Free Printable Chore Charts

Hey, everybody! How’s the adjustment to the new school year going at your house? We are only one week into our year. I know many of you are weeks or over a month into your school year. With the beginning of the school year, I realized I hadn’t updated our chore charts in a really long time, so today I’ve got a couple of different printable chore charts for you. Don’t you love how I need something for my house and it works out all good for you, too! 🙂

With a new school year and my girls being a bit older than the last time I did our chore charts, they definitely needed some updating. I have to say, it feels so good to have updated charts. I think the charts may be more for me than for my kids. It is like I wrote about years ago in my post about my parenting battle plan, I need help with the follow through. If there is a chart there that has the things the kids need to do, I am going to be way more likely to actually follow up and make sure they do what they are responsible for. More win-wins here today! Love that!

So let me show you the chart I came up with and how I use it at our house.

First, think about the things that will go on the chart.

I put things on there that I need to make sure I’m following up with my kids. usually, things that they aren’t the best at completing. It makes it more likely that I will check if they did it and therefore, more likely that they will do the task.

Above is my oldest daughter’s chart. She is in school this year, so there are some things that really need to get done related to school.

Second, add all of your chosen responsibilities to the chart.

Did you know you can add text to a pdf? When you open up your pdf file in Adobe, click on the ‘fill & sign’ button in the upper right-hand corner. Then click on the ‘add text’ option and click anywhere on the document to add text. Once you have added that text box, you can drag it to the location you want it on the document. Continue with this on your chart until you have added all of the responsibilities you want on the chart.

Next up, print your chart on cardstock paper. I like to print my chart on cardstock and us a Sharpie to darken in the days that the responsibility does NOT need to be completed. It makes it easy for both my girls and I see what days they need to do what.

Use a Sharpie to darken in the days that the responsibility does NOT need to be completed. It makes it easy for both my girls and I see what days they need to do what.

As you can see above, Snowflake would need to feed our cat and dog (Pepper and Ginger) on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this week. The darkened squares are days she does not need to complete this task.

Once you have the whole chart filled in, you will want to laminate (affiliate link) it.

Once it is laminated, a dry erase pen can be used to check off what has been completed each week. At the end of the week, the chart can be erased and you can start over.

I learned a little something while making these charts this year. I’ve never called these chores for my kids. I’ve always referred to them as responsibilities, partially because chores just bring the feeling of dread to me, but also because I want my kids to grow up realizing that no matter what age we are, we all have things for which we must be responsible. It isn’t always fun, but it needs to happen. For me, it is a bit of thinking of what I want them to have learned when they leave my house. I don’t want them to have learned to dread chores (or responsibilities), but rather to have learned the art of being responsible.

I never realized what a good job I had done at calling them responsibilities and not chores until I was getting these ready for this post and my girls. My youngest daughter, Pumpkin, quite vehemently expressed her disdain at the idea of having a chore chart and went on to explain that chores are horrible, but that these are responsibilities. Umm…I guess I accomplished what I set out to accomplish.

All of that being said, you will see that you have a couple of option for your free printable chart. You can select one that says chore chart at the top if that is the term you use at your house. You can also select one that says responsibilities at the top. One version has a plain area with only the wording at the top and the other has the wording with circles. Pick whichever version you prefer.

I love new anything that has to do with organizing…so I’m loving our new charts. They are helping me follow up on a few things that I stink at following up with. That is fantastic for both me and my girls.

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Plain Responsibilities Chart          Circles Responsibility Chart          Plain Chore Chart          Circles Chore Chart

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