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DAILY HOMESCHOOL ROUTINES: Chore Charts That Work!
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Jun 19, 2024
Are you looking to get more organized with teaching your kids how to do chores in your homeschool? Here are my chore charts that work so well for us! Zone cleaning is a game changer, and I'm breaking down how I set up my chore charts for my 3 older kids (letting my true Type-A-ness shine here you guys! 😂). Let me know what you think! Homeschool Organizational Methods collaboration playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF8Qv5iZfKlRBfezCMJligw1dcGB5Pz5q&jct=igUXBQIiLyy9yWjWEVXcynDBXobO4A Daisy's Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@journeyinthehome GRAB THESE CHORE CHARTS FOR FREE! (Coupon code in video — thank you SO MUCH for watching! 🙌) : https://blessedhomeschool.com/product/zone-cleaning-chore-charts/ Stick around! Subscribe and hit that notification bell for updates on new videos weekly. 📧 Let’s Connect! 📬 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blessedhomeschoolblog/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blessedhomeschool ********************************************* Hey there! I’m Sara, and I’m a teacher-turned-homeschooling mom to 4 kiddos (including a set of twins!). I balance homeschooling while working full-time from home, and am so thankful you are here. I love sharing about homeschooling on my blog, Blessed Homeschool, where you’ll find tips, resources, and curriculum reviews. Whether you are a newbie or a veteran, I hope you will leave inspired and equipped with what you find.
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Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. Today I'm going to be talking about our family chore system with you. I've had a few questions from you guys asking me to do a video about this. So I'm going to talk about what we do and how I set up our chore charts
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So this video is actually a collaboration hosted by my friend Daisy from Journey in the Home
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I am going to link the playlist in the description below. The theme of this collab is homeschool organization methods
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Well, Chor Charts might not seem like homeschool organization, but in a way it is because our
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homeschool is our home. And I don't know about you, but when our home is clean, when things aren't a mess, and we
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have systems like this in place, it sets a stage for our home. a lot of other things to run more smoothly. And I love having the opportunity to teach my kids life
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skills like these. Learning to be responsible on a daily basis and how to take care of a home is
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definitely important. So these are our chore charts and about twice a year, I give them an overhaul
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As the kids get older, they are ready for new responsibilities and age appropriate chores that
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maybe require a bit more difficulty than they did the year before. And it is time for us to do this
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again. These are zone cleaning chore charts that I created. My oldest is 12 and then I have twin
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daughters that are 10. My youngest is five and I don't have one of these for him just yet
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We are doing our own thing with chores for him. When he is six, that's probably when I'll start
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him as that's when I started my other kids on these chore charts. And with one child
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these chore charts are a breeze to set up. If you have three or more kids like me
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it can be a bit more complicated because as you see there's a lot of spots in here to fill out
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So whenever I do this, I hunker down with some coffee, usually some scratch paper, and just take an hour or so to crank it out, get everything organized
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Trust me, once you get this chore system set up and start implementing this process, you won't regret it
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When I first started my blog, Blessed Home School, in 2021, this printable was one of the first products that I had created
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and they are still pretty popular today. I love sharing them with people. Make sure you watch this video until the end
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not just to see how I use them, but I'm going to share a discount code with you
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so you can grab these for free from my online shop. Now, why zone cleaning you might ask
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Well, because this is how I love to clean. Once I discovered zone cleaning
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I knew I had found the thing that would help me keep up with my own household chores
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without feeling overwhelmed and discouraged. I have a very all or nothing mentality
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when it comes to cleaning, I don't mind doing it, but I often was feeling overwhelmed
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because I see everything that needs to be done and I wanna tackle all the things at once
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And sometimes that overwhelm and feeling like I had such a huge task in front of me
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paralyzed me into doing nothing at all. I kind of needed to give myself permission
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that it was okay not to do everything all at once, that it was okay if things weren't always perfect
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but a work in progress. And if I did a little bit each day
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I was productive and on the right track. Creating a zone cleaning system for myself
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is what helped me find that groove. And when I realized that I could take the same system
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and get my kids involved, it was a no-brainer. We finally have a homeschool chore chart system
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that is easy to implement and that we stick to each day
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With zone cleaning, you basically split the house into zones and then you split those zones into tasks
