Encourage kiddos to clean during their homeschool day with a simple chore routine!
Chore Routines for Homeschoolers
If you’re a homeschool mom, you know how difficult it can be to keep up with the housework while teaching formal lessons and caring for little ones.
This is why incorporating a simple chore routine into your daily homeschool schedule is a must!
Utilizing a printable chore chart schedule and breaking up your chore routine throughout the homeschool day will not only help you create order in your home, but it’s also a super simple way to encourage independence & responsibility in your children.
Homeschooling can wreak some serious havoc on a house, am I right?
Being a mom feels like an endless adventure of chaos and mess sometimes, which is why it’s essential to find balance and ask for help!
If you thrive in an organized and tidy space, as I do, this one is for you!
Our 90-Minute Chore Routine
Fitting chores into our daily routine and practicing the never-ending task of picking up after ourselves, gives me a tiny sense of that organization and order I crave.
Realistically though, things still get messy from time to time — and that’s ok!
In our home, we follow a simple 90-minute chore routine.
While that may sound like an overwhelming amount of time to spend on the simple task of cleaning up, it’s really not.
We break up our chore routine into 3 bite-sized chunks by following the 30 – 45 – 15 rule.
30 Minutes Before Lessons.
This first chunk of time is set aside for quick morning chores.
We typically ease into our homeschool day with our lazy morning basket, personal bible time, and a quick breakfast.
Then, we tackle our 30 minutes of morning chores.
While 30 minutes may sound like a long time for chores first thing in the morning, it’s actually not too bad. Plus, it gives me a chance to work on my own morning chores every day!
With that said, we only do a few simple tasks before starting formal lessons, and realistically, they don’t always consume the entire 30-minute time slot.
I simply like to add buffer time for those unexpected extras.
Morning tasks include the following:
- Make the beds
- Pick up bedrooms
- Put all dirty laundry in hampers
45 Minutes After Lessons
I like to think of this time as our after-school clean-up or family chores time.
However, my kids typically call it the 45 minutes of helping mom with whatever she tells us to do, so we can finally do something we want to time.
Haha! Not even joking.
Much like our first chunk of time, I overschedule this!
I simply like the option of going deeper or doing more during chore time if need be.
The tasks we tackle in this time frame are a little more in-depth than our quick morning chores.
Plus, each of my children has personalized chores they are in charge of daily or weekly.
For example, my oldest checks all trash cans daily and takes out the trash when full.
Afternoon tasks include the following:
- Cleaning up the school area
- Work on personalized/individual chores
- Help mom with extras
*Note: We do have a reward system for this particular chore routine.
If all children complete their given tasks in a timely manner or work with me for a full 45 minutes (and all school lessons are complete of course) they get to watch an episode of our current series.
Right now we are in the middle of Little House on the Prairie and it has been so much fun adding it to our homeschool routine!
15 Minutes Before Bed
This is the most important step of our 30-45-15 chore routine.
If you skip this part, you might as well skip it all.
Seriously though!
Keeping up with chores and other mundane tasks throughout the day is incredibly important, but doing a quick pick-up before bed is just as essential!
There shouldn’t be a ton of things out of place in the evening hours which is why I only set aside 15 minutes to wrap up our day.
To be completely honest, if you follow the previous 2 parts of our 30-45-15 rule, this one should be pretty darn simple.
With that said, I do have days where I skip this step, and let me tell you, I always, always regret it!
Doing one final walk-through of the house before bedtime means waking up to a clean house, and seriously, what is better than that?
Another simple way I make these 15 minutes some of the most productive minutes of our day? I assign everyone in the family an area to check before crawling into bed!
For example, my oldest makes sure the entryway is tidied, jackets are hung, shoes are in bins, and the light is off.
It works like a charm, you guys!
Evening tasks include the following:
- Living spaces picked up
- Assigned areas picked up
- After dinner dishes (wine or tea cups, etc) in the sink
The Family Chore Routine
Learning how to break up your chore routine into smaller chunks is only the beginning!
The next important thing every homeschool parent needs to know before tackling this chore routine is that chores should always be a family affair!
Believe it or not, keeping a house in a functional, tidy state is not just Mom’s job!
In our home, the kids are responsible for getting the kitchen cleaned up after most meals.
I mean, we all live here, breathe here, sleep here, and eat here. Why should only one of us be in charge of cleaning up?
Every single person in the house helps make the mess, so realistically every single person in the house should help clean it up.
Am I right, or am I right?
Easy tasks to work on as a family:
- Cleaning the kitchen after meals
- Outdoor chores such as yardwork or gardening
- Washing, folding, and putting away laundry
The Kids’ Chore Routine
While I do consider household chores to be a family affair, there are certain tasks I specifically hand off to the kiddos.
Children need responsibility.
What better way to learn that than through simple daily tasks? Life is messy and it’s important for kids to work together to clean it up.
For example, if I constantly sent my kids to play after every single meal, while I stayed behind to clean the entire kitchen from top to bottom, what lesson would I be teaching them?
Set expectations, assign chores, and don’t be afraid to offer consequences when things aren’t done properly.
Responsibility is one of the most important things we can teach our children and the younger the better, in my opinion.
Seriously though!
Do not wait till your kids are teenagers to try and teach them how to wash their first dish.
Let them help in the kitchen with simple tasks and start helping mom at a young and tender age.
Then, simply up their responsibilities as they grow.
Watch out though, you might just end up raising a functioning, hard-working, responsible kiddo at the end of all this!
That’s definitely a crazy thought in this self-serving mixed-up world.
Kid chores are a must, you guys!
Simple daily tasks for kids:
- Setting & clearing the table
- Taking care of pets
- Tidying their own spaces
The Never-Ending Chore Routine
This is it you guys — my best-kept secret to keeping a consistently clean house.
Teach your children to pick up after themselves as they go along!
I know, I know, easier said than done.
Teaching kids to pick up after themselves is literally one of the hardest tasks I have ever tried to tackle as a homeschool mom.
And you know what? I’m still in the midst of that battle right now.
From lessons to meals, I’m constantly reminding my own kiddos to put things away or tidy up their space after completing something.
A kitchen can become a disaster in a pinch and stay that way for days if don’t you take the time to tackle it as you go.
Cleaning up after every single meal can help keep that mess at bay!
Tidying individual working spaces in between lessons is also a huge must. If we leave things out from previous lessons the house would become unrecognizable by lunch, at best!
Staying in a constant mode of cleaning throughout the day definitely helps cut down on the clutter and the chaos.
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