Today we continue our series on
Homemaking:
Taming the House, keeping in mind that our ultimate goal is to delegate, train, and teach our children to run a house by themselves, hopefully by their sixteenth birthday. If we grasp perfectionism with clenched fists, delegation will never work for us and when they're all teenagers,
nothing will have changed.
They'll still need us to wash, fold and hang their laundry, make their meals, clean their messes and organize their school days. All that work continuing for years and years, and then their spouses despising us for failing to launch them?
Oh, the horror.
Taming a house full of kids starts with
taming the toy clutter, followed by taming the children. I've found nothing better than graphic organizers to help kids organize themselves, enabling them to take on their appropriate share of the work.
I own very little software and use even less, but if you're good with technology you can whip up something pretty and easy. I don't even use a ruler anymore, but just write the weekdays on the top and the subjects on the left margin, and make boxes to write the assignments and chores in. Certain times of year we have a timed schedule, but when routines are well known we just use a boxed-graphic schedule for each school-aged child. My schedule includes what I need to do with my preschooler.
Here you see History, Bible and Reading in the first picture, and science and writing boxes in the next image.
Besides the school subjects, we have boxes for standard chores and a box for "love offerings". The children must do 3 "love offerings" a week for free, and then I give them additional paid chores, such as vacuuming and sweeping and mopping.
The paid chores are not the same every week, but are more of a sampling to help train them and help me catch up as necessary. If they want friends over and I've been steadily busy all day, they sometimes have to help me by vacuuming or sweeping beforehand--either as a love offering or a paid chore.
They can choose their own 3 love offerings every week, such as reading to the girls, doing therapy with Beth, folding extra clothes, making cookies for neighbors, sweeping the kitchen or dining room, etc. They put a check in a love offering box and write one word to describe what they did, such as "read" or "bake". On Fridays if they don't already have 3 love offerings done, they have to catch up on the weekends.
The standard daily chores for the boys are:
- Making their own beds
- Clearing their bedroom floor of stray clothes, etc.
- Feeding any pets, changing cages once/week
- Folding all of their clothes from the clean-clothes baskets (and if there are none of theirs, they fold Daddy's pajamas or underclothes, or our towels/washcloths)
- Putting any recycling out in our bins, and putting the bins on the curb on Thurs. morning
- Putting away anything they use each day (construction paper, paints, Lincoln Logs, Legos)
- Clearing off and dusting their dresser and bookshelf twice monthly. They still use way too much lemon spray, but we're working on that.
Paul, age 9, is still learning to sweep corners well and vacuum entire areas thoroughly. Peter, age 10 (11 in Jan), is quite good at both sweeping and vacuuming now. Peter also does well with a squeegee on the windows, but we don't do them often, I'm ashamed to say.
Peter can also start laundry but he sometimes forgets the soap. I ask him to start laundry only occasionally and only if I can be close to watch him with the soap. I do all the dishes and emptying of the dishwasher myself, mostly because we have little money to replace broken dishes and the dishes are kept in high cupboards anyway.
I will need to let go of my worry over broken dishes in the next couple years, as most kids can do this chore by 12 or 13, I suspect. Our experiences, remember, are with the boys being the oldest, not the girls.
Five-year-old Mary folds her pajamas, underwear and socks, and helps clean the playroom as necessary. We've worked on bed-making together but I gave her a break with that, deciding we'd try again in a few months. I am not picky with beds, as you could see with the boys' beds if I were brave enough to photograph them. They aren't great at it, but everything gets pulled to the head of the bed and the trucks on their comforters face the proper direction. (Yes, they've had the same little-boy truck & car comforters for 7.5 years and so far, no complaining or asking for updates. It seems as though they could care less!)
Beth, age 3 (4 in Dec.), helps clean the playroom, though I have to keep on her a lot (sometimes she ends up in time out). She does better when we give her a specific job, such as put away the stuffed animals in the stuffed-animal bin. Put all the dishes in the play kitchen, etc. One direction at a time. When I walk away, she's lazy and lost. She can also fold her underwear and towels, and I'm not picky as this point about the quality of her folding.
I hope someone finds this helpful. I know we definitely would live in more chaos without graphic organizers.
I think it helps our sanity that we participate in very few extra-curricular activities. Beth goes to physical therapy and speech, back to back on Wednesdays, and Paul and Mary will join her for group speech therapy in January. I have been staying home and continuing to school, letting husband take Beth to her appointment during the last 6 weeks, finding that it gives me more uninterrupted time to school Mary one-on-one, without Beth feeling jealous (I can't include her in everything).
AWANA/kids' choir is on Wednesday nights, but doesn't interrupt our daytime schedule. Their verse practice time is on their graphic organizers, but I help my girls with theirs.
The three older ones will go once or twice a month to homeschool gym, which runs for six weeks at a time throughout the school year. And we go every other week to the library around 4 PM, or more often if we need a specific book, or if they have a worthwhile program offered.
There are fancy chore organizers you can buy, specifically one on Titus2.com called
Managers of Their Chores, which sells for $25 and comes with a hanging chore pack with cards kids manipulate. It covers appropriate chores at specific ages, and how to train children effectively.
Happy Homemaking and choring! Please share what works in your home?
