The Chore Challenge

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Get the whole family invoved!

By Helen Williams, The 15-Minute Mom

It takes a village to raise a child, but how many people does it take to maintain a house? If your answer is, “the number of people who live in the house”, you are correct. If you answered “only one – Mom “, read on…

We all want our kids to be self-sufficient, but often fail to give them the opportunity to achieve the skills they need. For instance, learning to take care of their home and belongings. As long as Mom is doing all the work, kids are not learning these very important skills – skills that both boys and girls will need when they become adults. The added benefit of getting kids involved in the daily, weekly and annual upkeep is that it opens up more time for family fun and reduces stress in the home.

Here’s how the Chore Challenge works.

Get some index cards. Now think of all of the things that should be done in the home, daily, weekly, monthly and annually. Include tasks that are currently being done, as well as those you want done in future. Write each job or task on an index card.

Hold a family meeting. Talk about your overall goal and your expectations about the family’s help in reaching that goal. Decide whether you want a sparkling clean house or some lesser standard. Then:

• pass out index cards. Ask family members to write their name on the card and put it on the table. Add a final card with the word “noboby” written on it.

• retrieve your chore cards. Place each one under the name of the person who does the chore. Put chores that are not currently being done under the ‘nobody’ card.

• look at the results. Stand back and see who is doing what. Is one person carrying the load or are the chores equally distributed? Do you have a huge stack in the “nobody” pile? Are the chores under names all being done on a regular basis and done well?

• swap and allocate. If one of the kids is doing a chore they don’t want to do, or is not doing it well, offer him or her the opportunity to swap for another job. Re-allocate chores from those who are doing a lot to those that are doing little – keeping the lists as balanced as possible but still age appropriate. Next, allocate the “nobody”cards – let the kids volunteer to take on that chore, but if you meet resistance, assign as you see best. If there are cards leftover, agree that at this time those chores are not important and recycle them. Finally, have each family member agree to do the jobs under their name.

Create a master list and post it on the fridge. In this way, everyone will know what is expected of them. Also specify when jobs need to be done, ie, certain time of day, week or month.

At the end of the Chore Challenge exercise, your family should have a better idea of what needs to be done to maintain a home and what your family sees as important. Revisit this exercise annually to ensure everyone is taking his or her role seriously – offering up trades and changes as your family grows.

• Andrea | March 17, 2009 at 8:47 pm - §

  Thank you, thank you, thank you! I absolutely LOVE this challenge - and I'm in full-force! I'm going to plan my family meeting for Thursday!

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