5 Chores Our Toddler Does Around the House

Toddlers innately want to help and, according to Psychology Today, if you encourage (and allow) your toddler to help you around the house, they will continue to voluntarily help you throughout their childhood and maintain that cooperative attitude into their adulthood. 

So to that end, we have our 21-month-old toddler participate in some simple chores around the house. Lee’s name isn’t on a chore wheel, but we continuously include him in some basic housework.

Full disclosure: it would be infinitely easier to have Lee out of the house while I clean up and working with a toddler to set the table requires a lot of patience and practice by all parties. But the goal isn’t for Lee to run the vacuum and take out the garbage by his second birthday. The objective is to frame housework as simply a part of our everyday routine and something we do as members of the family. We also want to avoid creating a reward system around chores and housework.

Here are the simple chores we have our 21-month-old toddler help with around the house...

Setting the Table

As we’re preparing dinner, we will hand Lee plates and silverware to put on the table, one at a time. He’s responsible for at least ferrying the place settings to the table; he can safely place the plates on the table but they’re usually scattered about the table.

We got Lee a placemat that has the outline where his plate, cutlery, and the cup should be set. It helped him connect the dots that the fork goes on the left of the plate and his cup on the upper right. 

Wiping Up and Mopping Up Spills

Probably the first chore Lee learned was how to wipe up spills, first with a kitchen towel and then a mop. We bought him this B. Toys Wooden Cleaning set; the kid-sized mop makes it easier for him to maneuver. 

I think Lee picked up this skill simply from observing us wipe down the counters and surfaces where he had flung his food during lunchtime. We would hand him his own towel as we wiped up his dribbled water and, eventually, he started wiping up himself. 

Loading the Washing Machine and Putting Items in the Hamper

This is more of a challenge because we don’t have an in-unit washer and dryer; instead, I have to walk with Lee (and schlep our laundry) to the laundromat on the corner. Lee is responsible for pulling the laundry out of the bag and loading it into the washing machine. Once the wash is done, he plops the wet laundry into the wire laundry cart and wheels it over to the dryer to load. 

Given that I can’t always let Lee tag along to the laundromat, I frequently ask him to put dirty clothes in the hamper. He scoops up his food-flecked shirt and muddy jeans, opens the closet door, and drops his laundry into the hamper. Truthfully, he occasionally gets distracted on the way to the hamper, so I remain close by to grab any forgotten socks along the way.

Putting Away His Toys and Books

Whenever Lee is done playing and before we move onto our next activity, we clean up his room with him: place his toys back on their shelves; store all his building blocks; and return his books to the bookcase. We want Lee to understand that cleaning up is a part of the playtime activity. 

When we initially started this practice, Lee would just stand and watch us as we cleaned up around him-- or he’d get into something else to play with that we had to also clean up. After months of observing and then eventual practice, Lee will put his book away independently and help us gather up his Magnatiles. 

Now all of this is not to say that Lee is some cleaning wunderkind; he gets these chores right about 30% of the time, occasionally making more of a mess than helping to clean. But again, our aim is to help Lee understand our household’s expectations: we clean up after ourselves, respect our belongings, and help each other.

Interested in getting your toddler to start pitching in around the house? Here is how we coached Lee to help clean up and integrated it into our household’s norms.