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Household chores Word Search

This household chores word search hides words like sweep, laundry, vacuum to find. Play it free online or print the PDF with the answer key, a handy household chores vocabulary activity.

10 words · 11×11 grid · Medium · Answer key included · Free printable PDF

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Tap the first and last letter of a word — or use arrow keys and Enter. Dragging works too.

LAUNDRY
DUSTING
MOPPING
IRONING
VACUUM
SPONGE
BUCKET
SWEEP
SCRUB
BROOM

🎉 Solved — all 10 words found!

True stories

The cleaner that had to wait at the curb

London, England

In London, England, in 1901, an engineer named Hubert Cecil Booth went to the Empire Music Hall to watch a new cleaning machine. It blew air at the floor and hoped the dust would land in a bag. Booth thought the whole idea was pointed the wrong way. Pull the dirt in, he argued, and trap it in a filter, and the room would actually be clean. The inventor on stage told him suction was impossible. Booth patented his suction cleaner that same year. His petrol engine was far too big to carry indoors, so it waited at the curb while operators fed long hoses through the windows of the house.

A van full of washing machines

Brisbane, Australia

In Brisbane, Australia, two friends decided that clean clothes were a good place to start. In 2014 Nic Marchesi and Lucas Patchett fitted an old van with washing machines and dryers, then drove it to the places where people sleeping rough gathered. The washing was free. So were the six orange chairs they set out beside the van, and the founders came to say those mattered as much as the laundry did. While a load spun, people sat down and talked. The service they called Orange Sky spread across Australia and New Zealand, and on Australia Day in 2016 the pair were named joint Young Australians of the Year.

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Did you know?

sweep: The proverb a new broom sweeps clean was already settled English by the 1660s, and people still say it.
laundry: Laundry traces back through Old French to a Latin phrase meaning things to be washed, which is exactly what it is.
vacuum: Hubert Cecil Booth patented a powered vacuum in 1901; his petrol machine was so big it stayed in the street.
dusting: Dust a room from the top down, because anything you disturb up high just settles onto the surfaces below.
mopping: A mop holds water in its strands and gives it back under pressure, which is why wringing out matters so much.
ironing: An iron works by heat and weight together, relaxing the tangled fibers in a crease so they lie flat again.
scrub: Scrubbing is friction, not chemistry, so a soft brush and a little patience often beat a harsh cleaner on delicate surfaces.
broom: The sweeping broom is named after a shrub; people once tied its slender twigs to a handle to make one.
sponge: The original sponges were sea animals, harvested and dried; the one under your sink is almost certainly plastic foam.
bucket: Use two buckets, one soapy and one for rinsing, or you wash the floor with the dirt you just lifted.
dustpan: A dustpan only works if its front lip sits flush with the floor, or the last line slides underneath.
recycling: Rinse a jar before recycling it, so leftover food does not spoil the paper and cardboard traveling in the same load.
detergent: A detergent molecule has two ends, one that grips water and one that grips grease, which is how stains let go.
clothesline: Washing dries on a line because moving air carries the water vapor away, so a breezy day beats a merely hot one.
tidying: Tidying goes better in short bursts; a room given ten minutes a day rarely needs a whole lost afternoon.

Trivia

Who patented a powered vacuum cleaner in 1901, a petrol machine nicknamed Puffing Billy?
Hubert Cecil Booth.
The sweeping tool called a broom takes its name from what kind of plant?
A shrub, also called broom.
Which two common cleaning products must never be mixed, because together they give off toxic chloramine gases?
Bleach and ammonia.
The American word chore is a variant of which older English word, meaning a turn of work?
Char, as in charwoman.
Which religious community at Watervliet, New York, made its name with flat brooms that swept a wider path?
The Shakers.

Trivia · 1 / 5

Who patented a powered vacuum cleaner in 1901, a petrol machine nicknamed Puffing Billy?

Hubert Cecil Booth.

In their words

Life's too short to stuff a mushroom.
Shirley Conran, Superwoman (1975)

There was no need to do any housework at all. After four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.
Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant (1968)

Is this household chores word search free to print?

This household chores word search is a free printable puzzle with 10 hidden words in an 11×11 grid. Find words like LAUNDRY, DUSTING, MOPPING hidden across, down, and diagonally. You can play it right here in your browser — tap the first and last letter of a word — or download it as a printable PDF with the full answer key on page two. It's free for personal and classroom use, so teachers can print copies for a whole class with no sign-up and no account. Word searches like this one are a proven way to build vocabulary, spelling, and word-shape recognition, which is why they're a favourite with ESL learners, elementary classrooms, and anyone who likes a quiet puzzle with their coffee.

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