My Tidy Team

Summer over at Mom Is Teaching posted about cleaning house.  It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately too.  The girls are soon to turn 9 years old and so we’ve been talking about what new chores they might be ready for. 

They’ve helped with the housecleaning now for 8 years.  With 3 very young children, I didn’t have much of a choice but to put them all to work soon after birth.  As soon as they were old enough to pick a toy up and deposit it in the toybox, they were expected to pitch in.  Our house was very small and we would have easily been taken over by toys if we didn’t pick up regularly. 

Motivation is key.  Not much was more motivating for my kids than food.  So we cleaned up the toys before every meal.  If you didn’t help, you didn’t get to eat.  It helped establish a very important concept – everyone in the family has their own role to play in making our home a nice place to live.  My job was to serve them food, their job was to clean up the toys.  You didn’t get the benefits if you weren’t willing to do your bit.

Later, loss of their precious toys was a good motivator.  If I wanted a room really clean, I’d just tell them I was coming through with my garbage bag when they were through cleaning.  Any toy I found out of place went into the garbage bag.  This taught another important lesson – if you care about something, you need to care for it.

These days, the kids have their usual chores and they willingly help out with whatever else I ask them to do. When Zee occasionally balks at the work, the girls repeat back to him those same lessons they learned years ago. 

As the girls get older they’re itching for more ‘grown-up’ chores.  They beg to wash pots and pans, empty the litter pan and clean the toilets.  Yes, beg.  And fight.  Yes,  fight over who got to wash more pots and pans.  Ridiculous!

The girls sometimes talk about how, when they’re older, they’ll do it all (or else pay someone to do it) so I can rest.  I always tell them I wouldn’t like it that way.  I like our Tidy Team.