Meals, groceries and choresWeekly
Chore chart
A weekly grid for a household, with one row for each chore, a column for who does it and a box for each day. It is for families, roommates and couples who want shared work to be visible.
- Type your details or print blank
- Print or PDF, Letter or A4
- Free, no sign-up
On this page
What prints
The page is portrait. The heading is Chore Chart, and a Week of line sits beside it. The table has a Chore column, a Who column and seven narrow day columns, each headed with the first three letters of the day (Mon, Tue and so on). Every day cell holds a small checkbox. Below the table, in small gray type, is the sentence: "Write who does each chore, then tick the box on each day it is done."
If you type chores in the settings, they print in ink in the first column, one per row. Otherwise the column is blank for handwriting.
The settings
- Heading. Custom title, 40 characters maximum.
- Chart. Weekly chore chart, kids' chore chart with stars, or cleaning schedule. This page opens on the weekly chore chart.
- Child's name. Used by the kids' chart. It does not print on this one.
- Chores (one per line). Up to 300 characters. Each line becomes a row.
- Chore rows. 4 to 14, default 12. If you type more chores than the row count, the chart grows to fit them, up to what the page holds.
- Week starts on. Sunday or Monday.
Making the list
Write chores that have a clear finish line. "Take out recycling" is clear. "Help around the house" is not. Specific chores avoid arguments about what counts.
Aim for a mix. Daily jobs, like dishes, appear with a tick every day. Weekly jobs, like the bathroom, get one tick on a single day. Writing the day-of-week jobs into the grid takes some thought, but you only do it once.
The Who column handles rotation. Write names in pencil, and shift them down a row each week. Each person eventually does every job, and nobody has the bathroom forever. For households with kids, the American Academy of Pediatrics offers advice on age-appropriate tasks and on how to talk about helping at home.
Do not make the chart a scoreboard. It works best as a plain record of who agreed to do what.
Worked example: a four-person household
Type these chores, one per line: Dishes after dinner, Take out trash, Vacuum living room, Clean bathroom, Feed the cat, Set the table, Sort laundry, Water plants. With 8 chores, set rows to 8 and Monday start.
Who: Dishes, Sam and Jo alternating (write "Sam" in pencil). Trash, Dev. Vacuum, Jo. Bathroom, Sam. Cat, Mia. Table, Mia. Laundry, Dev. Plants, Jo.
Daily jobs (dishes, cat, table) get a tick Monday through Sunday. The weekly jobs get one tick, such as Vacuum on Saturday. At the end of the week, anyone can see that the trash was skipped on Thursday and that the bathroom is still open. Next week, rotate the names.
More pages
Young children do better with a picture-style sheet, so try the chore chart for kids. For jobs that happen monthly or by season, use the cleaning schedule.
Sources
- HealthyChildren.org (American Academy of Pediatrics): Chores healthychildren.org