Chores

I have always been pretty bad about giving my kids chores. I know that it is good for them to have them, and I know that they SHOULD have had chores since they were little, but I just never enforced any.

As my kids have gotten older, I have become increasingly frustrated by the fact that they still leave stuff around like they did when they were 2 and 3.  As I weigh my decision to bring them all home for the upcoming school year one thought keeps popping up over and over again: "I cannot school them at home AND keep a house in order." Since my desire to bring them home is pretty strong I knew that the one side that had to give was the lack of contribution on their parts. I need them to help make my load lighter both figuratively and literally.

In their defense, they do help out when asked. We have something called 'family cleaning' time in our house where the entire family will take 20 - 30 minutes to pick up and put stuff away.  I am of the mind set though, that this shouldn't be happening as often as it does because if everyone would just pick up after themselves to begin with then our family clean time would only last 5 - 10 minutes.



I purchased a book a while ago, and even wrote a post about it, called Large Family Logistics, by Kim Brenneman. I LOVE this book - the first time I read it I made the mistake of not using a highlighter and taking notes. THIS time through I am doing both of those things, and the information is sticking in my brain a bit better.

Basically, Kim talks about how to TEACH your children to do household chores, and then how to make sure that those chores become second nature. She talks about how today's kids (mine would fall under this category) are pretty lazy because nothing is expected of them, and how we (I took her to mean me) are setting our kids up for failure because they are going to leave our homes, and will not have the skills to set up their own home.  I know that some people may be reading this post thinking, "Duh!!!", but to me her writing was more like an "Aha!".

Kim suggests giving kids the same chores to do all of the time, so that they learn to master it, and again, so those chores becoming like second nature to them. Eventually, I will not even have to ask if they have been done because they will become ingrained in the kids psyche. I couldn't agree with this more. In the past, when I have tried the whole chore chart thing, I was changing up the chores every week, which was a huge pain in the neck for me.

I know that implementing this new system is going to be a bit painful, and very time consuming for me at first. Not only am I going to have to follow up with everyone on whether or not they did their assigned chores, but I am also going to have to show everyone HOW I want each chore done. After all, how in the world can I expect my kids to do a chore properly (i.e. the way that I want it done) if they have not been shown?

I struggle with being a good housewife because I was never shown how - I never really had chores when I was growing up - and although I would not have liked them when I was doing them I think that the act of doing them would have served me very well as an adult. I am a lazy home maker most of the time, and I don't want that for my kids. I want both my boys and my girls to be able to take care of a home both for themselves, and then if they should choose, when they get married and have families of their own.

So, today I am going to sit down make a list of chores I feel is appropriate for each child to have, and then I am going to roll out the system tonight. I'll let you know how it goes, so stay tuned. : )