Chores

I have had a few friends ask me about chores.  We cannot afford to pay someone to come into our house and help clean it.  Even if we could, I don't think that I would.  If my seven children were ten and under, I might seriously consider it.  A friend once shared that she stopped having someone come and clean her house when she started to think about the message that she was sending to her children, especially her oldest, by having someone clean their house on a regular basis.  Thus, chores are a necessity in our house.

A while back, Danielle Bean shared the chore chart that her family uses and I immediately adapted it for my family's use.  This summer, I made a chore chart based on Managers of their Homes.  It looked nice and neat, but it did not work (the schedule did, but that's another post).

Over the past year or so, I have found that chores work better in our house if:

1. The children can easily see what they need to do
   
2. The chores are reassigned once a month
   
3. The children are assigned to specific areas or tasks (i.e. The same child is assigned to sweep the dining room and kitchen throughout the day.)
   

I uploaded our December and Saturday chore charts (with my children's names omitted) to Google Docs.  If anyone would like them in Word.docx format, please let me know via a comment and I will be happy to e-mail them to you.

Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant,

count as nothing.

~ St. Therese of Lisieux ~

Disclaimer:  This does not mean that we have a clean house at all times.  It does mean that it is usually presentable (except for the off-white carpet that shows every speck of dirt no matter how often it is cleaned).