Chores & Allowance
Stop redesigning the chore chart every six weeks.
Chore systems break down because they take work to maintain — figuring out what's age-appropriate, who does what, whether it rotates, how to track it, what (if anything) is tied to allowance. By the time you've worked through it, you're too tired to enforce it. Three weeks in, the chart's on the fridge but nobody looks at it. Six weeks later, you're starting over.
Cowork takes the figuring-out off you. It builds the chart based on what you actually want (and what your kid factsheet says about each kid), suggests age-appropriate chores, sets up tracking, and updates the system as kids age or the family changes. You spend ten minutes once; it runs for the year.
Build the chore chart.
Open the relevant Kid Project (or your shared Kid Life Project). The kid factsheet from Set Up Your Kid Project already has each kid's age — Cowork uses that to keep chores age-appropriate.
One way to ask:
Cowork interviews you through the open questions and proposes a chart. If chores feel off for a kid's age — too easy, too hard — tell Cowork what to adjust. You can also push back on the whole approach: "This is too elaborate. Just give each kid three chores total, one daily and two weekly."
Some patterns that work for different families
- Fixed chores per kid — each kid owns specific chores. Easier to track, but creates resentment if one kid's load feels heavier.
- Weekly rotation — same chore set, kids swap who does what each week. Fairer feeling, more memory load.
- Daily quick chores + weekly bigger ones — daily five-minute things (clear your spot, put shoes away) + a bigger Saturday job (vacuum, take out trash). Splits the load.
- Family-share chores — some chores belong to everyone (dishes after dinner) and the kids rotate the lead.
Tell Cowork which pattern fits your family and it builds that. If you don't know yet, ask Cowork to recommend one based on the ages of your kids.
Allowance, if you do allowance.
Plenty of families do chores without allowance. Plenty tie them together. Cowork supports either. If allowance is part of your system, you set it up alongside the chart.
Make the weekly review easy on yourself.
The thing that kills allowance systems is forgetting to do the weekly review. Two patterns that help:
- Tie the review to something you already do. Sunday-night meal-prep, Saturday breakfast, the after-dinner cleanup — pick a moment that already happens every week and add the allowance check to it.
- Schedule a Cowork nudge. Set up a scheduled task (from Phase 3's Scheduled Tasks) that pings you Sunday afternoon: "Time for the weekly chore review." Cowork can even pre-fill what it remembers from the week.
Kid Life & Learning — done.
That's the module. Project(s) set up per kid (or shared), homework help on demand, full lessons on any topic, interactive learning artifacts your kid can tap through, printable worksheets when paper wins, and now a chore-and-allowance system that runs for the year instead of being rebuilt every six weeks.
What you built across this module
- Kid Project(s) with factsheets — Cowork knows each kid
- Homework Help — explanations and guided problem walk-throughs at her grade level, from your kitchen table or your car
- Full Lessons on Any Topic — sick-day catch-up, fill-the-gap, prep-before-it's-taught, summer enrichment, homeschool
- Interactive Learning Artifacts — clickable HTML tools deployable to your kid's tablet
- Printable Worksheets — drill, practice, vocab, test prep, road-trip packets
- Chore Chart and (optional) Allowance Tracking — built once, runs all year
Optional dashboard block.
If you'd like the dashboard to surface what each kid is doing right now:
Back to the Phase 4 menu.
Three Phase 4 modules done (Email & Calendar, Meal Planning Deep Dive, Kid Life & Learning). Four more to pick from: Running the Household, Money & Bills, Trips & Big Weeks, The Just-In-Case Binder. Or stop here — the system keeps working.
Back to the Phase 4 menu →