Household Chores in English: Dishes and Laundry

Housework looks much the same in every home — dishes, laundry, floors, trash — and English names most of it with a small set of verbs: do, clean, wash, plus a handful of phrasal verbs such as take out and put away. This guide goes through the jobs room by room, and then covers the part people actually argue about: whose turn it is.

Prefer to hear it first? The podcast episode Who Does the Dishes? uses many of these phrases in two short conversations between roommates.

Housework, chores, and homework

Three words that learners often mix up:

Use do with all three: do the housework, do chores, do your homework. For the wider pattern, see our guide to make vs do. One common household expression with make is make the bed. Do the dishes, do the laundry and make the bed are fixed pairs — more of that habit is in our guide to collocations.

Room by room: the everyday jobs

In the kitchen.

Laundry.

The rest of the home.

The main vocabulary here uses American English. In British English, you may hear do the washing-up (wash the dishes), do the washing (wash clothes), and take the rubbish out. Put the bins out means move the bins outside for collection. Hoover is also used as a verb for vacuum.

Clean, wash, wipe, tidy up: which verb?

These verbs overlap, but each has its own main idea:

Tidy up is about order, not dirt. In American English you'll also hear clean up, pick up, and straighten up for the same idea — Clean up your room often just means “put your things away.” And when a room looks really bad, there's a phrase for that too: What a mess!

Phrasal verbs for chores

Many phrases for chores use phrasal verbs: a verb plus a short word such as out, up or away. How they split around a pronoun is the same pattern as in our guide to phrasal verbs.

Word order. All the phrasal verbs listed above are separable. With a noun, either order works: take out the trash / take the trash out. With a pronoun (it, them), the pronoun must go in the middle. This rule does not apply to every phrasal verb.

Sharing the work: asking, offering, taking turns

Asking. Can you…? is normal at home; Could you…? is a little softer. After Would you mind…? the verb takes -ing.

Answering. A short reply is enough at home. If it is not your job, say whose turn it is.

Offering. Use I'll for a job you decide to do at that moment.

Taking turns. Your turn is your time to do a shared job. Use turn + to + base verb: It's your turn to cook. With take turns, use -ing: We take turns cooking.

A short conversation at home

Alex and Sam share a kitchen. They are deciding whose turn it is.

Do the dishes and do the laundry name the jobs. I'll wash if you dry splits one job. Take it out puts the pronoun in the middle. Yet at the end means the bag is not full so far.

Common mistakes

“Make the laundry.” Learn the expression do the laundry for washing clothes. It takes do, not make.

“Homework” for cleaning. Homework is for school. Work around the home is housework.

“Houseworks” and “laundries.” Housework is uncountable. Laundry is also uncountable when it means clothes to wash or the task of washing them. Use chores to count jobs and loads of laundry to count batches. A laundry can mean a business that washes clothes; that meaning has a plural.

“Take out it.” A pronoun goes between the verb and the small word.

“It's your turn to washing.” After turn, use to and the base form of the verb.

Clear or clean the table? Both are correct, but they describe different jobs: clear means remove the dishes; clean means remove dirt.

After a meal, you may need to do both: first clear the table, then clean the table or wipe the table.

Quick exercise

Complete sentences 1–7 with these words, using each once: bed, clear, do, fold, out, to, up. In number 8, choose one of the two words.

1. I usually ___ the laundry on Sundays.
2. The trash can is full. Can you take it ___?
3. It's your turn ___ vacuum the living room.
4. We've finished eating. Could you ___ the table and put the plates in the sink?
5. The towels are dry. I'll ___ them and put them in the closet.
6. Pull the blanket flat — you forgot to make your ___.
7. There are toys all over the floor. Please pick them ___.
8. Cleaning, laundry, dishes — I have so much ___ to do this weekend. (homework / housework)

Frequently asked questions

Is it “do the dishes” or “wash the dishes”?

Both are correct and common. “Do the dishes” names the whole job; “wash the dishes” describes the action itself. In British English, people often say “do the washing-up.”

What is the difference between housework and chores?

Housework is all the cleaning and tidying a home needs, and it is uncountable: “a lot of housework.” Chores are the separate regular jobs, and you can count them: “three chores.”

Is it “do the laundry” or “make the laundry”?

It is “do the laundry.” English usually uses “do” for household jobs: do the dishes, do the laundry, do the chores. The common exception is “make the bed.”