The Johnson Crew!

Hi friends today I want to share with you how we manage the mess in our house how we manage our kids chores so that I don't lose my mind so stay tuned welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is Sarah and we have four kids they are ten eight six and three today's video is all about the chores that we have chosen for each of them you know depending on their age age-appropriate chores I'm going to share with you when we started having them do chores

And what that looks like throughout our day and throughout our week I do have chore charts that you can download I'll put links to those in the description box below that you can you know edit and make work for your family but today's video is extra exciting because it's actually a collaboration with several other homeschooling moms and they're going to be able to share with you how they manage chores with their kids they're going to have different amount of kids from me different ages than me

So you'll get to see you know how a lot of different families manage the chores in their house and so maybe you like some of what I share but then you go and check out another video and can pull tips from them you know maybe mesh the systems together and pull a little from each or just find one that fits exactly perfectly for you so hopefully we're giving you guys enough variety today to find something that you feel like is going to work great for your household

So I'll leave a link to that playlist below and I'll also put up a link to it at the end of the video for you to click on and you can watch those next first things first let's talk about why we have our kids do chores um I think this is really important because obviously we need to feel invested in order to make the system work and follow through with it so one of my big reasons for having our kids do chores is for their sake I want them to grow up

And be independent self-reliant capable human beings I want them to be helpful people I want them to have self ownership and self responsibility and good time management skills and those kinds of things I want them to be able to manage their house when they get older as well but I feel like even though these chores will help them learn how to take care of their house one day teaching them self-responsibility in this way is going to bleed over into so many other areas of their life

And it's just so important to impress upon them that if you make a mess you're responsible to clean it up and that you are a part of this family unit and so we all contribute to make this household thrive it's not just mom and dad doing everything for you you're not going to get free handouts when you get older you shouldn't expect it rather and so we want them to have that mindset that they're going to be the ones that need to to take charge

And do things and take care of their things part of taking care of our house is is showing that we have gratitude for our house and the things in it and so just teaching them those things along the way I feel like goes a long way and um in all different areas of their life so that's number one number two is pretty obvious um it helps mama out big time right if all the chores were all on us all day every day I don't know when we would have time to homeschool or do anything fun right we do need their help especially the more kids that you have the more messes that you'll have

And so it's great to have more hands on deck to help clean those up and again we want them to know that they are a very very helpful part of this family unit and that really helps mom a whole lot when they get these chores done and it just helps our house run smoother so really we have been teaching our kids to clean up since the get-go you know since one-year-old they can pick up their toys after they're done playing with them you know it's not anything difficult

But you know even when they're a toddler you can make it a game okay now it's the pickup game and we're gonna put these things away and you're just sort of building those skills and the acknowledgement there that oh there is something out on the floor that's that can't stay there all day we're gonna we're not gonna put these away and so now there's walking space on the floor you know those little things are are kind of getting in there over the years and the earlier that you start you know when they're really little they like to help they look forward to helping us right

And so if we capitalize on that when they're really young they'll there will be a little less pushback as they get older and doing other more difficult chores so let's talk about age appropriate chores so by the time that our kids are like three we have gotten them to put away silverware now we put away like knives first before handing them the little caddy but it's actually a great sorting game and we do it with them for a while and help them out and show them how to do it

And make it kind of a game and then that just grows into a normal part of their routine they look forward to it when they're that little and and they just do it and so that's a great place to start them out is just with the silverware drawer and then you know by the time they're four we're having them put away the kid dishes because all the kid dishes are plastic they're not breakable so and we also have a kid drawer so this drawer is on the bottom it's easy to reach easy to put stuff in

And that makes it very easy for them and for us so they can easily put away their cups and plates and bowls all in one drawer and this is also a form of sorting they're sorting the different types of dishes and they're stacking them and so these are all good skills to have your four-year-old working on and also by the time that they're four we're having them help with laundry just a little bit they can fold their shorts it's one fold over right very easy or they can take their underwear

And you know fluff it out and make it flat and make a stack of all their underwear and then they can put that away in their drawer it's not going to be perfect when they're four years old and that's okay that's not what we're looking for we're just training we're just training them they're they're learning to be helpful while we're the ones doing the rest of the laundry they're just doing a little bit with us and then as they get older they can do it on their own

So by the time that our kids are five we do actually have them fold all of their own clothes and bath towels and and this does take training I'm you know I'm having to sit down with them and show them how to fold shirts that's the most difficult one right but it doesn't take very long the investment is super worth it because I'm very thankful for their help with the laundry I don't want to have a mountain of it to do so I'm so glad when they're able to take over their own laundry

So here's my six-year-old's chore chart so let's just kind of go over what we have him do in a day he's helping unload the dishwasher wipes the kitchen table once a day he vacuums the kitchen floor those are things that he does every day so he has four chores a day and then there's one chore every day that changes one day he is organizing the bikes in the garage or making sure that they're put away and they're not in the way of me parking in there one day he's cleaning up the backyard making sure that there's no toys left out there or whatever

And picking up trash if there's any one day he has to pick up all the toys off of his bedroom floor one day he has to pick up any clothes that have been left on his bedroom floor and one day has to pick up any books that have been left on the bedroom floor then he does bikes again another day of the week and then on sunday afternoons he cleans the upstairs room which is our school room so this is for my six-year-old he just turned six like last week

