Conquer Your
Household Chores

Chores. A necessary evil in our lives if we want to have some semblance of a neat and orderly household. If you spend all your time on homeschooling, then your house falls apart. If you spend all your time on your house, your homeschooling falls apart. The key to solving this problem is balance. If you can schedule some time into every day to take care of the basic necessities, then you should be able to keep your house looking presentable.

The first thing you need to do is to decide what jobs need to get done every day in order to maintain your home in a way that will make you comfortable. Also important is to find out what your husband wants your home to look like when he comes home. If there is a huge difference between the two views, then hopefully you can discuss a compromise.

Once you have decided on your basic daily jobs, the next thing you need to do is to divide them up into what will get done in the morning, the afternoon and the evening. For example:

And so on. Try to group your tasks into a couple of different time frames throughout the day. For instance, you can empty the dish drainer or dish washer, clean up the dirty dishes, wipe the counters and sweep the floor all after breakfast - and lunch and dinner if necessary.

Right before dinner you and your kids can make a sweep of all the rooms in the house so that they can be neat and tidy for when dad comes home. Put away all the toys and clean up the school books and papers from the day.

I am a big advocate of getting your children involved in helping out around the house. The amount that you can accomplish in one day will depend greatly upon the number of able-bodied children you have. If you have at least one child that can walk steadily, then you have a child that can help.

It is important for many reasons to get your kids involved in chores:

Once you have decided what your basic list is and what time of the day these jobs are going to be done, figure out who will be doing them. Make sure that everyone has something to do.

In our house, everyone is assigned a room that they are responsible for picking up before dinner every day. They keep this room for one month before they rotate on to a different one. They also each have a chore to do during the breakfast, lunch and dinner prep and clean up time. On Saturdays, the whole family has chores to do to give the house a more thorough cleaning.

Don't be afraid to get the kids involved. Here is where a good chores chart will come in handy. Make one up so that everyone knows what their jobs are and when they are supposed to do them.

Take the time to teach them exactly how you want it done. Just remember, you will have to keep following up on them because it might take them awhile to get it right,

Chores are a necessary part of every day. It becomes more difficult to accomplish them when you spend most of your day homeschooling the kids. By getting everyone involved and having an organized schedule for who will do them and when they will get done, keeping your home looking neat will not be an impossible task.

A rule of thumb that I use is that your home should be within 1/2 - 1 hour of being able to be seen by a visitor without you feeling embarrassed. Is your house in that state? If not, take some time right now to get organized and get going with a chores chart so that you can be on your way to a neater and more comfortable home.