209 - How We Do Chores
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I had a friend recently ask me, “How in the world do you do chores in your family with all four of your kids?” And I thought that would be a great podcast episode. So today I am gonna share with you how we do chores in the Ray household.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through below.
Chores and allowance and learning how to raise your children to be hard workers and manage their money well is hard. It's a hard thing to know how to do it right and well, and I don't think we're doing it perfectly, but I think we're doing an okay job because there's one thing that I've learned and I'm grateful for Will's leadership in this because I feel like he's really been the driving force behind our kids doing chores in our house. There's one thing I've learned, that is kids really, their capacity and and ability to understand hard work and do hard work at a young age is astounding and they don't want you to know that. They wanna play all day.
But it's never too young to start teaching your kids how to work hard and how to handle money. So here's how we do it. In the Ray house, we usually introduce chores around age four. That's when they can really understand the concept of working and earning money and kind of building up money to buy something. And of course we make sure the chores are age appropriate.
Right now our kids are 2, 4, 6 and 8. And I'll go through the chores that they have at the end of this episode. But we make sure their chores are age-appropriate. We differentiate with our kids between household responsibilities and chores. There are certain things they have to do just 'cause they're a part of this family and that's what it looks like to be a family is we help each other and we work hard to keep our home tidy.
But also there are things that they do that are a little bit more time-consuming that they can earn money for. We teach them to do three things with their money. We teach them to save their money, we teach them to give 10% of all of their money, and we teach them to spend their money and that's something we want them to catch on too young because that's, that rings true for adults too.
We keep their money in large clear empty plastic nut containers that we got from Aldi that we've washed out and ripped all the tags off of because it feels like a great visual for them. Will cut like little holes in the top of the screw-on cap so that we could, they're not fancy piggy banks is my point. But the good thing is they're not gonna break 'cause they're not glass and they're, they're, it's a great visual cue for our kids that they're, they keep adding money to it and they can see it fill up.
So we think that's like a great way to motivate them to keep going. So we, that's like their spend money and then they have an envelope to bring to church every month and then they have another envelope if they choose with the name of a toy written on it and that's their savings for a toy or something to look forward to.
We don't do allowance. We wanna teach our kids that in the real world, you have to work to get money and it doesn't just come to you. It's not just given to you. You have to get up and you have to go out and earn it. And so that's what we wanna teach our kids from a young age is they have the ability and the personal responsibility to get their booty going and do some hard work and earn some money. And that is up to them.
Sometimes we encourage our kids like, Hey, you wanna do some chores right now? And they're like, no. We're like, okay, it's up to you. You are not gonna earn any money today, but that's your choice. Sometimes we encourage them like that. Other times we force it and we say we need you to do these three chores today. You have to, you can choose when, but you have to do them today. And if you don't you're gonna get a consequence because sometimes we just need the help.
So that just depends on the week and the day and kind of what our needs are as a household. We do try to take them shopping pretty regularly to just show them, hey, your chores equal like money, which equals a reward like that you get to buy.
And that just keeps them willing to do their chores and it teaches them the principle of like, “Hey, you get to have fun with money.” That's part of a healthy relationship with money. You have to do all three things, save, spend, and give and spending's part of that. So we want 'em to have fun with it and like kind of get that like hit of joy and like,
yay, I did this. And just the pride and dignity, like my hard work got this toy. And I tell you what, they love those toys more than anything they get at Christmas or their birthday. They are so proud of those toys.
And you know, if we get to the store, one thing that I really try to do is teach them, if you're $2 short, we're gonna have to come back next week. Like this is part of learning how to manage your money and save. We teach them about taxes at the store. They have to like save an extra $2 for every toy that they wanna buy. We try to teach them all that stuff so that they understand how it all works.
And then when we're at the store buying the money, bless my heart, I will wait in line and let them each pay in cash, and that—I've had some angry people behind me before, but I feel like it's important for them to see their own hard work and their money disappear and then turn into a toy or whatever it is that they bought.
Sometimes on occasion, I'll spot them a couple dollars if they've worked really hard or we miscalculated something. I'm not gonna be this like tyrannical ruler and be like, no, like, or if it's like the last one and I know like it's gonna be really hard to find like I'll buy something for them or spot them a few dollars. But you know, that's just a balance of trying to decide when to make them save for it and plan for it better or when I can help 'em out. That's just something you have to do as a parent.
So let me walk you through my kids' chores. Now I have them with me. So if you hear some sounds it's because I have the chore charts with me. We have them in these like transparent sleeves that you can write on with a dry erase marker. And then we hang them on the small wire hooks, the like 3M command hooks that are like sticky and it's great. We have them at their eye level and we just keep a dry erase marker inside the little pocket. And then we print this, we print something out on our computer, which I can, I will add that to the show notes. You can download our little chore chart and customize it yourself.
But yeah, it just says how Milly can earn money, how Lyndon can earn money, and how Beaufort can earn money at the top. And then it has the jobs on one side and the amount on the next side. So let's, let's start with Beaufort. He's our youngest one doing chores right now. Benji's still 2, he's not really doing much.
