The last few days I’ve been very busy getting stuff done. I’ve finally tackled the list of yardwork that has been staring at me for most of the summer. But despite the fact that I got stuff done I ended yesterday feeling very discouraged. I have this whole list of things that I feel should be happening in my household regularly. But if I don’t make them happen they won’t. The kids should be putting laundry away once a week. Bathrooms should get cleaned more often than once a month (or less). Floors should be swept at least daily. Clothes do not belong on floors. Shoes belong in closets. Plates with food on them should not be sitting around on the counter for hours let alone days. When I am focused on it I do alright at being a good housekeeper, but there are so many things that I would rather be doing.
In theory I should be training the kids to clean up after themselves so that I don’t have to try to do it all myself. But I get so tired of making them do stuff. When they’re happily playing the last thing I want to do is begin a confrontational hour where I require them to do housework. Yet if I don’t they’ll never learn and I’ll continually feel like a failure because I simply can’t keep up with the various messes left by six people.
Yes Howard helps around the house. But if he is in his office working to put food in our mouths it seems counter-productive for me to haul him off to clean the bathroom. He works incredibly hard already.
No deep thoughts or epiphanies today. Just lingering frustrations left over from the past week.
I sympathize entirely. Of course, I don’t live with anyone else, so I have no one but myself to blame for this mess. But there are things I’d rather be doing than cleaning, and so I do those things, and my apartment’s a mess as a result.
One thing my family did – I’m oldest of four – is a daily “Quick Pickup” right before dinner. Everyone in the house (with the exception of my dad, who wouldn’t be home yet) took ten or fifteen minutes, and just tried to pick up obvious messes – toys or clothes left out, dishes, etc – in the main part of the house. Having it as part of a daily routine that involved the whole family helped keep things from getting too bad.
I’m not sure how much of an option that is given the ages of your children – I’m pretty sure our youngest two were about the age of your oldest two when we were doing that – but it helped with a day-to-day sense of things not being such a mess, and made the more complete weekend cleaning a lot easier.
I have to agree that getting kids to work is a hassle. But you will have to get them doing it eventually, and as they say, there is no time like the present.
Our methodology has morphed over time and is far from a perfect example, but it went like this. First, we had chores that were done on Saturday only, with chores being matched to each kid. Since each of my older boys are roughly the same in ability, this was not too hard. What it did mean, was that we only had to be “mean” parents one day a week, and my wife was perfectly willing for me to be the bad cop most of the time.
As they got a bit older, and the youngest came along, once a week was no longer sufficient. What we have now is a rotating list for each of the three boys. The list has a daily version, and a Saturday set (for the big jobs like cleaning bathrooms). The daily set usually “should” take 10-20 minutes for the kids to complete. Don’t ask about actual times, sigh.
Yeah, it is work, but it really does make things better and I know that my kids are learning to work. It is a pain that teaching kids to work is so much work, but it’s just like everything else in life, if it were easy everyone would be doing it.
If my kids turn out to be lazy bums when they grow up, it won’t be for my lack of trying to instill a work ethic.
I think teaching my son instead of doing it myself was the hardest thing I had to learn, and I don’t think I did a terribly good job of it. But the catch phrase, “Take Time for Training” was something I used to remind myself that I was looking at a bigger picture – sort of a “slow down – the training is more important than getting it done.”
I have two sisters whose kids are my age. One’s house was always spotless, no pets, impeccably dressed kids. The other lived in happy clutter, dogs and cats in and out, kids in clean but battered play clothes. Guess who has neurotic kids? Guess who I call and enjoy talking to? Guess who I drop by to visit, and who I haven’t seen in years? (I object to making an appointment to see my sister.)
So take time for training and relax about the house. You won’t care in 15 years. (Sorry to just drop into your journal uninvited – my son is a fan Of Schlock Mercenary, and that’s how I got here. You sound like a great family.)
If I minded “uninvited” guests, this wouldn’t be a public journal. Welcome. And thank you for the comment. I’d much rather have a happy home than a spotless home. On the other hand it is hard for me to feel happy if I feel like the house is filthy. I hope I’m finding a good balance between the two.
Your system sounds remarkably similar to mine. The kids all know what they’re supposed to do and when they’re supposed to do it. But unless I actually enforce, cleaning does not get done. Theoretically they’ll eventually start doing their work without being asked, but I’ve yet to see it work that way.
