Friday, June 6, 2008

Chores

I'm still amazed, a year later, how the addition of a little person to our family and moving to a new house can turn things upside down. It's a good kind of crazy, mostly.

In the past year, one thing that has really slipped through the cracks is housekeeping.


I like that word, it reminds me of those ladies who keep hotel rooms all shiny clean.
In fact, it makes me want to holler for someone from that department.

"HOUSEKEEPING!"

So, ideally, my crack team of highly skilled Ducklings do a really good job of keeping the house cleaner and tidier than I could possibly do on my own. However, they are NOT spontaneous neat-niks. Which means it falls to me to instruct, remind, cajole, bribe, I mean reward, discipline, schedule, delegate, etc.

I have fallen down on this particular job.

The last two weeks, however, we have made a fresh start. A new chore chart has found its way onto the refrigerator and we are doing a much better job of keeping on top of the mess which is caused by living.

In my "system" the older Ducklings have specific chores to accomplish a couple of times a day. The littles are supposed to assist them, giving the olders an opportunity to learn to delegate and direct. It all works really well, as long as I keep everyone motivated.

The other day I came into the kitchen and saw this:




The Bambino(3) had taken it upon himself to clean the kitchen counter without being asked.



His technique may not have been perfect. And I'm pretty sure the counter was cleaner before he started.

But, these are the rare and precious moments that make all the hard work of training my little people oh-so-worth-it.

Thank you, Lord, for tiny glimmers of hope for the future and incremental progress!

I like to imagine that some day we'll all work together in glorious harmony, with great maturity, both theirs and mine.

1 comment:

  1. I find that our Munchkins are VERY good about attending to their chores WHEN I remember to post & assign them. It's just that I fall down on the job frequently (creating more work for myself in the process) and starting again takes a little burst of energy.

    I love how your older ducklings are training/mentoring the younger ones.

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