1) Keep rooms clean, including making the bed, hanging up/folding clothes (putting away clean laundry), keeping our desks organized.
2) This will sound funny, but since my sister’s birthday is on an odd day, and mine is even, on odd days my sister got to set the table and say grace first. On those days, I cleaned up dinner. Vise versa on even days.
3) Once we were in high school, we were responsible for doing our own laundry. This is so essential – otherwise, I wouldn’t have known how to do it in college!
4) Everyone ironed their own clothes.
5) Laura and I were also responsible for shoveling the driveway/walk when it snowed.

I don’t think kids necessarily need to be or should be incentivized to do chores. My parents always made it clear that every member of the household had to contribute to the household’s productivity, and we never questioned that!

We shared rooms (3 girls to one room, 2 boys to another) so the rooms stayed clean by virtue of “peer policing”. My parents had to break up a few fights now and then, but they didn’t have to play bad cop.

We also had household chores assigned to each of us for a week at a time – e.g., doing dishes after dinner, taking out garbage. The rotation broke up the monotony and kept things fair. Though I recall that there wasn’t any QA process, so some of my siblings got off easy. Perhaps this caused some permanent damage, but then life isn’t always fair, is it?!

Finally, every Saturday morning was cleanup day. We had to clean up the basement (our play room), and dust and vacuum everywhere. We all did it together, and nobody was allowed to leave the house for any reason until the whole job was done. No if’s, and’s or but’s. Even when our friends would come around and ask when we could come out and play.

Not sure how many of these would fly in today’s world, but there were some valuable lessons there along with getting the work done.

When they were smaller, they were told a specific day that their room and things had to be picked up. If it was not completed, to “close” to my specifications, it was the garbage bags turn. I am the garbage bag queen. One time throwing out anything out of place, regardless of value or favoriteness and I never had to do it again.

Now, that is not to say I didn’t have to remind, I do this today. But, my life has become easier as they age with the habit of cleaning.

I also limit their jobs, frankly because it is not up to my standards. They only, clean their rooms, put up laundry, bring dirty laundry down 2 days a week, put all dirty dishes of theirs in the dishwasher, and bring back the trash cans on garbage day.

If I must be totally honest, cleaning thier room is just putting things in their place, I vacuum, dust and clean fans. They will tell you though, “we don’t do it good enough or we would”.

I suppose this is why Stephen Covey mentions something in his book about getting a kid to keep his room clean but doesn’t offer any suggestions on how to do it.