HouseChores
Chores for teenagers
Grouped by what a job actually builds — not by age. A capable fourteen-year-old and a stretched seventeen-year-old are different people on different weeks, and a list that pretends otherwise gets ignored by both.
The hard part is not the list. It is handing a job over so it stays handed over, which means handing over the noticing and the deciding too — not just the doing.
Jobs worth owning outright
A whole job with a clear edge — done or not done, no supervision, no checking. These are the ones that build the most, because owning something is different from helping with it.
- Their own laundry, start to finish — wash, dry, fold, put away
- Their own room: sheets changed, floor vacuumed, surfaces clear
- Bins out and back in on the right night
- One room of the house, cleaned properly once a week
- Loading, running and emptying the dishwasher on set days
- Feeding, walking and cleaning up after a pet
- Keeping the car interior clean, if they drive
Jobs that teach a life skill
Things that are genuinely useful to leave home knowing. Worth doing alongside someone the first two or three times, then handing over.
- Cooking one full meal a week, including the shopping for it
- Planning what the household eats for a few days
- Doing a shop from a list, and staying inside a budget
- Ironing, sewing a button, treating a stain before it sets
- Unblocking a sink, resetting a tripped breaker, bleeding a radiator
- Changing a tyre, checking oil and tyre pressure
- Booking their own appointments and keeping them
Jobs shared with everyone
The daily maintenance nobody owns and everyone contributes to. These work best as a household habit rather than an assignment.
- Clearing your own plate, cup and wrappers
- Putting back what you got out
- Shoes, bags and coats where they live
- Wiping the counter after making food
- Telling someone when the last of something has been used
How to hand a chore over
- Hand over the whole job, including the noticing. "The bathroom is yours on Tuesdays" transfers the work. "Help me with the bathroom" keeps it, and keeps the reminding with it.
- Agree what done looks like, once. Most arguments about chores are two people using the same word for different standards.
- Show it once, then step back. Redoing a job in front of someone teaches them not to bother.
- Let it be done differently. If the outcome is fine, the method is theirs.
- Let the consequence be real and small. No clean uniform on Monday teaches more than any reminder, and costs less than an argument.
- Notice out loud when it is done. Not praise for a favour — acknowledgement that a job belonging to the house got carried by them this week.
When it is not happening
Before treating it as defiance, it is worth checking whether it is one of the ordinary, fixable things instead.
- Is there a moment attached? Most undone chores are jobs with no when. "After dinner" beats "today".
- Is this week actually full? Exams, a first job, a season in a sport — the load someone can carry moves week to week, and a list that never moves gets abandoned rather than negotiated.
- Is it invisible? If the only way to know what is outstanding is to ask a parent, then the parent is still doing the remembering, which was the actual work all along.
- Is it only ever them? A household where one person's jobs are listed and nobody else's are will read as unfair to the person on the list — and they will be right.
- Has it become leverage? Chores tied to phones, lifts or money stop being how a house runs and become a negotiation, which is a harder thing to get back from than a missed bin night.
The goal is not compliance. It is a household where the work is visible to everyone in it, and where a person can see what is theirs without being told. That is a much lower bar than a spotless house, and a much more useful one to leave home with.
HouseChores is a free, shared board built for households with teenagers in them: everyone sees the same list, chores are distributed by what each person can reasonably carry that cycle, and nobody has to ask a parent what is outstanding. No ads, no trackers, nothing sold on.