When we were a young family, I struggled to find a way to keep our house reasonably clean. It was difficult to find a balance between just giving up and going “over-the-top”. All the chore charts and reward systems in the world didn’t seem to help our family maintain our shared living areas.
Now I can’t take credit for figuring out a way to do it, but I do take credit for listening and copying people that managed life really well.
One day, my cousin Evelyn mentioned how their family cleaned together and it revolutionized my housekeeping. It gave me a plan of action. I am going to share her plan. It worked well for us for many years. Gleen any ideas that suit your family.
Here’s what we did:
PART I – Daily Chores
Each child was expected to complete morning tasks. These were:
- Get out of bed
- Make the bed (immediately upon standing)
- Get dressed
- Wash face and brush teeth (I believe that fresh breath and face make you more socially acceptable in the morning)
- Complete your Family Task. (This job is for the benefit of the family. We had 3 kids, so we had 3 rotating “tasks of the day”. Each kid did one of the 3 tasks for a full week and then rotated to the next task for the following week, and so on.)
- Clean up the breakfast dishes
- Empty all the upstairs wastebaskets (into the main basket)
- Take dirty clothes to the laundry room. Deliver any clean laundry to the correct rooms
The kids learned they did not need to bother coming to breakfast until their “chores” were complete. This was very motivating to my kids and it saved a lot of nagging.
If your kids don’t care about breakfast, then find whatever they care about (cute clothes for school? a ride to school? snacks in their lunch?) Hopefully, it is an immediate disincentive for delaying, so they complete their tasks without being asked. The goal is to make this so routine, they don’t even think about (or debate) doing it.
PART II – Weekly Cleaning
Choose one hour a week and have the whole family clean together (or no one clean). We started this when the kids were young. We would have breakfast together around 8 am on Saturday, then we all started cleaning at 9 am.
Housework can’t kill you, but why take a chance?
Phyllis Diller
The success of this time will largely depend on the adults in charge. Give each of your children a task. We found it worked best if they had the same task for a year. Yes, a year! A 7-year-old definitely needs a year to practice dusting the living room furniture.
The beauty of it is, when it is time to clean, each child knows their assignment and can just start cleaning. They know their task and tools and will continue to improve in competence week after week. One is vacuuming, while one dusting, one sweeping the kitchen floor, someone cleaning the bathroom, etc.
Will your house look perfect? No, but it will be a little better than if you didn’t clean at all. Our house was reasonably clean enough to have friends and family drop by for a visit or meal unannounced.
Slowly, you will begin to notice that the kids are more capable and able to handle more challenging tasks. It will be tempting to do it all yourself, but don’t! In the long run, you are doing them a favor by teaching them life skills and demonstrating the fun of being a key part of a working team.
Here are a few ground rules:
- Choose a time and stick to it!
- Everyone works hard and gives their best effort — especially parents (no phone calls).
- Crank the music and set a happy tone. Working together should be satisfying.
- A parent “floats” around to assist, instruct, inspect, and encourage. The goal is not perfection, but to slowly improve with practice.
- Assign chores and keep them for at least a year — then ask for input when it comes time to mix it up.
- Set a timer and work hard for 1 hour (if kids are slacking, add to the time).
- If anyone finishes early, give someone else a hand.
- When the timer rings — STOP and whatever remains waits until the next week.
Yes, there will be seasons for deep cleaning and decluttering, but putting our weekly maintenance routine on “autopilot” saved a lot of stress. Try it, you may like it.
Jennie Lodien
Author Thrifty and Thriving available on Amazon