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And then you assign the zones and the tasks to certain days or weeks, and you rotate through them
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There are a couple of different ways to do this, but the way I set up our chore chart
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is by splitting our home into four different zones. And then my kids each tackle one zone each week
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by doing one to two tasks each day in that zone. You cycle through the whole house each month
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and then you repeat from the beginning. Now, this works pretty well because I have three kids
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so I have each of them working in different zones each week to cover a lot of our house
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I've had people ask, if you just have one kid working in one zone a week, then the whole house won't get clean for an entire month. And yes, I suppose that's true
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but if this for our family, I as a parent am still working and filling in chores that need to be
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done around the house. We are still doing daily things like cleaning counters and tables
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vacuuming the floors, washing dishes, dusting when needed, etc. So if you see something that is
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really dirty and needs clean, then you just clean it. You can use these charts as a guide
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not to necessarily be a slave to them, but to help you accomplish a little bit each day
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day, so taking care of the house doesn't feel overwhelming. And I use them as a tool to teach my kids
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how to do chores and learn all these little tasks as well. Here's what I love about using these
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chore charts. We have a predictable routine to follow. My kids know what chores are expected of them
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each day to contribute to our family, and this has helped them learn to take initiative and follow through
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with their jobs. I love that these charts are effective. The charts that I created work perfectly
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because my kids can see exactly what they need to do and when. And crossing off their tasks
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definitely gives a little sense of accomplishment. And they're not boring. The chores that they have
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are not long. They never take more than 20 minutes each day total. And with this method, we work in
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different zones each week. So it's nice to mix it up a little and for the most part not have to do
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the same thing every day. And then finally everybody is contributing. Well, as a mom, I certainly
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have more to do to keep up with the household duties. It's not completely on my share
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shoulders. Even if it's a small chore or task that my kids do to help, it all adds up and we
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all learn the value of working together to accomplish something. One thing that might be tough to
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remember as you get started is that especially if you have younger kids, the chores might not be
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done perfectly. And that's okay. I started this, like I said, with my kids when they were six
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so there was definitely a learning curve. What is important is that they are contributing
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forming good habits, and doing their best at their assigned duties. And over time, you'll see
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certain jobs improve. Use this opportunity to encourage your kids as much as possible and model joy
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as you do your own chores. That can be a hard one to remember, but it's great for your kids to see
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Okay, so let me go ahead and walk you through how I set these up. Okay, so I have my scrap paper
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here and this is probably going to look really complicated. Like I said, it's because I have three
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kids and I'm trying to split this up as well as I can. What I'm basically going to do first is I'm
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going to decide what my zones are going to be. I had them split up last time
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like this, you can see. We did schoolroom entryway, bedroom and kids bathroom
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kitchen and living room, kitchen and living room. And yeah, I had that on all the kids
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So I gonna switch it up a little bit this time and we gonna do four different different zones So I going to do I know I want to do the kitchen as one zone We going to do our living room slash the school room as another zone
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Our school room is basically where our dining room is. It's not a dining room anymore just for
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computers and homeschool stuff. We're going to do bath. We have three bathrooms, two full baths and one half. So all those are going to be included. And then
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bedrooms. Okay, actually for the bathrooms, master isn't going to be included. Just their bathroom and
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then the one downstairs. So those are the four zones that we're going to use and I'm going to
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rotate with my kids. All right. And then I need to decide about how many chores I'm going to need
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for each zone. So I have on here Monday through Sunday. You can decide how many days a week you want
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to assign chores. I typically leave Sunday blank. That will be a day where we either take a break
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or if there's something that doesn't get done during the week, we can catch up on Sunday
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So with two chores every day, that means Monday through Saturday. There are 12 different chores