The quick pick up is a good idea. Now I just have to find the energy to enforce it between homework time and bedtime.
Can I ” AARGH!” with you?
I am really good at coming up with chore lists….but, no one will work with me on actually following the lists and doing the chores.
Usually, Ross just does most of everything with a sigh. And I say, Hey, get the kids to do it with you! Or we take turns doing almost everything every other week. Having a house adds the “Outside” list… yikes.
I remember sorting out laundry into piles with my brothers, and then sorting out clean laundry into piles and everyone folds and puts away their laundry, but I don’t know HOW my mom got all this going.
But, you’re all right. No time like the present to be great “mean” parents. eh? Time for a new chore list. Does anyone have suggestions for a good list of daily chores and saturday chores for kids aged almost 4 and 8?
Teaching adults and teen-agers to clean up after themselves is just as hard as teaching kids. You think it would be easier because they should see the logic behind keeping things picked up but long time bad habits are hard to change. You know I had my brother and his two teen-aged boys living with us for a while. A big portion of my frustration was that they were old enough to “know better.”
My mother, sweet wonderful woman, got sick of hearing me (the youngest) whine “Do I have to???” as a preteen and took to doing all the household chores herself. I feel very bad now that my house cleaning knowledge is so lacking. Your children may struggle against it now, but their adults lives will be much easier knowing how to take care of their stuff and their home. And I believe someday they will say “Thanks, Mom, for putting up with us and taking the time to teach us.”
Thank you Chaliren! Those are the words a mom needs to hear. Yes, it takes effort and frustration and energy… but, Yes, it is SO worth it. I mean, I have felt highly inadequate with keeping my house, I’m NOT good at it. (I look at spotless houses and wonder how they do it.) I had to learn how to cook on my own out of cookbooks. Why would I want my kids to feel like that when they are grown up?
I have let them cook with me… now, just to tackle the chores thing!
[Battle Cry!]
Thanks. I needed to hear what you had to say.
How to be a Nag of a Different Color
1. Don’t try to make them clean up the whole mess if you are pushed for time. Ask each one to pick up 20 toys or 50 toys. (Younger children can pick up 10 toys 2 times if they can’t count to 20. For small toys like legos, they are to count handfuls.)
2. “Whoever picks up the last toy gets the first snack.” I used to watch kids scramble to find one more toy while the family room got cleaned!
3. Supervising the monster and tieing him up when you are done is much more fun than vacuuming.
4. Likewise, sneaking the loot past the sleeping tiger and stashing it is more fun than taking out the garbage.
5. Sometimes a funny reminder note is better than yelling.
6. At one point in my parenting, I hung a round “tuit” on a child that couldn’t be removed until the chore was done. (A round tuit is for anyone who keeps saying, “I’ll do it when I get around to it. You can make one by cutting a circle of paper and printing Tuit on it. Punch a hole in it, reinforce the hole with tape, insert a piece of yarn or ribbon big enough to go over the head and knot it. Put a hook or nail on the wall to hang the round “tuits” on when the job is completed.)
7. Assign a pickup job to a hand puppet (with a mouth that opens and closes) and put a child in charge of making sure the puppet does his job.
8. Have child cut a round hole near the top of a paper bag. Draw a face with the hole as the mouth. Use this monster bag to put toys in. The down side to this plan is the toys end up in a pile unless you are stationed at the toy shelves to help put the toys away.
9. Set a timer for 10 minutes. If everyone works as fast as they can for that 10 minutes, we’ll quit when it rings. Then make sure you let them quit–even if the job isn’t all the way done.
10. Remember that people are more important than things! You are good at this as you think about and analyze what your children and family needs.
11. Remember that you are a people too! So find a balance that doesn’t leave you frustrated because you are living in the middle of chaos. Share this philosophy with your children.
For what it’s worth
My mother used to nag us to do chores, but as we got older she got sick of it and started doing them herself instead because it was easier.
Now that I’m an adult, I find that my cleaning habits are about the same as my mother’s: I’m not meticulous by any stretch, but my house is quasi-tidy, and I am much neater as an adult than I was as a child. And like my mother, I’d rather do chores myself than pester someone else to do them.
So I’m not saying “there’s no need to force your kids to do chores”. But I do think that kids tend to form as adults the habits their parents had, rather than the ones their parents tried to get them to acquire. The habits they have as adults may well be more like your own than like the habits they have as children now.