But Beaufort can bring in the groceries for 50 cents, put his dirty laundry into the hamper for 50 cents, put clothes away for 25 cents, make his bed for 25 cents, and vacuum the kitchen with our handheld vacuum cleaner for 25 cents.
Lyndon empties the dishwasher for 50 cents. She can vacuum the van for $1.50 'cause that is usually quite the job. She puts toilet paper in all our bathrooms for a dollar, ph by the way, Lyndon is six years old. She sets the table for 50 cents, weeds the garden for 50 cents, makes her bed for 25 cents, puts her clothes away for 25 cents and brings in the mail for 25 cents.
Millie empties all trash 'cause she's eight years old. She empties all the trash cans in the house for $1.50. Oftentimes she'll bring in her little brother Beaufort and they will split that chore because she needs help with it and he's happy to do that. She brings in the trash cans from the street for a dollar. She folds a basket of laundry for a dollar. She vacuums the playroom for a dollar. She waters plants for 50 cents, sets the table for 25 cents, makes her bed for 25 cents, and my personal favorite, makes us our coffee every afternoon and sets the timer to go off at 5:00 AM for us the next morning. So it's like a magical coffee fairy and she loves that chore. Oh my goodness. If anyone else tries to do coffee instead of her, she will be so upset.
So they're responsible for checking off, like putting a little check mark by every chore when they do it. Sometimes they'll do two or three check marks a week because they have done a really good job at like putting their clothes away or making their beds.
Millie makes coffee every day. I mean, she will check that thing off like seven days a week. She loves it. So yeah, I think it's such a great way and we tell them they have to check it off and if they don't check it off, they don't get paid. So that's like, part of it is you do your chore, you check it off, you're, you're learning to take that responsibility.
But it has really fostered like some hard work ethic in our house and some motivation to get some fun things at the store. And I feel like a couple things, the dignity of work is like I've really seen them be so proud of themselves for doing a hard job.
This has not been without tears. We, there was a lot of resistance in the beginning a lot and there still is a lot of days. There's a lot of tears, especially in the days where we're like, guys, you have to do this. Like we need your help. You gotta do your chores. And they don't want to. Like, there's some tears, but it has really helped them know that that's part of what it looks like to be in a big family. Like we all have to work, we all have to carry our own weight and pull our own weight to keep this household going.
And it's teaching them like what it looks like to run a household and to manage your own money. And yeah, they're just so proud of themselves. I think that's my favorite part is they're so proud of themselves when they work hard and earn something for it. One thing they're they're learning that I really love is that working hard results in better play. And so when we rest and have fun as a family on Sabbath on Saturday, they love it. I mean they go around, we're like, “No chores allowed. We're not doing chores today. Like whoa!” Like they love it. And then they also know that Friday we double up on all our chores because we're preparing for Sabbath. And so they work so hard on Friday because they know what's ahead.
And so there's this balance that I'm seeing in their little brains like, Hey, we work really hard six days a week and then we get to just do whatever we want on the seventh day. It is awesome. And I'm like, man, that is so exciting to see this rhythm in their life and how fulfilling it is even for like our four-year-old or our six-year-old is really, really sweet.
And then the last thing is just teaching them what it looks like to give and, and they don't totally understand that yet. They don't know how a church works, they don't know all of that, but they're getting the principle that, hey, this money, all of it's God's anyway. Like we tell them all this money's his anyway, like it is, but God commands us in his word to give and return the tithe back to him, return that money back to him. And we can even give more if God puts that on our hearts if we want to. But a really important part of managing our money and our hard work is making sure that God is honored with it in everything we do.
So they love bringing their little envelopes to church and giving and yeah, I think I just want to raise kids who are healthy with work and play and healthy with their finances. And it starts young and it starts small, but man, it's been so rewarding to see all of that play out. And I just, last thing I'll add is it's, it's ever-changing. It's not uncommon for the girls to trade chores for like a month. Like Milly was doing the dishwasher and Lyndon was setting the table and they both got so tired of it, they were like, let's trade, please, let's trade, let's switch. I don't wanna do this anymore. And they switched and they both like instantly loved both of those chores again.
So it's some trial and error and as they grow, I'm sure we're gonna keep adding on more mature chores. Millie has grand plans of like buying a lawnmower, oh, she's eight, she wants to buy this lawnmower and get paid like $30 to mow our lawn when she's 10. She's like already has this whole plan for it that Will's talked to her about. But it's just cool to see it like clicking in their little minds.
So we really want our kids to just have a healthy relationship with money and to develop a really great work ethic. And I think it's starting to work with how we do our chores. Thanks for listening to episode 209 of Work and Play with Nancy Ray.
So grateful that you're here every week, I just wanna say thank you. If you wanna be an insider or get some more content, head to patreon.com/workandplay. You can find out more there and everything I've mentioned today, including our chore charts and the little sleeves that we use and the dry erase markers and the command sticky hooks will all be in the show notes at nancyray.com/podcast/209. And you can always find me at nancyray.com or over on Instagram at @nancyray.
Dale Carnegie said,
“Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one, it makes you that much stronger. If you do little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.”
Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