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that I'm going to need for each zone. So I'm just going to start jotting some things down. So we're going to do
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kitchen, living room, bathrooms, bedrooms. I promise this isn't that complicated. This is just how my
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brain works. I've got to write all this down like this. So what I'm going to do next is just start listing out
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some of those different chore ideas, what I want to make sure that we include. I already know for
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the kitchen zone, one of their chores is emptying the dishwasher. So whoever has that zone, that's
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going to be their chore for that entire week. So that is going to be, that'll actually take up
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six of those days. So really, I just need to have six other
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ideas for that kitchen zone that I want them to do. And I'm also going to make a note to myself
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so that last week, since there's only three of them, no one's going to have the kitchen zone
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So I still want that to get done that last week. So even if it's not part of a zone, but you have
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a task that you want them to do, it's okay to put it in there. You don't have to be constrained to
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just the zone. It's more of a guideline. And yes, most of the chores are going to be within that
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zone, but for that last week, there might be some tasks that we kind of split up, and they do
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just because we need them done, even though they're not in that zone. So I'm just going to make
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a note for some of the tasks during that last week that I'm going to want them to make sure
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we have in there. Okay, I already know that I'm going to be assigning laundry to them, at least
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one time a week. So that's going to be something that is not zone specific. So obviously
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their laundry doesn't have anything to do with the kitchen. But they need to do that at least one
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time a week. So I need to make sure, I'm just going to make another note to myself
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that I want to make sure I assign that each week. So I'm going to probably get that in the chart
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first. And then another thing I want to make sure I add in is we do have a dog. So three times per week
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we need to have someone clean up the yard. And the kids don't really like that sure. We're going to
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split that up and spread it out so that each of them are maybe doing it once a week. So I will get
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those on their charts as well. Again, not necessarily zone specific, but something that needs to get
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done. And then another thing that I can think of off the top of my head is cleaning up their toys
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in the basement. That is something that I want to happen once per week. And I'm going to go ahead
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and put that with the living room zone. But then again, that last week, we're going to have to
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just add it in. Someone's going to have to tackle it that last week to make sure it gets done
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something else that I know that needs to happen is vacuuming daily
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Okay, you guys, I can never remember how to spell vacuum. I'm going to have to spell check that
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Is it two C's? One C, I think there's two U's in there. I can never remember no matter how hard I try
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So this is going to be on here daily. We have a German Shepherd and she sheds a lot
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So I know that's going to need to be done daily. I'm going to put that with living room
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but that's going to be our entire first floor. So that'll take up six of those tasks
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So with the basement toys being one of them, I know I just need five more spots to fill
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One to three, four, five. Okay, five more spots to fill there. I'm going to go ahead and add that
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It's probably two Cs. I don't know. Okay, so that's going to be down here as well
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So I remember that last week. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to look at their old chore charts just so I can get some ideas of the other chores that they had and start filling those in and then we will add those to our charts
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Okay, so I have most of the spots filled in. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to go and I'm going to start putting them on the charts
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and then I'm going to kind of fill in from there make sure I have things in order and it's starting
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to look okay. All right. And I do need to give a quick tip right here
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I am using an erasable pen. I love these. If you plan on laminating your chore charts, do not use an erase
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an erasable pen. Maybe you can guess why, but I did not even think about it the
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first time I did this I wrote with an erasable pen on my charts sent it through the laminar and it all got wiped away So if you are just working on your first draft
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fine, use an eraseable pen. But when you are ready to print and laminate, use an actual pen
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or just type it on the computer. These do come in an editable PDF. So you can type it out
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which is what I'm going to do after I'm done with this. So just a print
