As my family and house size grew, my household chore list shrunk!
Cue angels singing.
I often wonder how I did the things that are now delegated to my children while nursing babies, changing diapers, and living off of less than ideal sleep. It is wonderful to have grown such capable helpers and to feel like a family team.
If you are in an exhausting season mama, there is hope that the ones you are nurturing so well will be baking you cookies and vacuuming your floors…in time!
Near the end, I share a few ideas and a visual to help this process develop with younger children, and if you have older children this may be the motivation you need to train and release them to take on more age-appropriate tasks.
Design your household chore system once and for all, so you can use your precious brainpower for more life-giving things!
1) Decide
Decision fatigue is one of the draining themes of our time. You may be a person who prefers winging most areas of life, but I encourage you to see if designing or refining your chore system lessens your stress.
“Limit your decisions by making certain choices once and then never again. Deciding once doesn’t make you a robot but leaves more time for you to be human. You can decide once in any area, including giving gifts, getting dressed, making meals, cleaning the house, and creating traditions.”
—Kendra Adachi
I love not needing to think about what we need to do each day or worrying that something isn't getting done because our chore flow has been on autopilot for years.
There are times for deeper cleaning and seasonal projects, and there is space for this in my free download too.
Our basic upkeep happens in a short time each day, because everyone, right down to my three-year-old helps!
Not only do we carve out rhythms of work, but daily and weekly (Sabbath) rest times too. I left Sundays out of the printable page for weekly chores to drive home this point—though it may be a different day that you decide to rest from household chores.
Get started by brainstorming all the chores you would like to have completed each week (i.e., vacuuming, bathrooms) and record beside them how many times you want them done (we do bathrooms once a week, and a full house vacuum twice, etc.).
Then brainstorm tasks you would want to address monthly and seasonally (like washing windows, organizing seasonal clothing, hanging Christmas lights, dusting light fixtures, etc.).
I set aside one of our weekly chore slots (Wednesday mornings) for some of these tasks, and also address these on a Saturday or when we are taking a few days off of our usual home school routine to invest in a bigger project.
2) Design
I won't go into the nitty-gritty of our weekly schedule—I give an example of our Monday morning chores later—as this is unique to each family based on variables like the season they are in, their commitments, their children's ages, their expectations, and so much more.
Create a system that works for YOU!
Consider what fits best based on your schedule, considering the days you host and the days you are out more, to make it ideal.
Do this for your monthly and seasonal chores as well!
Whenever you take time to step back and imagine an ideal flow to your week or season, always remember your chore system! It is easy to forget how much time these things take and how they impact everything else. (This may also shed light on some things to edit out of your schedule.)
3) Delegate
After you have decided on and designed your ideal chore system it is time to delegate!
Who in your family will do each task for the next quarter (or whatever length you prefer)?
I must give credit to my husband for encouraging me to release tasks to younger children and for his diligence in guiding the little ones to develop skills like sweeping the floor or wiping the table when I didn't have the patience for "one more thing."
When I would have neglected to delegate a task because I could do it quicker or better, he showed me the benefit of consistent training, and now we are reaping the rewards daily!
TIP: pair up older children with younger ones who are learning new tasks!
Once these pages are filled, the only thing you will want to revamp over the years is who does which chores, but your weekly chore flow will become second nature and feel naturally ingrained into your family system!!!
Here is a visual suggestion I created for the approximate ages a child can acquire a new responsibility.
By the time your child has completed elementary, they could have all the basic skills to run a household.
What a gift you've seeded into their future.
I hope this has inspired you that children can be lead into life skills that contribute to your family now and their family in the future.
Begin at the earliest level, no matter your child’s age, and build up their skills and capacity.
If you live on a farm, I would guess there are many more tasks you could add to these lists.
Please let me know if I missed something.
And have fun learning and serving together!
I know I said I wouldn’t tell you our entire system but…
Here’s a typical Monday morning for us!
After waking up naturally and spending time refreshing my soul and moving my body, before checking my phone for messages and enjoying a quick shower (shower caps and dry shampoo have changed my life), I finish getting ready for the day while listening to a podcast.
While I finish getting ready, my six children are usually downstairs eating breakfast, clearing the dishwasher, and loading their dishes, while whoever’s day it is (we go down by age throughout the week) finishes the rest of the breakfast clean-up. My husband often eats breakfast with the kids and always finds me to spend a few minutes praying together before he heads out—unless he has a really early meeting.
Since it is Monday, the three oldest run the vacuum through one floor of the house each, while the other kids are collecting laundry and emptying garbage cans! They know these are the things we do every Monday (and Thursday).
After their morning chores are complete, the older kids move on to their rotation of typing, music practice, and Math while my younger ones play or watch me eat my breakfast and start the laundry, before we do some preschool/kindergarten and begin our homeschool day altogether.
Here’s a picture of our homeschool rhythm if you are interested:
It is wonderful (on mornings without bickering) to see everyone working together and accomplishing a lot in a short time!
Remember, there will always be “one more” task but if you have divided your chores throughout the week and among the members of your family, then let the rest go and enjoy the things you love with the people you love!
I pray your home functions with peaceful rhythms.
Print this template to help you design or refine your family chore system!
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