Everyone’s favorite subject….chores. And there is lots of opinions on chores and allowances and such out there. Ultimately I told the kids that I don’t get paid to do the laundry and Clint doesn’t get paid to make dinner every night and taking care of chores and cleaning/picking up/etc etc is just what it means to be part of a family and live in a home.
I struggled for a bit to figure out what to do and how to assign things and make it fair. Leighton has gymnastics 3 nights a week and Caedmon has ballet two nights and Edric has rock climbing….and Paxton and Coppelia are only 3. And I was finding that because he gets ready faster than anyone in the morning Caedmon was always the one doing the kitty litter and feeding the cats. And no one was cleaning up the breakfast things except for Clint and I. And so one recent afternoon during the littles’ naps I sat down and started figuring out a schedule and such. In the past I’ve made charts and everyone would click off each day when they did it but 9 time out of 10 I would forget to check at the end of the day and remembering to mark the box became just as much of a chore as cleaning up the table and made me just give up on the whole thing. So now we have a general page for stickers and so everyone knows that they get a sticker if they complete their chores, but at the same time, if we forget to put a sticker on no one knows and life goes on. It also seems to work as a good motivator on the days when someone is not as motivated that I will let them pick out a sticker. It seems we need a day or two of remembering stickers and putting them on, and then everyone is good with that and we have a number of days where everyone just does their assigned tasks. Also I made the form as to which day it is because truly there are days I don’t remember which day it is and I need that as much as the kids do.
It’s actually been going pretty well and making things easier. The kids finish breakfast and look to see what day it is and then read down their list to see what they have assigned that day. I purposely didn’t assign kitty duty to anyone on Wednesdays because that’s the day we all have to get around early for homeschool enrichment and preschool and so that morning whoever is ready first does it to help everyone else out. And the littles have a few things assigned and thats ok, as they grow so will their responsibilities.
Hiking Mommy 