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Pro tip there. No erasable pens if you're going to send these through a laminator. Learn from my mistakes. Okay, so here we go. Let's start working on filling these in. This is going to be for Luke. And then I've got Carly and Emma. All right, so first let's go ahead and assign the zones. We'll just start with Luke. We've got kids. We've got kids
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kitchen, living room, school room, bathrooms
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The last zone is going to be their bedrooms. And I decided they're all going to have that same zone that week
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It'll just be easy then to rotate through the other ones. And then some of those other chores that I need to have them do weekly, I can just split up during
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this zone because I didn't have as many chores for that anyways so we're going to switch them up so
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they're not all doing they're not working in the same zone at one time so
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So from here, I'm just going to go start filling in the different chores that I have for each zone
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So I'll start with Luke. And once I have a zone kind of set up, then it's going to be really easy
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I can kind of go and just rinse and repeat with the other other ones, kind of doing the same tasks
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Like I mentioned before, when they have the kitchen zone, they're going to be emptying the dishwasher
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And that's going to be every day that week. And that has to get done on Sunday, too
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So that's going to be a Sunday chore. when I type this up, I'll type it in each little box, but for now to go quicker, that's just going to go in that top row
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And then before I do anything else, I do want to add in the chores that I want every kid to do at least once per week
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So one time per week, everyone is going to need to do their laundry
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I'm going to put them on different days so they aren't all doing it the same day
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So I will go ahead and put it here for Luke. We'll make his laundry day Thursday
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And I'll do that across the board because we need to do that every week
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And yes, I teach my kids to do their own laundry. It's an amazing thing
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You should do it too when they turned maybe six. I don't know
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My five-year-old has really wanted to live. learn. So I've been working with him on it right now. But teach your kids to do their laundry
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It's amazing. And then usually I give them the next day. That's kind of the putting away the
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clothes. That can take a little bit longer and that's something that we're working on trying to do
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So if he gets it done this day, then he will put them away on Friday. I don't even like to put
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my clothes away the same day that I wash them. They kind of sit in the basket for a day or two
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So I'm going to give my kids some grace on this one as, well, if he wants to do it all on that day
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then he can do it and then have a day where he doesn't have to do anything. As I'm doing this
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I'm going to add this to my girls' charts as well, just so I can keep everything straight
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And I don't forget to do something. So Luke's doing his on Thursday. I'm going to have Emma do
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hers on Friday. And then I will have Carly do hers on Saturday. Okay. So then, so then
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let's see three times a week I want them to help with cleaning the yard and so three times a week
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that means each of them are going to do it once so I will just pick a day for each of them
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and again that's not necessarily tied to a zone but one day a week is going to be their
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day to help clean up the yard and pick up after the dog
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Okay, so let's work on filling in the rest of this. So we've got emptying the dishwasher
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We have the yard. So for the kitchen, we do have a big sliding window in the kitchen
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So we'll do the window on one of the days. And the other chores I have down, wiping down appliances and cabinet doors
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And then tidy and counters. I've only got two more spots. I want to give a day
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off here or a chore off here. So I think I'm going to do wiping down appliances and then cabinet doors
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And then the tidy counters that I watch that I wrote down, we will just all kind of take care of that
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during the week. Okay, so kitchen zone done. Obviously this isn't like a deep cleaning of the entire
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kitchen. You know, when I do my own kitchen cleaning, I will clean out the fridge, wash the sink
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think, do other things like that. But this is just basics, helping out, learning how to do some
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simple tasks, and contributing. So we're all doing a little bit and it doesn't all fall on me
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Let's move on to living room and school room. So some of this is already filled out
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vacuuming daily That is going to be a daily chore So if they in the zone I just going to go ahead and fill that in and we do that each day So that takes care of a lot right there And then we also going to be
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let's see, we've got one, two, three more slots to fill. So if I look at my list here
