Balancing the Family Cabin Chore List

If you share a family cabin, then you’ve no doubt faced the issue of who handles the chores. Keeping up a family cabin is hard and when multiple people are involved, determining who is responsible for what chore can get confusing. A family cabin limited liability company, or cabin LLC, can add structure and accountability that can help conquer the chore dilemma.

The methods used by cabin LLC members for assigning and tracking chores are as unique as the families themselves. Many cabin owners use a chore chart to track chore progress. Those charts work well and usually assure that no chores slip through the cracks.  A few interesting chore sharing and assignment ideas appear below.

One family that recently put together a cabin LLC for the family cabin decided on a task-based approach to tackle this issue. The family members thought about it and decided to divide up chores based on the skills the family members have. According to the family, it’s always a good idea to let people play to their strengths. Some folks are simply better at one thing and weak at others.  They split up the work task by task to let each person totally take ownership of a few areas. For example, some people hate doing the interior cleaning but can take care of leaves, gutters and mowing with no problem. If the family members can limit the chores they have to the tasks that they can stand, it will make the cabin chore time a little happier for everyone.

Another family used a time-based approach in its cabin LLC. They estimated the time it takes to do each task and made sure that each party is spending the similar amount of their cabin use time towards cabin upkeep.  This family thought this would be the most equitable way to allocate the responsibility for various chores. Under their system, cabin LLC members can always do the same tasks, or rotate them to keep it interesting. Setting chores out this way ensures that one person doesn’t spend forever on the hard tasks while others float by with quick chores done only once in a while.

A family with a cabin in northern Wisconsin likes to rotate the responsibility for seasonal chores. This is an interesting strategy. The idea here is that each person takes a bundle of chores on in total. For example, one family member or family branch handles the spring cabin opening in a given year and does everything. Yes, even the pier installation in that ice cold lake water. The next year another family member or family branch takes that on. It’s a lot of work for that short period, but allows the other people involved to get a real break where they don’t need to even think about cleaning or preparing the cabin at all.

No matter how you split up the chores, everyone in the family will need a break once in a while.  Frankly, with shared cabin ownership, some kindness and understanding with the other family members will keep the cabin ownership positive, resulting in warmhearted memories that will last for generations.