Make a printable chore chart for your family

The rotation setting is the only real decision on this page, and it is what decides whether the chart survives the month.

Rotate when one of the chores is genuinely worse than the others. Someone has to clean the bathroom, and a chart that hands it to the same child every week is one that child will start arguing with — not because they are lazy but because they are right. Rotation makes the unfairness visibly temporary, which is usually enough.

Keep it fixed when people are good at different things, or when a chore needs continuity. Feeding the cat is not better for being shared between three people; it is worse, because the cat gets fed twice on Tuesday and not at all on Wednesday. A fixed chart is also easier for younger children, who learn "my job is the bins" long before they learn to read a rotation.

The most common reason a chart fails has nothing to do with the chart. It is that a row says "tidy your room", which has no definition of done, so the child believes they did it and the adult believes they did not, and the argument is about the chart rather than the room.

Rows that work name an object and an end state: "clothes off the floor", "bins to the kerb", "dishwasher emptied". A row a seven-year-old can point at and say "that is finished" is a row you will not have to supervise. It is also the test for whether a chore belongs on a chart at all — if you cannot write the end state, what you have is a project, and it needs a conversation instead.

A printed chart is a snapshot. It cannot tell you whether the bins actually went out on Tuesday, it cannot pay pocket money, and when the rotation needs to change because of a school trip you print a new one. For a lot of households that is completely fine, and it is why this page is a free tool rather than a signup form.

You have outgrown it when three things start happening at once: you are reprinting more than once a month, you are having the "did you do it" conversation anyway, and you are tracking allowance in your head. At that point the chart is no longer the system — you are, and you are running it from memory.

That is the job the Chores & Allowance app does: the same chart, but each person sees only their own rows, ticks them off themselves, and the allowance follows the completions without anyone adding anything up. The rotation moves on its own, and a week where somebody was away is something you adjust rather than reprint.

• Chores & Allowance
• Routines
• Rewards

Every app in the library is included with the household plan. This page stays free either way.

• A chore system that does not require constant parent reminders
• How to share the mental load at home, not just the chores
• Name the invisible work, then see who is actually holding it
• A home maintenance checklist for your house, grouped by season
• A phone and screen-time contract you can both actually sign
• Draw Secret Santa names without an account
• Split shared expenses and see who pays who
• Split rent and bills between housemates
• See a custody schedule on a calendar, and count the overnights