Review: The Everyday Family Chore System

No family of 14 can survive without a system for maintaining the home, and we had a system that had worked for a number of years, but we'd fallen into a slump.  For some reason, our system just wasn't working, and I'd already been contemplating making some changes when I had opportunity to review The Everyday Family Chore System from Everyday Homemaking.

I received a physical copy of the book because I really prefer a hard copy that I can mark up as I read, but it is also available in PDF format for those who prefer working directly from their computers and who like printing documents over copying them.

The book consists of 5 parts:

1.  Introduction (in which I found out that Vicki Bentley, the author, is not only an experienced mom, but also a foster mom to almost 50 children over the years!)

2.  Laying a Foundation:  She discusses child training in a loving, standards-based fashion

3.  Implementing the Plan:  She explains how to use the system she did when raising her family and even how to tweak it a bit to fit your family.  Also included is an awesome Life Skills Checklist--with advice to keep it real, folks!

4.  The Actual Chore System:  Here are the pre-labeled cards and tags (along with some blank ones) to be copied/printed and prepared for use.  If her cards work for you, there isn't a whole lot of work to follow other than teaching the system and following through.

5.  Suggested Resources:  other books and online ideas from Everyday Homemaking.

Here is one of her cards from the Actual Chore System that does work for my household.

And here is a card that does not work for my household:  We have no china cabinet, nor knick-knacks, and the tops of our appliances are storage areas that require their own cards for tidying up.  I ignored this card and created my own that worked for my family.

Here's a card I made that is specific to my household, following the model from The Everyday Family Chore System.

And just for kicks, here's another one.

I followed Vicki's advice for deciding what chores needed to be done--which were critical and which were occasional, and I printed them off and organized them into 5 categories:  Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Weekly, Job Box (occasional):

From there I highlighted the weekly and Job Box chores, so I could tell them apart from the daily chores (there are so many because our family is large, and all jobs are just huge--even clearing the dinner table gets shared by 2 children because cleaning up dinner for 14 every night is more than is fair to ask of 1 small person).  Then I put each child's name on a tab and passed out chores as fairly and as age-appropriately as I could .

This took me a long time.

I think these papers were on my kitchen table for a full week as I arranged and rearranged them, praying and thinking about what would and wouldn't work.

 Finally I got a sense that we could succeed at the division of work.

Here is how I chose to arrange our completed chore system:

By no means is it required to make a permanent display like ours.  I was inspired by the simpler recommendation made in The Everyday Family Chore System.  We happened to have pallets and polycrylic and sandpaper and nails all in our garage, and this was actually cheaper for me to put together than it would have been for me to go out and purchase the mat board recommended.  It was more complicated and more time-consuming, but it was basically free for me.

And here's our Job Box:

 Per age/skill-appropriate recommendations from page 23, I adapted one idea of putting the clothespins on the kids' shirts to making necklaces for my toddlers, outlining their "jobs."

Folding the laundry is my daily job . . . but I couldn't keep up, so I had to catch up one Saturday!  And I folded 5 more loads after this picture was taken. :)

It was a lot of work to put together.  There were many times I felt that it was ridiculous to have so many moving parts and to work so hard when I could have just printed a spreadsheet of jobs and been done with it.

But then I remembered that our spreadsheet system had been failing us, and we needed more accountability.  So I invested the time and work.

It was worth it.

There's something about the moving parts that keeps us moving, too.

The kids have to move their jobs from the "Just Do It" section to the "Did It!" section each day/week.  I can see at a glance who has and who hasn't completed chores.

Each morning before the kids get up I move the daily chores back to the "Just Do It" area, and I leave the weekly chores until Saturday evening (the deadline for completing them).

I'm not constantly asking what has and what hasn't been done, and the kids like moving their chores onto the "Did It!" area.  

Nature Angel clears the island and counters after dinner each evening.

Baymax doesn't clean the living room as a regular chore, but he's happy to help tidy up his toys.  "I a big boy!" he says proudly when the job is done.

In order to adopt The Everyday Family Chore System in our household, I was forced to assign kids to jobs I'd been resisting giving them because I didn't want to supervise them.  I wanted chore time to be easier on me, so I wasn't teaching the littles as I needed to. 

But as Vicki wrote:

"You are investing in your children."

So my littles are learning and growing, my teens are working well, and I'm working harder.

But I'm investing in them, so I'm teaching myself to think of my work as working smarter. :)

It's a good work we're doing.

To see what other families have to say about The Everyday Family Chore System or about Everyday Cooking, both from Everyday Homemaking, click here or on the banner below: