The Love/Hate Relationship of Chores

Chores can be a touchy issue with some families. One family might love them and another might love to hate them! I, personally, enjoy an orderly house... clean is a bonus... I will settle for orderly. I think chores are an important part of learning responsibility and overall contribution to the function of a household.

We use to have 'chore day' on Sunday. I hated that since it is God's day and should be reserved for family time, prayer time, church, and such. After much protest on my part we switched chore day to Saturday. This did not seem to work well though. The kids spent half the day helping pick up around the house and cleaning their rooms only to turn right around and mess them up in the 'relaxing' mode we usually take on our weekends.

Chore day has been moved to Mondays. So far so good. We all actually look forward to it... if that doesn't sound too crazy. The kids know they can relax for the whole of the weekend. I drive them pretty hard during our homeschool week so the weekend is a nice break. (It is a wonderful break for me as well).

Mondays begin with a general picking up of the house. This usually isn't too bad because the one thing I do make them do throughout the week (other than help with dishes) is pick up after themselves. But still... it seems there are always stray stuffed animals, baby dolls, and legos from "games" they played on Sunday.

We move from the outer areas to the inner areas: their rooms. I don't' make my children clean their rooms during the week (usually). I use to when I had one and two kids. But once we added #3 and #4, cleaning rooms EVERY day has sort of gone out the window! We all have more peace of mind with this. Besides, most of us can remember back to the "game" of Barbie, Matchbox or Legos that you just get set up perfectly when the parents said "Time for Bed" and you didn't want to take it down. You wanted to resume play the following morning!

It all goes mostly smoothly. My kids seem to actually be good sports about these tasks on Mondays where they fought me more about it on the weekend. I think they are secretly relieved to go from two days of no structure and no requirements to starting the week with getting things in order. I am thankful for that.

We always wrap our day up with reading time. If they do no other school projects I like them to at least read. After all, it is fundamental to all other things in life. I'm thinking of adding some "math" by ending our day with a yummy treat that requires measuring. A bonus for jobs well done.

I guess this is just my way of sharing other ways we tackle a homeschool day, keep the sanity, and manage some semblance of order in our homeschooling house! It may not work for everyone, but it works for us :-)