quote:

Any messes, even those not made by the child, are the responsibility of that child and he needs to get it clean.

This is where we really run into problems! I am so tired of hearing "It's not my mess" or "It's not my job". Ugh!! That's something we really need to work on, and I'm hoping that by assigning areas of responsibility, rather than specific chores, we will be able to overcome that. It's gotten pretty ridiculous, to the point that the girls even divided up the day into three time slots to decide who lets the dog outside when she needs to go. The youngest covers the morning, middle daughter does the afternoon, oldest does the evening up until bedtime. It all sounded like a good idea, until the dog needs to go out in the morning but the youngest is nowhere to be found, and even if the other two are sitting right there in the room, they think they shouldn't have to do it because it's not "their job". Very frustrating!! So something definitely has to change.

I just thought I'd share our latest "system" for keeping up with the housework. So far it's working fairly well (but it's only been a month). When we moved into our new house I divided the routine housework into three groups (since I have three kids at home). There's the kitchen job, the laundry job, and the everything else job. Basically, the kitchen person is responsible for cooking, cleaning the kitchen, dishes, grocery shopping, etc. She doesn't do it by herself (yet), but she helps me with as much of that as she is able to do. The laundry person, obviously, is responsible for doing the laundry for the whole family. And the "everything else" person is responsible for, well, everything else. That means pet care, vacuuming, dusting, decluttering, etc. Everyone is responsible for their own bedroom and bathroom (two girls share a bathroom, one has her own). I take care of the master bedroom/bathroom, the downstairs half-bath, and generally supervising to be sure everyone is doing what they're supposed to be doing. They trade off jobs every month. It's working out really well! Since they keep the job for a month, it's easy to tell if someone is slacking off. My youngest has the kitchen job this month and she loves helping me fix dinner and learning to cook. My oldest has the laundry, and altho' she hasn't enjoyed that as much, she is learning how to do it and getting better at it (still have a ways to go, though). The everything else job is the hardest to keep up with, but over time I think we'll get better at that. So far this system is working really well for us. I'm not sure if it would have when they were younger, but with teenagers it's great.