So um this is probably gonna get updated for him here soon he can probably upgrade to some more difficult afternoon chores but this is his list for now so let me pause there before I go on to what our eight and our ten-year-old do and explain how we lay out our chores so my husband came up with this and it's pretty brilliant we don't just give them a big list to tackle for the day they don't just have this list that they have to check off at some point before bedtime it's actually timed out throughout the day

And I don't mean like super specific times but um here I'll show you so at the top it says before breakfast so before they even eat breakfast they all unload the dishwasher so I have the dishwasher separated into top bottom and silverware and they each get a different one every day so that really doesn't take them very long they can knock it out super fast and then next it says after lunch so they just have two chores each after lunch now the way that I very easily ensure that these get done is that they can't play their ipad they can't have their ipad time until they get their afternoon chores done super easy motivator I don't really have to manage much because they're very

Motivated to get that done so they just have two chores after lunch one is like a kitchen chore like to clean up after lunch and the other one is just something else in the house lastly we have after supper so they all have a kitchen chore to get done after we eat dinner and we all just kind of hop up after dinner and get that done together as a family and so that's pretty easy to manage them getting done as well so I really like this setup where it's chunked up throughout the day this is an easy way to lay it out

And it's modeling for them time management so they can start to understand like it's important to be doing little steps of tidying all throughout the day in order to keep the house clean let's talk about my eight and ten-year-olds chores they pretty much have the same chores throughout the week they're just on different days here's both of their charts but I'll just show you one so they each have a different section of the dishwasher to unload in the morning and then after lunch there's only two chores that I've flip-flop between for the two of them for their like kitchen lunch chore

And that's loading the dishwasher and vacuuming the kitchen floor so they do one of those every other day and then after that they do have a different chore every day of the week I've got clean backyard clean the upstairs which again is our school room and that sometimes can be messy vacuum the living room floor clean the garage sometimes there's trash left around or toys or bikes are just not put back where they're supposed to go once a week my 10 year old does it once a week my 8 year old does it on different days

So it kind of helps keep the garage pretty clean all week long and then one afternoon he has to clean out the van I'm so glad I thought to put this chore in their arena because it's their mess anyways they're the ones making that van so messy um and so on fridays my 10 year old cleans out the van and on tuesdays my eight-year-old cleans out the van so again it helps to keep it pretty clean all week long not perfect by any means but it helps a ton

And then the next day after they clean out the van their chore is to vacuum the van I do feel like that's kind of a lot to do in one day for them but to break it up works pretty well and I really love having a clean van so I'm very glad that they do this chore and they do it pretty well it's good enough and then on sunday afternoons I have written here special chores so I have this other chart of things that don't need to get done every single week

And so I break it up into four weeks and we just work our way through it every month and I write next to each chore which date we did it so that I don't forget and we all get these special chores done every sunday afternoon and then after dinner there are two chores that I have my eight and ten-year-old take turns doing so one day one of them will be loading the dishwasher and the next day they'll be wiping the kitchen table countertops and stove top

So whole kitchen gets cleaned and I don't write it on this sheet just because it would be a lot of text but what comes with the dishes chore is also clearing the table and counters of any dishes and then what comes along with the wiping chore is clearing the table encounter of anything else you know dirty napkins condiments whatever else needs to be put away they can help me put away food into tupperware that needs to be saved in the fridge stuff like that so a little bit more to those chores than what's written on here

But they know that I've explained that to them okay so those are the different kinds of chores that we have our different age kids managed throughout the week you certainly could just print something out and put it on the fridge you don't have to laminate it I realize this is a little extra but I do love my laminator and love how this turned out so if you have a laminator it is pretty fun because you know what happens to paper on the fridge is they touch it or it gets messed with

And you know sometimes there's like food smudges or it gets all crinkled and messy looking so I like to have the clean look of the laminated chore chart because it stays on there forever and then I just took some magnets that have like adhesive on the back and stuck them on here and that way they stick to my fridge pretty simple and I really liked um like customizing their little chore chart putting something on it that they would like you know it's kind of eye-catching

And cool for them my daughter loves unicorns and rainbows and my six-year-old loves dinosaurs and my 10 year old loves all things about space so this system works really well for our family one thing that I want to point out before you try to implement any kind of new chore system you need to get your kids on board or else you're just going to get a lot of pushback a lot of complaining so you know maybe a few days before you're trying to implement this thing sit down with your kids go over it with them talk to them about it you want to get their buy-in

So like really puff them up and explain to them this is your role in the house it's super important um not just like you made a mess so you better clean it up you know we want to empower them and make them feel good about how they are helping the whole household they're helping us not have as much on our plate for us to have to take care of which frees us up some and then it also just helps the whole house to be tidy throughout the day

And helps everybody out you know you might be cleaning up a mess that you didn't make and that's okay we're all here to help each other out to help keep this house running smoothly to help take care of this house and you play a very important role in that and you know explain to them that you're super thankful for their helpfulness and proud of them for being able to do these things and do them well and that learning this work ethic is going to help them be successful in life

And in whatever future job jobs they want to get and want to do so hopefully that can help get their buy-in they know what their role is why it's important and hopefully that'll help them care more about getting these things done you probably will have to reiterate those things to them over and over for a while but eventually it should become part of their normal daily routine and you won't get so much pushback so hopefully that's helpful to you again don't forget to check out the playlist that I'm going to put a link to below

And put up on the screen and you can go see what other moms do in their homes and with their different age kids and tell them that Sarah said you but again thank you so much for joining me today and I will catch you in the next video bye you