Chores by Age Chart: What Kids Can Do, 6 to 16

Two questions sit behind every chores by age chart. The first is what your kid can actually handle this week. The second is harder: which of those tasks earn money, and which are simply part of being in this family. Most lists answer the first and skip the second, which is how parents end up with a long printable on the fridge and no real system underneath it. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Money As You Grow milestones lay out the developmental side of the first question, and the Building Blocks model confirms the school-age years are when the link between effort and money gets set.

Below is the chart, year by year from 6 to 16, with the family-baseline list, the earnable above-baseline list, and the milestone year that bends the chart. Pick the row that matches your kid; pick the category that matches the task you have in mind.

How to read the chores by age chart

A useful chores by age chart does two things at once. Most age-appropriate chores lists, and most household chores by age guides, answer only the first one (here is the kids chores by age list) and skip the second, which is why parents end up with thirty tasks and no system.

1. Family baseline (unpaid) at that age: what we do because we live here.
2. Earnable above-baseline (paid): what your kid can take on for real money, above the family floor.
3. Category (indoor, outdoor, pets), because the same age handles different categories at different speeds.
4. Milestone: the developmental shift that moves the chart forward each year.

Tap an age in the chart below to see the per-year lists. Use the category toggle to filter indoor, outdoor, or pet care. The lists are calibrated against the matching per-year deep-dive posts where they exist, so the chart and the year-specific guides agree.

Two notes on reading it. First, the baseline column grows from year to year; the earnable column does too, but more slowly. By 10, the baseline is roughly five items and the earnable list is roughly four. Second, the chart treats age 6 differently on purpose: the earnable column is empty at 6 because the lesson at this age is the habit, not the income. We hold the earning conversation for age 7 or 8.

If you are looking for a chore chart by age that scales beyond this widget, the pillar at /chore-ideas-for-kids-by-age has the full band-level lists for indoor, outdoor, and pet care.

The baseline grows with age

The baseline column of the chart matters more than the earnable column, even though parents typically focus on the earnable one. The baseline is the year-by-year promotion ladder that produces a teenager who can run a load of family laundry without prompting. Pay does not appear in that ladder at all.

At 6, the baseline is five short tasks: bedroom tidy, table set, hamper drop, pet water, sock sort. (Our deep dive for age 6 walks through these in more detail, including the developmental signals that decide whether your kid is ready.) The point at this age is not the chore. It is the rhythm of doing a thing at the same time every day, finishing it, and noticing it got finished.

By age 8 the baseline has roughly seven items, with two-step tasks like "clear and rinse own plate" and "pack own lunch" sitting alongside the original five. By age 10, the baseline tightens around five core daily-or-weekly habits: bed, bedroom, table, trash, laundry. The CFPB's Building Blocks model places ages 9 to 12 in the developing-financial-habits stage; the chore chart's job in that window is to make the unpaid baseline feel automatic.

By the early teens the baseline starts to look adult. At 13, cooking one family dinner per week is on the list. At 14, the kid is running their own laundry on a schedule. By 15 and 16, the baseline IS adult-baseline: bathroom clean to standard, family laundry (not just their own), meal prep, watching younger siblings reliably. The earnable column shrinks at the same time because there is less above-baseline left to pay for at home.

Earnable above-baseline jobs (where the pay lives)

The earnable column is the lever of the hybrid system. It is where money meets effort, and it is the half of the chart most parents get wrong by either paying for everything or paying for nothing. Both extremes break the lesson.

A useful framing: the earnable list is for tasks that are clearly above the family baseline. At 8, that means full dishwasher cycle or vacuum a room. At 10, it means above-baseline work like washing the car or doing full pet care end to end. At 12, it means solo mow the front lawn or babysit a younger sibling while an adult is home. At 14, it means tutoring younger kids or yard work for the neighbors. The earnable list grows the way real responsibility does: out of the family at first, then out to the neighbors, then into a real job. (Our deep dive on paying for chores covers the system theory in more detail.)