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we've got vacuuming and then three more spots to fill. So basement toys, that's going to be one of
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one of them. So I'm going to put that, let's see, we'll do that on Saturday. Dusting is a big one
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so we'll dust, and that'll be for the living room and the school room. And then the other thing
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that I had on here, I had windows, and then I had their desk, and then vacuuming all the rugs
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windows I'm gonna keep that off for now and maybe just leave that as a mom chore for now
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And then on to the bathrooms for this one. Let's see. We have their bathrooms upstairs. They have a
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kid's bathroom and then we have one downstairs a half bath. So I have, how many did I come up with
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One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight with one extra
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spot. So maybe what I'll do with that extra spot is I can split up the toilet and have them do
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one on one day and one on another day. Okay, that's it for the bathroom zone. And then finally we get down to
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the bedrooms. So each week we have, I have one, two, three, four, five, six different tasks that I
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listed, plus some extra ones that I still want done that we're going to split up between the kids
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So again, with three kids, it can get a little complicated. I like to stack these up so I can see
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how I'm going to split it up. I know that Carly really likes the dishwasher chores. She doesn't
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mind that one. So I do want that one to do want that one to do. done every day I'm going to give that to her a couple different times so we'll do
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So I will go ahead and probably sign that to Luke. I had done that on a Saturday before
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So we'll put that right there. Vacuuming daily has to happen
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And I'm going to make a note that this is downstairs because they will have to vacuum their bedrooms
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but this needs to happen with all the dog hair downstairs. So now I want to go in for their bedroom zone
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and fill in the other bedroom tasks that they're going to have to do
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So dusting, vacuuming, tidying up their closets, things like that. So that's what I'm going to do next
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All right, so I have the basics kind of filled out. So what I'm going to do next is, I will be
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taking the different zones and I will be putting those in here for my girls
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And then I will go to my computer. I'm going to type it all in so it's nice and neat
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And then I will laminate them. I hang them on our whiteboard in our kitchen
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So it's really easy for the kids to take a dry erase marker and X them off every day
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They don't always remember to X them off. But my son especially likes to do that because it's a really good visual for him
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So if you want to laminate them, that is a great option. But I know this looked really complicated
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It feels more complicated because I do have the three kids. But I hope this gives you an idea of how you can split things up
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how you can assign the different chores and maybe some of the different chore ideas that you can give them
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They do not take long. So I have them doing something small in the morning and then something in the afternoon after lunchtime
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and usually 10 minutes or less. So not a lot of time. It makes it really manageable. And yeah, so we just love using the system. And I hope that you might as well. Okay, I hope that was helpful for you and gives you an idea of whether or not something like this will work for your family. My kids know that their chores need to be completed each day before any electronics. So it's a pretty good motivator for them. I do give my kids an allowance, but it's not directly tied to their chores. The allowance is more to teach them to wisely
27:27
use their money, but if I notice that they're not following through and keeping up with their chores
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we talk about that. And they know that they might lose some of their allowance if they don't
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contribute. It feels really good to have a system down that we love and allows us all to take part
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in keeping our home clean and organized. I love the responsibility. It has helped me build in my
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kids and that they see how manageable the process can be when you break it into little steps. And I want to
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share this with you guys. Check out the link down below to find these printables in my shop. My zone
27:56
cleaning printable pack includes both age appropriate chore ideas and chore suggestions by
28:00
zone and it also includes a reward chart if you want to use something like this. They are
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editable PDFs so you can type on them or write on them by hand. If you want to grab them
28:12
please use the coupon code YouTube chores to get them for free. And don't forget to check out
28:18
the rest of the videos in this collaboration if you want more encouragement and inspiration on homeschool organization methods. I hope this was helpful and I hope you
28:25
enjoy trying zone cleaning with your kids please subscribe my channel if that's
28:30
something that you want to do hit that like button hit the notification bell and if you have any questions at all drop a comment below I would love to hear
28:38
what are the chores that your kids are doing in your home and does something
28:43
like this look like something you'd like to try thanks for watching
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