Life Lessons: I Forgot To Do My Chores

In our home, we believe that children are to be willing participants in keeping our home clean and safe for everyone to enjoy. It's not just on Mommy to keep the house clean, do the laundry, and cook the meals. Everyone has to do cheerfully do their part, as a team, to make our home a place that we all can enjoy.

There are many things that we don't want to do in life but if we just ignore them, we can cause harm to someone else or even inflict some pretty bad consequences on ourselves. I don't always want to wash dishes but if I ignored them long enough, the stench from decay as well as waste left by microscopic organisms that thrive in such conditions would make my family ill. Further, if I do my tasks with a dismal or complaining attitude, my children will find their work to be just as dismal and I will have a difficult time convincing them to do their tasks with joy.


When one of our children doesn't complete their task, there is a consequence. These consequences vary accordingly. This week, my seven year old missed three days of bringing the laundry down to the laundry room. Since we absolutely have to wash at least four loads of laundry daily to keep up with it, missing just one day can lead to a heaping pile of laundry. Since it was time to wash comforters, I didn't check up on his job, personally. One of his older siblings brought it to my attention when looking for a clean shirt to wear. Having kept up my washing, I traced the missing shirts back to my 7 year old not doing his part in bringing down the laundry. Of course this made more work for me and my other laundry person. So I decided to teach a lesson about how important it is for each person to do his or her share.

 I thought it would be nice to take a trip to the laundromat to wash all of the clothes and since the laundromat comes with a price, my son had to pay a price as well. It was a tiresome morning washing, drying, and folding all 14 loads, and there was no mercy from the heat that came from the dryers that added to the already scorching weather we had here. I brought drinks, and we worked until the laundry was done - no breaks.

Sure, my sweet son was able to replenish his fluids and race around the laundromat on the laundry carts as he went from washer to dryer but it was definitely not a fun experience that he'll want to repeat. His take was, "I never want to do this again." My response, "Then it's important to do your job promptly so you won't make more work for the others on your team or yourself."

One Way to Get Your Children to Help at Home

If listening to the story of the Buffalo Public School Teachers spending $9 million on cosmetic surgery at the expense of tax payers wasn't enough, I ran across an eBook on Amazon this morning titled "77 Ways to Get Your Kids to Help at Home (77 Ways to Parent Series)." I'm thinking, "What in the world is going on?"

As a child, when I was told to do something, I just did it. My parents didn't have to devise 77 ways to get me to do it. I just did it.Why is it that, in this day, we need tactics and tricks to get our children to do what they're supposed to do - what we ask of them? Am I effectively training my children for the real world, the work force, by tactically "getting" them to help out at home? Their employers won't tolerate tactical approaches to getting work done when there's a deadline that needs to be met. Getting the children to help at home is absolutely not something I'm willing to use a tactical approach for.

So I'm going to share one way to get your children to help at home. It worked for my grandmother, my mother, and it works for me. That is, tell your children that it's their responsibility to help you around the house. They are a part of the family and everyone in the family has to help. Give them their appropriate responsibilities and give them a consequence when they don't follow through. Enough said?

If you want to check out the eBook. It's free on Amazon. I haven't read it but the title itself is just not appealing to me.

A Mess in My House!

Why in the world does my house look such a mess? From the time the children wake up, we have breakfast, do our memory work, bible study, and our math lessons. I try to keep everyone in the same room but, it never fails, when I take a tour of the downstairs prior to lunch, it's quite a mess.

It's not easy keeping things orderly in a home of eleven. In fact, I've had to realize that things will NOT always be orderly. I mean, if you walked into my home right now, you'd see books stacked in front of the fireplace from our reading basket, a table with almost empty water bottles on the tea table, papers sprawled across the sofa, a laptop on the back of the sofa, and the vacuum lying on the floor. Now it wasn't like this when I started my morning but, somehow, between breakfast and our last lesson, an invisible tornado went through this house and we were sitting right here amidst it . So how do we get things back in order?

Here are a few things that I always revert to when the invisible tornado hits my home:

1. "If any would not work, neither should he eat." (Thess 10:3)  Before we can have lunch, everyone has a jurisdiction he or she is responsible for. All jurisdictions must be complete prior to sitting down for lunch.

2. Everybody must be responsible for his/her own things. If you put it down, you must pick it up.

3. Do all things without complaining or disputing. (Phil 2:14) There will be absolutely no complaining (verbal nor nonverbal) about a job you have been assigned or there will be a consequence (a less favorite meal - soup works for my children, loss of free time, or even an extra chore).

As I type, my little blessings are busy getting things back in order so that we can enjoy a comfortable home once again. Soon we'll all be having lunch and quiet time. However, the fourth matter of importance that I've found - a must for success with children, I must now go to inspect all of the tasks that they've been given.

I'm still not sure how things get this way so quickly but it's not as frustrating when there's a plan to get things back in order.