How much to pay for the earnable column is a separate question, and it is the one the allowance by age chart answers. The two charts together form the hybrid system: a small unconditional base from the allowance chart, plus earnable extras from this chart. A 10-year-old at $8 a week in the comfortable column of the allowance chart, plus four earnable chores on this chart at $1 to $3 each, lands around $12 to $20 per week in real money. That is the right shape for a hybrid system at this age.

One thing the earnable column does not do: it does not unlock the baseline. If your kid refuses to make their bed, the answer is not to start paying for it. The baseline is non-negotiable participation; the earnable list is where money lives. Mixing the two collapses the hybrid system back into pay-for-everything, which is the system kids learn to optimize and parents learn to resent.

Indoor, outdoor, and pets: what fits where

The widget's category toggle filters chores into Indoor, Outdoor, and Pets, mirroring how the pillar at /chore-ideas-for-kids-by-age organizes them. The categories matter because the same age handles different categories at different speeds: a 9-year-old who can vacuum a room reliably might not yet be safe with a lawnmower, and a 7-year-old who confidently refills a pet water bowl may not yet handle a feeding schedule end to end.

Use the categories as a sanity check, not a rulebook. Most kids are ahead in one category and behind in another. The chart is a starting point; your kid is the source of truth.

Lessons that teach the chart in practice

The chart is the map; the in-app lessons are how kids walk it. The four below cover the three age bands the chart spans (young, preteen, youngteen) and tie the chart's central mechanics (cadence, contracts, earning, real-work readiness) to short interactive lessons that take 4 to 8 minutes each.

The first is the youngest-band introduction: what a chore chart is and how to negotiate a fair one with your parent. The second is the preteen heart of the chart: a real chore contract with task, standard, deadline, pay, and proof. The third is the earning plan that ties the earnable column to a real savings goal. And the fourth is the early-teen pivot: a one-page resume for the real outside work that starts to land at 14 to 16.

When should you start a chore chart at all?

This is the question we hear from parents more than almost any other about chores, and we get why. The chart starts at age 6, but the first year is the one that needs the most context, so it is worth pausing here before you put a chart on the fridge.

Our honest answer is: 6 for most kids, sometimes 5, rarely earlier. The marker is not really a birthday; it is whether your kid can finish a two-step task ("pick this up, put it there"), notice when a thing is "done," and stay with a five-minute focus task. Most 6-year-olds clear that bar. Some 5-year-olds do too, especially the second-or-later kid in a family who has already been watching an older sibling do it. (For the year-one specifics, including why we do not pay for chores at this age, see the age 6 deep dive.)

A few signals that suggest you can start earlier than 6: your kid puts toys away without prompting, helps with simple tasks on their own initiative, or stays focused on a small task for several minutes. A few that suggest you should wait a year: meltdowns over small frustrations, no interest in completing things, or a household where the chart cannot reliably be checked daily because of work schedules. The cadence matters more than the calendar age. Start the chart, or wait a year and start it then with the cadence already established.

What changes when the chart bends at 14 to 16

The chart's right edge looks different from the rest of it, and that is the point. By 14, the baseline column has caught up with what an adult would do, and the conversation shifts from "what should you do this week" to "what does it look like to run this household alongside us." By 15, a real outside job is on the table for many kids: babysitting, retail, food service, tutoring, lifeguarding. The chart's earnable column shrinks because the real money is now coming from outside.

By 16, the at-home earnable list is down to occasional big one-offs (deep-clean a room, paint a fence, detail the car) priced at adult market rates, not chore-chart rates. The 16-year-old deep dive covers the transition in detail, including why paying $4 for a fully-mowed lawn at 16 actively teaches the wrong lesson.

A bending chart is the goal, not a regression. The job was always to grow a kid from five short tasks at 6 to running the household alongside you at 16, and then to step out of the way once a real outside job takes over the earning conversation. A 16-year-old still doing the 10-year-old row means the chart stalled. A 16-year-old whose earnable column has visibly emptied because the real money is now a paycheck means the chart worked.

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