before breakfast chores

Karen, just while you are thinking of doing evening chores let me add something else to consider.  We do evening chores also (well, and morning too) but we do ‘5:00 Chores’ instead of right before bed.  In our family we go straight from eating dinner and some kitchen clean up (to be completed by my older children) to getting the younger ones ready for bed, so we don’t have time to clean up then.  I’ve moved up our ‘5:00 Chores’ to 4:30 🙂 becasue that gave more time to get it all done and for me to be involved while also preparing dinner.  The general house (including bedroom) pickup happens in the evening.  I hope you can find something that works for your girls!  I love so many of the suggestions you have received!