Anyone who hangs out with me or our family for more than
a day knows that our home life is insane.
It’s not anything in particular; it’s just the dynamic of our
family. We aren’t the typical 2.5 kids
in a perfect suburban house. We are the
atypical five kiddo’s family with crazy hours and lots of stuff everywhere. Most days I am totally fine with this
craziness, but some days I struggle with my lack of housekeeping perfection. As much as I adore the idea of being the next
June Cleaver or Donna Reed, the reality of our family doesn’t mesh with those perfect
stay at home mom stereotypes.
In reality, I don’t aspire to be the perfect housewife. Yes, I want my house to be somewhat neat and
clutter free, but the reality of a family our size with the stuff we have more
often than not lends itself to clutter.
I want to have the homeschooling room, the workroom for my scrapbook hobby,
and the work room for Robert’s leather and whip building. Instead of having this, I have homeschooling
stuff in bookshelves around the dining table and the kitchen area. This is meshed with the leather and whip building
stuff that Robert and now Maggie and John Robert are using. And my scrapbook stuff? Well it’s regulated to the top shelf of my
closet next to my jeans. To say that I
don’t have my dream house or organized storage system would be a cold hard fact
for me, but I am doing what I can to make our lives better.
This year our family schooling structure has changed as
we have added dual enrollment for Maggie into the schedule. Add to it the change that I am also teaching
a Wednesday night Awana’s class and I KNEW we HAD to get things together in our
house, especially with our chore system.
The simple reality is that what I was doing just wasn’t working
anymore. Everyone was getting burned out
on their chores. More often than not, I
was picking up more and more slack, and getting grumpier and grumpier in the
process. I knew something had to give,
so I did what any imperfect modern American housewife, homeschooling Mama, and
full time Mom would do; I hit Pinterest with a vengeance.
If I am being totally honest, I was slightly bummed at
the overall state of chore recommendations and organizing that Pinterest had to
offer for a family our size. It seemed
like everything was geared towards the stereotypical American family. You know, white picket fence, the perfect two
children and a dog, mom is at home happily imitating Martha Stewart, while dad
works a 9-5 office job. Yep, this was SO
NOT our family scenario, and I was getting more and more discouraged. Then I found it, chore baskets from Joyful Homemaking.
The idea was a simple one. Get some baskets, fill it with the necessary cleaning
supplies, and then put instructions on the baskets for how each chore is to be
done. Simple, easy, and for us, pure genius! More than that, I think that this is a chore
system that will actually work.
So, I headed into town, bought a weekly whiteboard
calendar to organize our crazy weeks, labeled each chore basket, printed up the
labels and actually used some scrapbook paper to make them look pretty, and
then created the baskets. My plan is to have
each big kiddo use a chore basket for the full week. So if your name is next to the “B” on our
weekly calendar, then for the next week it is your job to clean the
bathrooms. All you need to do is grab
your basket and do what the chore card says on it! I LOVE this idea!
Our new weekly calendar. Hung up in the kitchen high enough that little hands CAN'T color on it! HA!!!!
A trip to Dollar Tree yielded almost everything that was needed to put together these baskets. I even found the laminating cards! YAY!
Each chore basket is set up and ready to go.
I LOVE that everything needed to tackle a cleaning job is now in one place!
Today we started our new chore system. So far it has been simple and easy for the
kiddos to understand and follow through on.
My hope is that this system will work in two ways. The first is that the kiddos won’t get burned
out on doing the same chore day after day.
The weekly rotations will help with this. The second thing that I want them to learn is
how to really clean and care for a home.
Even my boys will know how to sweep, mop, scrub a toilet, and even hand
wash dishes with this new system. To me,
this ingenuous idea will help me as a mother prepare my kiddos for life outside
of our home.
No, I’m not a perfect housewife. No, my house isn’t spotless and totally
organized. Yep, there are times that I
don’t always like what Pinterest suggests.
However, with our new chore baskets, I think we are making progress in
the right direction, and that’s good enough for me!
