First, the book was awesome in that it spelled out exactly what works for a certain family, and how the mom set about organizing everything. One of the biggest take-aways for me was seeing how the author sets up her weeks and months by having focus areas. This is something that I had been doing too, but her system had some great improvements over mine. First, she does the traditional "laundry day" like I do (don't most of us?) but she also has another day for "clothes" when she does her ironing, mending, sewing, and clothes change-over. I had been trying to fit all this in here-and-there, so to dedicate a day for it was an eye-opener. The second improvement to the focus day idea is that she has an "office day.". Love it! That is the day she plans the groceries, schedules, birthdays, etc. For me, Thursday is now office day. If one week is difficult and some tasks get dropped, I know there is always next week. It has been working very well.
She also assigns certain rooms to certain weeks of the month. I already do that but the biggest difference is how she includes her children. I learned a lot about what kids CAN do even when they're very young. I also learned that I need to inspect what I expect, and I need to work alongside the younger ones.
Which brings us to chore time. From the blog amonstlovelythings I heard about chore packs. I'm not sure exactly how they work :o) but I took away an idea about how to assign chores by seeing what needs to be done for the day instead of "you always dust the windowsills". Also, I use chore cards each day: I choose the 6 most important tasks and have the kids choose 2 randomly. Those are their 2 chores for chore time. Here's some of their chores from the other day:
Bunny drew "unload the dishwasher" as one of hers. Before the chore cards, I never would've thought the kids were old enough to do this right. They have really really surprised me. This is one of James' favorite chores, actually. When Mariposa chooses it, I do it along with her.
Mariposa drew "clean the TV room" which in this day involved cleaning up k'nex pieces and straightening up the pillows and blankets. She did this by herself but I had to check on her a lot because she gets sidetracked. :o)
James got "clean the toys off the ground" which is a hard one sometimes! This means everything in the living room and sunroom. He is putting away Bunny's Star Wars figures that Gemma probably got into. He also had to put away random books and toys that were lying around.
Gemma helps by either doing something along with me (especially dusting or glass cleaning) or just playing quietly:
This system has been really great to keep up with daily maintenance. Some other tasks they do are glass cleaning, windowsills, clear the toy table (a dumping ground), sweep the floor, vacuum the TV room, and put away their clean clothes. They have been happy to help, and they get rewarded with story time after chore time. What good kids!
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