Weekly family planner: how to plan the week and share the chores
Monday morning is a poor time to find out that two children need to be in two places at 4pm and there is nothing in for packed lunches. A weekly family planner moves those discoveries to the weekend, while you still have time to do something about them. Add a simple chore chart and the week has a shape: everybody knows what is happening and who is doing what.
This guide shows how to build a weekly plan in about twenty minutes, how to split household jobs fairly, and which chores suit children of different ages.
What goes into a weekly family planner
A useful weekly plan answers four questions:
- Where does everyone need to be? School, work shifts, clubs, appointments, social plans, and who is doing each drop-off and pick-up.
- What are we eating? A rough list of evening meals is enough. It leads straight to the shopping list.
- What is due? Homework projects, forms to return, payments, presents to buy, things to book.
- Who is doing which jobs? This is the chore chart, which we come to below.
Whether you keep the plan on paper, a whiteboard or a phone is up to you. A paper family planner on the wall is easy for children to read. A digital one is with you when you are out and can remind you. Many families use a shared calendar as the master copy and write the week up in the kitchen. If you have not got a shared calendar yet, start with our guide to setting up a shared family calendar.
How to run a weekly planning session
Pick a fixed slot. Sunday evening is popular, and Friday after tea suits families who like the weekend clear. Keep it to twenty minutes, because short sessions are the ones that survive.
- Walk through the days. Go from Monday to Sunday and say out loud what is on. Look for clashes and for days with no adult available at pick-up.
- Assign the runs. Every drop-off, pick-up and appointment gets a name next to it.
- Check what is due. Empty the school bags, check the school app and email, and add any deadlines to the plan.
- Sketch the meals. Plan around the busy evenings first: something quick on club nights, cooking on the quieter days.
- Write the shopping list. Do it there and then, from the meal plan.
- Confirm the chores. Take a quick look at the chore chart and agree any swaps for the week.
Include the children as soon as they are old enough to follow. Even a five-year-old likes to know which day is swimming, and older children are more likely to keep to a plan they helped to make.
Making a chore chart that lasts
A chore chart is a table of household jobs showing who does each one and when. The ones that last tend to share a few features.
Start with a full chore list. Write down every regular job in the house: cooking, washing up or loading the dishwasher, laundry, bins and recycling, hoovering, bathrooms, changing beds, feeding pets, the weekly shop. Include the less visible ones, such as booking appointments and sorting school admin. If jobs stay off the list, the same person tends to end up doing them without anyone noticing; our article on the mental load explains why that matters.
Split the jobs into daily and weekly. Daily jobs such as laying the table or feeding the cat work well when one person has them for a whole week. Weekly jobs such as bathrooms or changing beds can be tied to a set day.
Give every job one name. "Everyone tidies the living room" tends to mean nobody does. One job, one person, one deadline.
Be specific. "Tidy your room" is open to interpretation. "Clothes in the wash basket, books on the shelf, floor clear" is not.
Rotate the unpopular ones. Nobody should be on bins forever. Swapping every week or month keeps things fair and means everyone learns each job.
Keep it small. A chart with three jobs per person that gets done is worth more than an ambitious one abandoned in a fortnight.
Age-appropriate chores for children
Every child is different, so treat these as starting points and not as rules. You know what yours can manage safely.
- Ages 2 to 4: putting toys back in a box, putting dirty clothes in the wash basket, helping to wipe up a spill, carrying their own plate to the side.
- Ages 5 to 7: laying the table, making their bed in a rough-and-ready way, feeding a pet with supervision, watering plants, pairing socks.
- Ages 8 to 11: clearing the table and loading the dishwasher, packing their own school bag, putting clean clothes away, hoovering a room, helping to prepare a simple meal.
- Ages 12 and over: doing a load of washing, cooking a simple meal, taking out the bins and recycling, cleaning a bathroom, changing their own bed.
Younger children need you alongside them at first, and the job will be done imperfectly. That is fine. What you are building is the habit of contributing.
Shopping lists and the things that slip through
Even a well-planned week falls apart if you run out of bread on Wednesday. A shared shopping list helps here. Whether it is a notepad on the fridge or a shared shopping list app on both parents' phones, the principle is the same: whoever finishes something adds it to the list, and whoever is passing a shop can see what is needed.
The same goes for small one-off tasks that are not really chores: return the library books, find the swimming goggles, reply to the party invitation. Give them a place in the weekly plan and a name, or they stay in somebody's head.
Keeping the plan in one place with Duppy
If your weekly plan lives in a calendar, a chore chart, a shopping list and three group chats, keeping them in step becomes a job of its own. Duppy is the family organisation app we are building to bring these together: appointments, tasks, deadlines and lists in one shared space, with recurring commitments, reminders and a named person responsible for each one. You can look at the same week as a calendar or as a to-do list showing what is done and what is overdue.
Duppy is coming soon. In the meantime, a sheet of paper and twenty minutes this weekend are enough to get your first weekly plan going.
Frequently asked questions
How do I make a weekly family planner?
Set aside twenty minutes at the same time each week. Go through each day, note where everyone needs to be and who is doing each drop-off and pick-up, add deadlines, sketch the evening meals, write the shopping list and confirm who is doing which chores.
What should a chore chart include?
List each regular household job, the person responsible and the day or frequency. Keep jobs specific, give each one to a single person, and rotate the unpopular ones so the split stays fair.
What are age-appropriate chores for children?
As a rough guide, toddlers can put toys away, children of five to seven can lay the table and water plants, those of eight to eleven can load the dishwasher and put clothes away, and older children can do laundry or cook a simple meal. Adjust to what your own child can manage safely.
Is a paper chore chart or a chore app better for a family?
Paper is visible and easy for young children to follow. An app is with you when you are out and can send reminders. Choose whichever your family will actually look at every day; some households use both.