I've tried a number of ways of distributing chores among my children while training them to work.  Most have worked well, some have failed miserably.

There were two ways I swore that I would never try, because they seemed confusing to the children, did not appear to foster responsibility or competency or reliability at a job, and looked like a whole lot more work for me.

In both cases, I was wrong.  I'm woman enough to admit when I'm wrong. The fact that I am wrong often has given me lots of practice, and I can now say "I'm wrong" without stuttering or turning red or offering excuses.

I'm wrong, and am glad to add these two to my list of Successful Ways To Do Chores With Your Kids.

The first way I learned from my friend, IndianaMom.  A few years ago, she told about how she started at one end of the house with the kids, and they all cleaned each room together. 

Even tho IndianaMom is younger than I, she has a number of children older than mine.  My oldest is older than her oldest, but as far as having a big group of children at home, she is much more experienced than I.  Not only that, but I admire her way of cooking for her family and her spiritual journey with the Creator has often inspired and humbled and led me to change.

So I tried this thing.  Simply because IndianaMom did it.  And you know what? It worked.  It was so fun. And so quick. And we sang or listened to music. And no one disappeared only to be found after chore time with their nose buried in a book or their fingers buried in Lego buckets. 

Every room was thoroughly cleaned daily.  The children were the legs...they ran things back to where they belonged.  We hung trash bags on the door of the room we were working on so that trash didn't need to be brought into the kitchen each time.  The vacuum was parked outside the door of the room, along with the ceiling duster and the cleaner caddy.  The kids did the easy surface stuff while I took care of the nitpicky stuff.

It turned out to be one of the best ways to keep our house looking really clean in a very short amount of time daily.

Thank you, IndianaMom.

The second way was rotating chores.  This one seemed like it would be very confusing to the kids, and I wasn't sure how I'd keep up with who did what on what day.

Here's how I did it, and I was able to keep up. Every morning, I write out assignment sheets for my older kids listing the academic things I expect done during the day.  This way they are responsible for their own time and their own work.  Some of my younger children started asking for assignment sheets, even tho I work closely with them.  They just thought they were so neat.

Not too long ago, Jacob (12) had a very full week, needing to complete a number of things for Boy Scouts and some local newspaper stuff as well as his academics and daily chores.  So I just split up everything that would need to be done that week into 5 days, and each day I assigned him a one-fifth portion.

It worked so well that I decided to try that with the other children.

We live in a very rainy part of the country.  It rains about 9 months out of the year here.  So even tho the weather remains mild, we get The Rainy Day Blues often during the spring when we are waiting for dry days.  It seems during this time that everything gets to be just trudging thru mud, indoors and out.  Attitudes get a little sludgy this time of year, and it's important to do interesting, new, bright things to keep our heads above the water...almost literally.

The changing of chores daily keeps things just different enough that the children lose the day-in-day-out blues.  And because I'm having to reassign everything every morning, my brain clicks in on those things that I wouldn't normally think about...like someone left one of my dishes outside on the patio and I need it to come in the house so better just sweep the patio while we are at it and the trash can in the kitchen could use a good washing so Molls can take care of that while she's taking out the trash.  And the last best thing: my younger children are getting trained in jobs that are way beyond their ability but make them feel so big.  I did have a child vacuum up the vacuum cord...that was a little scary.  So some wisdom needs to be used. By me.

I have maybe a half dozen...maybe more...ways that we've done chores over the years.  I'm happy with most of them.  The thing that I've found works the best for us is to change things now and again.  Keep things fresh.  Present new challenges. Be willing to try something new and be willing to fail at it. 

And play good reggae music while you work.

You should see me do my version of The Funky Chicken to Christafari while I'm vacuuming. 

I am good!