Chore training

Breaks from school are the perfect time to work on habits.  They seem to click faster when we are just working on them and not trying to squeeze them in our busy day.  A year ago, we took a few weeks to work on our morning chores.  They are very simply: get dressed, put dirty clothes in the clothes basket (which is a surprisingly challenging habit for children), brush teeth, make bed and unload the dishwasher.  Now, when I say they need to have your morning chores done, they know what I expect and how to get it done.  The next break we worked on laundry and except for a few shirts that are hard for Colin to hang, they have this one down pretty good too.  

This break I took on our biggest change to date.

Now, we are not experts in habits or chores.  I have met many, many families who do a far superior job in this category, BUT we aren't those people and this is what has worked really well for us.  The chores listed are things that the kids were already capable of doing and have done before, but how I dished them out was sporatic and met with anguish.  I think most mom's would understand this...it was more of a random thought, 

"Oh, they really need to clean that bathroom!  It's SO gross!  KIDS!  You need to clean up this bathroom right this minute!" 

 The kids are caught off guard and respond with whines, which ensues the lecture 

"You better obey right away, young man!".

It's not fun for anyone.

I wanted our kids to see that we do chores to help each other out in taking care of the home we live in.  It's not a punishment.  It's not always fun, but we are a team and if we work together, the house will run so much smoother.  I wrote up this chart on the whiteboard in the schoolroom:

And I approached it this way; each day, we are going to work as a team to clean one area of the house (I have a job too, I just didn't have space to write it).  Each person has a laundry day, when they are responsible for doing their own laundry and they each have a day that they help me cook dinner.

The top right list were habits we were already doing, but I wanted to continue to do during our break. It is often easy for us to slip into complete laziness when we aren't doing school, but I wanted to stay diligent in these areas.

The bottom right list is still a work in progress.  We talked about the dinner chores one evening and decided for now Alison sweeps the floor, Eli wipes off the table, Colin clears the table and they all put their dishes in the dishwasher.  I would like to get to the point where they are helping wash dishes too, but we've at least got the ball rolling.   

The results?  This went WAY smoother than I could have every imagined.

They quickly saw that by working together, the job didn't take very long and seemed manageable.  Before when I would just randomly shout jobs, they were left overwhelmed and not sure how to execute that job.  It helped that it was consistent and predictable.  Now they know every Monday, after lunch, we're going to clean the floors.  I saw good attitudes and a confidence I haven't seen before.  Wednesday's are the biggest days when they have to clean their rooms.  This week I heard Eli tell Colin that he would clean up the whole room by himself and Colin could vacuum.  Eli clearly chose the hardest job in the house, as his room is Lego heaven, but it didn't seem like a big deal to him.

This system has also been really good for me.  I used to clean the entire house in one day and it would take up the whole day.  This system has freed up time and given more peace as I know that everything has a time that it will get cleaned.

Hopefully the system sticks as we transition into a new school year :)