Printable chore chart for kids, without the nagging

Draw up the list together, in one evening

A list your child helped write gets fewer arguments than one handed down:

1. Walk round the home together and write down every job that keeps it running, yours included: cooking, laundry, bins, the cat’s bowl.
2. Let your child pick two jobs from the list. Choosing is what makes them theirs.
3. Add one job yourself, the one the household needs most.
4. Write each job as a finish line: “table wiped, crumbs in the bin”, not “help in the kitchen”.

Three jobs is a full list to start with, and the rest of the paper shows what the adults already do every day.

Daily, weekly or one-time: give each job its rhythm

Not every job belongs on every day.

• Daily: small jobs that come round anyway — feeding the cat, clearing a plate, putting shoes away.
• Weekly: changing the bed sheets, sorting the recycling. In Moguchi a weekly task can be ticked on any day from Monday to Sunday, then it rests until next week.
• One-time: a bigger job that will not repeat, like clearing the balcony. Once ticked it leaves the list for good, so it can be worth 3 stars.

A daily job that keeps getting skipped is often a weekly one in disguise.

Fair between siblings, and between children and adults

The same job is not the same effort at six and at eleven, so fair means a list that fits each child’s age, not identical lists.

• Give a job an owner instead of rotating it daily: “the plants are yours this month” is easier to keep than a timetable of turns.
• A job the children share, like setting the table, goes on both lists, and each child ticks their own.
• Do your own jobs where they can see.

In Moguchi one phone holds one child’s goals, so with two children each has it set up on their own phone, and the totals stay on separate screens.

When a job is done badly

The bed is lumpy, the floor still has crumbs. Do not send it back before it “counts”: once stars depend on your inspection, every job becomes a negotiation.

Teach a new job once, side by side, and agree what “done” looks like at this age: a seven-year-old’s made bed has the duvet pulled up, not hotel corners. Then accept “good enough”. If it keeps coming out badly, do it together for another week. And do not redo it while your child watches; that says more than any remark.

A missed day costs nothing

In Moguchi a daily task that was not ticked simply closes at the end of the day; stars are never taken away as a penalty. The goal arrives a little later, and that is the whole consequence.

Skip the catch-up day where yesterday’s job is done twice. If one weekday keeps falling through, give that job a weekly rhythm instead.

Stars toward a goal, not a price per job

Fix each job’s stars when you write the list; a price that can rise on the spot gets bargained over every time. Big extra jobs go in as one-time tasks worth 3 stars: they bring the goal your child chose visibly closer without turning help at home into a wage.

The printed sheet or the phone

The printable sheet on this page has a column for each day: right for daily jobs and for a five-year-old who likes ticking boxes on the fridge. Weekly and one-time jobs fit paper badly; six empty boxes next to “change the sheets” look like six failures.

On the phone your child sees only what is due today; weekly jobs come back on Monday. Moguchi is free, with no ads and no account, and the data stays on your phone. It suggests tasks for your child’s age, each one is ticked with one tap, and Moguchi the mountain goat climbs towards the goal.