Empower Your Little Ones: Simple Housekeeping Jobs for Kids

Learn simple jobs for kids that can be accomplished around the house. Empower your little ones with more responsibility.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my journey of motherhood is that our little ones want to spend quality time with us and desire greatly to help in any way they can. They don’t care what the task might be. They genuinely want to offer their assistance to us as their parents and to spend intentional time by our sides.

The challenge as a mama and homemaker is to slow down long enough to invite them into our space and our world. It is hard as efficient homemakers to pause our systems and learn to do our tasks at a slower pace in order for little hands to offer their assistance. But, oh when we actually can pause and enjoy slow living in our daily tasks with our kids, what joy it brings.

Today I want to share some simple housekeeping jobs for kids. These jobs for kids will empower your little ones to take on more responsibility around the house as well as bring joy to your mama heart as you spend intentional time together.

5 Simple Housekeeping Jobs for Kids

The jobs mentioned below are perfect for children of a younger age range, from around two to seven years old. Once children are older than this range they typically can do housekeeping jobs around the house with little assistance from their parent.

Vacuuming

Vacuuming is the perfect housekeeping job to let your little ones participate in. This is a great job for your kids to help with when they have a lot of pent up and excess energy. Vacuuming is great excercise for mama as well.

When we vacuum our house I will let one of my children help me push the vacuum while the other one holds the vacuum tools with the brush attached and pretends to vacuum the baseboards. It’s important that everyone has a job to do and can be involved.

Laundry

If you are a mom you know there is always an abundance of laundry. Whether it’s washing, folding or putting away it seems like there is always a laundry related task to complete.

There are a variety of ways to involve your little ones in the task of laundry. I teach my kids the housekeeping job of laundry in several ways.

• placing dirty clothes in the hamper
• helping to transfer clothes from the washer to the dryer
• folding simple items such as washcloths or dish towels
• sorting laundry and taking their personal items to their clothing boxes

Dusting

Dusting is the perfect job for little ones to help with. At our house, I give a damp washcloth to both of my kids. I instruct my oldest to go and wipe down all of the door knobs in the house. He loves this job, it teaches him attention to detail and it’s a great way to accomplish a housekeeping task that I don’t honestly do regularly.

For my toddler I allow her to use her damp cloth to wipe down tables or other flat surfaces in our home. I make sure that the spaces she has access to don’t involve any breakable items. Helping with this task makes her feel very grown up.

Disposing of Trash

Learning to throw away trash is a simple housekeeping task that little ones can learn at a very young age. Teaching them to throw items away is a simple task but one that teaches them to keep their area clean.

One of the first items that I teach my children to throw away are their dirty diapers. As I’ve had more children this learned and practiced skill in the older toddlers has been essential. The older children are able to throw away diapers or other trash when I am changing or taking care of the younger ones. As a homemaker, help with even the smallest of tasks definitely adds up.

Now that my children are a little older they love to help me roll our large outside trashcans and recycling cans to the street.

Toy Clean Up

Toy clean up is a task that all children need to be involved in. Cleaning up their toys each day teaches responsibility of their own possessions.

Every evening my children are responsible for cleaning up our main living area where they play most frequently as well as their room. They currently share a room so they work together on this task as well. Not only does this task teach responsibility but also teamwork.

When asking your young children to clean up their toys it is important that the task seems achievable in their young mind. This means that their can’t be an over abundance of toys scattered around or the task will feel insurmountable in their young minds. Let’s be honest, even as adults when we see a room with too many toys the thoughts of cleaning up feels overwhelming.

If you want to downsize the amount of toys in your home in order to help your children enjoy more creative play as well as be able to maintain an age appropriate amount of possessions for clean up check out my article Transform Your Home, A Simple Method to Minimize Toy Clutter.

Other Housekeeping Jobs for Kids

• Wipe small spills with a cloth
• Help set the table (plastic items)
• Help clear the table (plastic items)
• Water plants
• Feed pets
• Sweep small areas with a handheld broom

Make Housekeeping Jobs Fun

Often, allowing your little ones to help you as a parent and participate in “adult” jobs is all the fun that a little one needs to stay engaged. However, if including your little one in housekeeping tasks is something new for your family and your children are resisting the tasks, there are several ways to make the jobs more enjoyable.

You can make chores more fun by playing music while you clean. You can use a timer method and make the chore more like a race. Another fun idea is to create some type of reward system to help keep kids engaged. Something that I like to do with my kids is enjoy a fun snack after all of our work is complete.

As a homemaker, being intentional in involving our children in daily housekeeping tasks is important. It’s important for us as parents to slow down and enjoy these moments with our little ones but it is also important for our children to feel empowered and understand household responsibility. Being a part of a family is being a part of a team…everyone needs to help.

If you are looking for other ways that you can involve your little ones in tasks around the home, check out my article Discover Seven Amazing Benefits of Cooking with Toddlers. Comment below and let me know what tasks you let your little one’s help with around the house.