It seems like I am forever changing my method of handling chores. I think part of it is because we just get bored with our routine. Or I do, at least. Sometimes we have chore chart spreadsheets for each kid that they check off daily. That works well as long as we check them each night to make sure they're getting done. We've also rotated chores every couple months to give some variety, but my poor husband had trouble knowing who does what, so we've pretty much nixed that idea and keep the same chores for longer periods. Right now, I've settled on a list that I can tweak every so often, and is posted in a sheet protector taped onto our cabinet right above my stove area so it's a cinch to look at.
I've also learned through experience (and because I generally stink at remembering things) that it's much easier to have our chores "attached" to something that we do on a daily basis. For instance, every day, we eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so we have chores that need to be done right before or right after a particular meal. This has helped so much because as I'm preparing the meal, I can look at the sheet on the cabinet and make sure so-and-so feeds the dogs (or collects the eggs, or empties the dishwasher, or...).
Along with normal daily chores for everyone, each of the kids are assigned to one day a week for what we've recently named their "serving" day. They serve the other members of the family by having some extra chores on that day. Their day includes things like lighting the wood stove and keeping it stoked (then filling it at the end of the day for the next person on the following day), loading all the dishwasher into the dishwasher throughout the day, and doing their own laundry (completely. Which means getting it put away as well.) They do these things along with their other assigned chores.
In addition, I had each of the kids pick out 4 days worth of meals to make on "their" day. They could pick a breakfast, lunch and dinner that they want to make for each of the four days. With each of the 5 bigger kids (currently age 8 and up) choosing meals, the month's menu was pretty much filled in. Saturday is our leftovers day and Sunday is our bigger meal of roast chicken or roast beef (that can cook in the roasting pan while we are at church). The meals that they pick are ones that they like, yet are out of our master meal list or cookbook, so we are not eating hot dogs or mac n cheese every night. We also tried to keep the repeats to a minimum. Pizza was one of the few that made the list a few times.
Last Monday, Caleb's day, I was uninvolved in the dinner making for one of the first times ever. Whoo-hoo! I think maybe they've patched something together when I had a newborn, but this was a real meal. You know, a main dish-veggie-side dish kind of meal. He's studying Mandarin (Chinese), so he wanted to make a Chinese dish. Sesame chicken, stir fry veggies and rice... all while I found something else to do (like there's never anything else on the list to do, right?). I think I read library books to the younger kids or something like that. (We LOVE good books! But, that's another blog)
Most of the kids ate with chopsticks that we salvaged from... wherever.
Looks pretty authentic to me... and tasted deeelish!
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