Chore time

At the start of every school year (and sometimes at mid-year), we review the chore assignments and make some adjustments. This year was no exception. We decided to continue with the even/odd dish assignment days (leaving Reed with odd days, which he hates since sometimes there's a 31/1 and he has to do dishes two days in a row) and with switching off weeks mowing the grass (this was a new chore for Amy after she turned 12). We moved Reed's dog walking assignment to the morning before school, since he leaves so late (bus at 8:44) and then give Amy a new dog walking assignment for after school, since she's the first one home. We're continuing with Reed putting out trash/recycling on Thursdays and plan to do our best to actually get Amy to put the trash out on Mondays (seems to get forgotten more often than not). Reed feeds the dog and Amy (mostly) feeds the cat. That's about it. Oh I think Amy feeds the fish too. (No one pays them much mind in general.)

Each kid is supposed to bring their laundry to me on Wednesday mornings, but that's as far as I've gone with making them participate in laundry. I know I can't put that off forever, but for now I just do the whole family's laundry because I know what will happen - if they have do their own, they'll put laundry in the washer, then forget about it (it's all the way in the basement, after all) and then every time I go to wash, there will be a washer full of mildewy-smelling clothes already there. Heck, I know that happened when was a grown up living at my Mom and Jim's - it's pretty easy to forget the laundry when it's two levels away. So I just continue to hope that maybe they'll want to start doing their own laundry (yeah, right!) or I will finally draw the line then they're in their senior year.

One decent thing I have taught them is to make and use a grocery list. At this point they're pretty good about writing things on the grocery list if they use the last of it....not perfect yet, but not bad. That's a good lifelong habit - so much easier to write things down than to just try to remember them!

We have a cleaning crew that comes every other week, so none of us does any real "housework" like changing the sheets, cleaning the floors, vacuuming, or scrubbing toilets. We struggle with that a little...how will our kids know how to do these things when they're on their own? Well I guess they'll have to look it up on YouTube. It's another thing we're punting until they're closer to being on their own. Not the best plan, maybe, but if the alternative is all of us spending our weekends cleaning, then I'm okay with how it's currently going.

Hopefully we'll have two relatively responsible kids in the end, who can take care of their own houses.