Rotation

This post might not interest very many of you, but it's something that's been on my mind a lot lately.  In any household, there are chores to be done.  In a house with seven people, those chores get overwhelming fast if they aren't done on a regular basis. 

One of the things we really want to impress on the children is that being part of a group, any group, means pulling your own weight.  So they have chores from the time they're old enough to put toys in the toybox. 

It's taken us a lot of years to find a really good, workable chore rotation.  There's been lots of trial and error, throwing out methods that weren't working for us and even a few tears along the way.  But finally we seem to have a rotation that works for us.  At least for now.  As the younger kids get older, they're move into the main rotation and when The Boy gets a job, he'll have fewer chores.

So, here's the rotation that's working for us right now...

Dishes and laundry are done on a three week rotation, by The Boy, Scooter and Pibb.  Right now, Pibb has dishes.  He is responsible for washing, drying and putting away all the breakfast and lunch dishes by himself, except sharp knives.  The Boy has dinner dishes, so he and Pibb will work together to do the dinner dishes, wipe the counters, wipe the fridge and stove and sweep each day.  They'll also Swiffer once or twice a week, as needed.

Scooter has laundry this week, so her responsibility is to wash a few loads of laundry each day.  As long as she keeps up with it, she can do all the laundry in 2 or 3 loads.  Because Bryant's office is also the laundry room, the laundry person doesn't start their chore until he's done with meetings for the day.  Obviously laundry is the chore that's considered easiest. 

Also the dinner dishes person is allowed to choose one night to "slide" on their chore.  On their chosen day, the laundry person picks up the slack, doing double duty.  This allows each kid to have one chore-free day every three weeks. 

Midge and Pookie have their own rotation.  Their chores are to straighten the bathroom floor or help make beds.  They go every other week and whoever cleans the bathroom floor gets ready for bed first.  The person who helps make beds gets to sit next to me at the dinner table. 

In addition to the chores described above, they are all responsible for helping to straighten the living room and dining room, clear and set the table and each person has to make their own bed (Bryant and I took a cue from my Gram and Grandpa - whoever is out of bed last makes the bed). 

We also do "extra chores" such as cleaning under the couch, straightening the entryway or purging dressers as needed.  There is no assignment on those as we usually just do them all together. 

There are a lot of people who think we're too hard on the kids and that's fine.  To each his own.  But I know that when our children go out into the big, scary world, they'll know how to do their own laundry, to wash their own dishes and pull their own weight.