Chores Checkup

For the last couple of months I have bemoaned the fact (to my running friends, my husband, and my children) that my house has gotten really dirty!  I have been keeping up with the laundry and the daily tidying, but my cleaning has been sporadic.  During the final weeks of my marathon training I was so physically tired, that I just began to neglect a little bit here and there.  I was too tired to do any cleaning, so I felt guilty enforcing my children to do their weekly chores....and you know how that goes.....the Mama doesn't check to see if the children are doing their chores, and eventually the children stop doing them....it just slowly happens.  Occasionally I would have a free afternoon or morning here and there, and I would try to clean a huge part of my house all at one time, and I would get overwhelmed (that's an understatement!)  Slowly, I have gotten discouraged by my lack of housekeeping, and I wasn't sure how to catch up!

Yesterday, as I was whining again about my stress over my dirty house (and the fact that we couldn't just take a whole school day and clean, and besides it is just too much to do in one day), Olivia and Julie said, "Mama, why don't you just tell us what to do each day.  We can divide up the work that needs to be done, and we can get the house all cleaned, and we can keep it clean."  Those precious daughters of mine sat at our kitchen table and in about two minutes divided up the cleaning tasks among themselves and made assignments.  In fact, they told me to refer to the chart I had made them almost two years ago.

They were right.  I just needed to divide up the work (tweaking my two year old chart since Leah is more of a help now, and Sam can pull his weight now too) and assign the tasks.  It really was that simple.  My children are so wonderful about helping....they just need direction and routine.

So today I reworked and retyped two chore charts for my helpers.  Chart One lists the daily morning and afternoon chores that each child does every single day.  These are chores like:  make bed, tidy room, brush teeth, empty dishwasher, sort dirty clothes, put away clean clothes.  I also assign different areas of the house for each child to tidy each afternoon--kitchen table, bar, den, outside toys, schoolroom, etc.

Chart Two is listed below.  These are the chores that are done weekly by each child--one chore for each day Monday-Saturday.  We usually do these chores in the afternoons.  If there is a day that we cannot get to these chores, I will not panic.  We will get to them the next week!    By following Chart Two, I think that I will have my house under control in a week or so!  I still need to do some deep spring cleaning--baseboards, ceiling fans, windows, etc., but I plan to tackle those chores after we get the general cleaning routine down.

One note:  I have a housekeeper that cleans the main floor of my house once a week--that's why my chores don't include major kitchen, den, or master bedroom cleaning, vacuuming or mopping.  I am so grateful to have the help!  That leaves the upstairs and the basement for the children and me to keep clean.  We can do it!

Here is the current Chart Two.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday
Olivia	dust room dust sewing room	clean girls' bathroom	vacuum room, hallway, sewing room
Julie	dust room dust black desks	clean girls'  bathroom	vacuum room, hallway, Leah's room
Clay	dust room	empty trash cans all over house	vacuum room, bathroom, stairs to upstairs
Leah	dust room	sort recycle basket	clean den doors
Sam	dust room	sort recycle basket	clean front doors
Mama	clean boys' bathroom	full laundry day ironing clean laundry room	change sheets (3 beds/week) vacuum kitchen/den/basement stairs
	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Olivia	clean out closet and drawers (pick one thing)	dust basement, wipe countertop	tidy sewing room
Julie	clean out closet and drawers (pick one thing)	basement bathroom, workout equipment	tidy sewing room
Clay	take trash to road clean out and vacuum van	get trash can from road, burn trash	clean off porches
Leah	sort recycle basket	schoolroom marker board	tidy sewing room
Sam	sort recycle basket	wipe off little table	clean off porches
Mama	stove microwave, kitchen sink, computer desk	vacuum basement	vacuum kitchen, den, basement stairs