Household Chores

[Meso]

I hate it all *quivers*

[Persepone]

About the only thing I am obsessed with is having fun with my kids. Tie dye or do laundry? Paint fun stuff or vacuum? No brainers in my opinion!

I wholeheartedly agree. The vacuuming will wait. And yes you can dress out of the laundry baskets. And if you leave the dust there you can use it to jot down phone numbers... Of course if you never clean those French door's window panes, then eventually no one can look in and see the mess...

On the other hand, the time you spend doing the tie die, helping kids build a birdhouse, teaching them to ice skate or swim or whatever is what makes the difference in how the child feels about him/herself when he grows up and gives you a chance to teach important values... Much more important than the clean house.

As long as it is not so dirty that the board of health would not find it a problem, and as long as there are "enough" clean clothes in those laundry baskets, life is good. And, ironically, if you spend a bunch of time with the kids on things like doing the tie dyeing, finger painting and building things (all messy activities) the kids will learn to pitch in and help with the cleaning and the laundry, etc. And by the time they are teenagers, they will know how to cook, do laundry, sew on buttons and mend stuff, and run the vacuum... And they will do it without complaint because they know that's how you have time for the "projects."

When my daughter was a teenager, I was amazed to find out how many of the kids in her school seemed to "live" at our house--and even more amazed that they pitched in on stuff that needed to be done in exchange for being allowed to do "projects" that they could not in their own houses. Kids were allowed to "cook" (and were amazed that we cooked "real" food--stuff from scratch rather than mixes)--and they did clean up after themselves. Also, we had 2 sewing machines and an amazing number of kids sat at our dining room table and made everything from prom dresses to Halloween costumes. One boy was our self-appointed grounds keeper and even after he went away to college, I'd come home from work, see that the hedges had been trimmed and know that he was home for a visit.

So in the grand scheme of things, the laundry does not matter. Well perhaps washing and drying it does--but even 10 year olds can do those types of chores with adult assistance--and they willingly help if they get a bunch of attention and help with projects.

In the end it is not the clean house the kids remember when they grow up and leave, but the fun they had living in the house. They remember making the cookies, using the fabric paint, cutting out the Halloween costumes, spreading their stuff out on the floor and making their school project stuff (an amazing number of kids also did their projects at our house because they weren't allowed to do them at their own homes if they were messy projects)...

There are a bunch of now grownup kids who come over, often with their own kids, and the talk is not about their own beautiful, pristine homes, but about the fun they had with projects, etc. at our house... And I get to sit back and enjoy myself as they bustle around making dinner, etc.--and yes, cleaning up after themselves--and I laugh to see 8 or 10 adults still working on group dinner projects just as they did when they were teenagers... And now they rope their kids in--things like Thanksgiving aren't a chore where there are lots of hands doing the work... And surprisingly, there are lots of hands to clean up afterward.