Home-Working

In response to my darling Sis-in-Law's request, I have decided to go ahead and post about how Rock and I run our household. We live in a reasonably clean and tidy home, with four children aged 8 to 8 months, we homeschool our children, and also have the care of another boy during the week. Now, here is the big reveal, I am absolutely not perfect in respect to running a household. I was born to a family of planners and organizers, I mean, after all I am descended from my Mother and Grandfather. However, the planner and organizer that I am, I have a hard time staying on track, and will often find myself up to my chin in stacks of paper, old toys, and school work that needs to be graded. This will result in a breakdown of the tearful type, followed by 3-4 days of me raging through the house cleaning and organizing everything in site, and basically driving poor Rock up the wall. So, while I offer these steps, please do not feel that I am some Superwoman or that I have arrived, because that particular destination is not even in sight.



Schedule, schedule, schedule

I have a schedule for keeping my house clean. Actually, I have a schedule for pretty much everything. It is short and simple and includes daily and weekly chores. I've had this schedule since Rock and I got married simply because I will forget to do something or let something slide if that something is not written in list form for me to check off . Actually, it is more like this, I believe that my head will explode if I do not check off everything that is on my to-do list for the day.



The first thing I did was to make a list of chores and put them in the categories of daily, weekly, and occasionally. As in, daily - make beds, feed dog, clean kitchen, etc; weekly - laundry, vacuum, etc; occasionally - clean window blinds, clean out coat closet, wash base boards. Now some of you are saying, "This chick has a serious problem keeping to her tasks." Well, yes and no, I do have a tendency to procrastinate, but it drives me nuts to think that there is something on my to-do list that is not done. Plus, there is something very satisfying about actually marking something or anything off of a to-do list. I mean face it folks, there are days when you seem to get absolutely nothing done, and trust me with five children in the house all day long, some days I am surprised that I even manage to brush my teeth in the morning. So by making a list like this I am able to cross even the little daily chores off my list and know that I accomplished something for the house that day. Now I won't bore you with my daily list today, but I will give you the highlights of my weekly list.

Monday - change sheets on beds, laundry
Tuesday - dust, vacuum, sweep, mop
Wednesday - bathrooms
Thursday - dust, vacuum, sweep, mop
Friday - occasional chore
Saturday - vacuum, sweep (Hey, I've got a shedding dog and dark furniture)

Recently I tried doing these weekly chores all in one day, but care of the children turned into a frustration with the children. So, I am back to my good old schedule. Why is my schedule this particular way? Well, it just works with our family schedule. There are somethings that need to be done more than once a week, but not necessarily every day, and there are somethings that need to be done that I hate doing - the person who invents the self-cleaning toilet will win a Nobel Prize. Some of those things take longer than others, so they are put on days when our daily schedule is lighter and the reverse is also true.

For my occasional chores, I made a revolving list. Then at least one gets done per week and then it moves to the bottom of the list. Eventually, it will reach the top of the list again.

About this time all of you good parents are asking, "Why doesn't she teach her children to help her with the chores?" I do, but in case you have forgotten or just didn't know, it takes just as long and sometimes longer to teach and supervise the chore process as it does to do it yourself. Professor and Princess are only sometimes on auto-pilot, you have to work alongside Warrior, and for some reason Baby J is using the excuse that he can't walk to get out of doing work.

Well, this post is getting long, and the children are awake and seem to think that they need to be fed and supervised. Your assignment: make a list of your daily, weekly, and occasional chores and see if you can put them in place for your weekly schedule.