How to take the chore out of your chore charts and lists

How to create a chore chart template

Recreating a chore list and divvying responsibilities every week can be daunting. Luckily, OneNote has an easy solution. Create a chore list template, save it in your notebook, and reuse it each week.

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To start, create a table to use as your chore chart. Click Insert a table in OneNote to organize information. Organize your table by specifying days of the week across the top row and household members in the initial column. You can further customize your table by clicking the table ribbon, to add rows and change color to distinguish different days. Once you’re happy with your chore chart design, save it and start planning out your week.

Templated lists in OneNote can help whatever you need to plan, from crafting lesson plans to travel itineraries.

Track chores with to-do tags

There are so many places in the house to keep organized. OneNote simplifies tracking chores with to-do tags. To-do tags let you categorize chores how you want to. Do you need to wash dishes, clean the refrigerator, empty the kitchen trash can, and want to keep these tasks organized under kitchen chores? While in the Home ribbon, click the second down arrow in the tags section to customize and create tags. Name the tag “kitchen chores,” and customize the list symbol, font color, and highlight color to distinguish it from other chores. Now you can make sure no chore goes unaccounted for!

Share the chore chart with your household

Don’t let chore assignment fall onto one person in the house. With your chore chart saved on OneNote, share a page or notebook with anyone. Send an email invitation to your whole household and give them editing permissions. Once they have access, they can write chores beside their name, and everyone can see assignments in real-time. Including everyone in your household allows them to assign chores to themselves when they’re available. To help prevent scheduling conflicts, you can also add meetings or events from Outlook. From the Home ribbon, click meeting details and add anything scheduled in Outlook into your notebook.

To add more fun to doing chores as a family, you can even make it into a competition! To incentivize the kids (and adults) in your household to do chores, track each family member’s chores for the week, see who does the most chores, and award a special prize for the winner.

Add a personal touch to your chore chart

Add a personal touch to your chore chart in OneNote by utilizing customization options in OneNote. Select draw and use a pen, pencil, or highlighter. Write your tasks out by hand in different colors to make your chore list pop. If you think your family members will use poor handwriting as an excuse to get off chores, you can always convert your handwriting to text. Click Select Objects or Lasso Select; draw a circle around the text and select to ink to text. You can also add visuals to your chore chart by inserting images to use as stickers or drawing smiley faces and stars to praise completed chores.

Maintaining a household is tedious enough. Simplify creating a chore chart by using OneNote to keep everything you need to do around the house, organized and accessible. Learn more organization tips from Microsoft.