Home Management

Big Fat Disclaimer: I would be a  liar if I pretended to 'have it all together' {grin}.  On this page you will read things that we do that work for our family.  As wonderful as these ideas are, they only work *if you {read "I"} do them*!  So, in a perfect world, I have a perfectly functioning home--we never run out of clean laundry, the floors never get yucky and we never make a mad dash at 8pm to McDonalds...  But, since I don't live in a perfect world....well, ya know how it goes!  The biggest problem is being *consistent*--There's a word for people who are consistent 99.9% of the time.  That word is "inconsistent".  Ouch.  I'm hurting myself here.  Guess my disclaimer is over!  Whew...Read on...there may be some useful nugget here for you!  {smile}

Okay, one of the things that helps me most is to remember that I can't do it all.  Say that with me "I can't do it all".  Don't you feel better now?  There's no way one person can do all that has to be done to run a household this size.  I have children.  They can do things besides make messes and play Legos :-).  A wise MOMY once said that as a mother your job is to work yourself out of a job!  Once I began to see myself as the Household MANAGER I lost all those guilty feelings associated with my inabilities to 'do it all'.  Chores are good for children.  They help develop a good work ethic.  They bring to light character flaws that need to be addressed.  Got it?  Now that you are on the Chores Bandwagon, I'll explain more how we do things.

LAUNDRY...yes, laundry deserves to be in all caps! Our children aged 7 and up learn how to operate the washer and dryer.  Children aged four and up can fold or hang most laundry.  The girls do laundry for the girls, baby and mama.  The boys do laundry for the boys and daddy.  We all work together on towels, sheets or other miscellaneous stuff.  Because MaryVance isn't 'chore aged' yet (at four they go into Chore Training {grin}), she helps sometimes as the fancy strikes her  and I help Molly some with her laundry chores.  The girls do laundry on Mondays and Wednesdays and the boys do laundry on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  On Fridays we all do the extra stuff.  It's a beautiful plan and works well when we use it--which is probably 75% of the time, maybe more...ya gotta have clean drawers!

Keeping house... I divided the house into Zones.  Each child has one zone they are responsible for.  We have Zone Check twice a day, once in the morning and once before Daddy gets home.  The older, more responsible children have the harder chores--the younger have the easier ones.  Makes sense, right?

Meal times... Our children work in pairs doing the Meal Chore.  This entails setting the table and then clearing the table and straightening up in the kitchen and dining room.  They work in pairs so no child has all three meals in a day.  For Caleb and Molly (the two oldest) they have no meal chores on their laundry days.  This gives them a little extra time to get laundry switched around, folded and put away and is a nice break from Meal Chore.  Works nicely for everyone.  We always do this.

So, now what have you got?  Clean undies, a meal on the table and you can walk through the rooms without stumbing over dolls and stepping on Legos barefooted (does that hurt or what?!) *********************************** I have lots more ideas to share but it's almost 4:00 and I don't know what's for supper!  Yikes!!  More later!

Click on the house to go back to our Home page...where laundry is *never* an issue!