Revelation Revolution

Every once in awhile I get a very helpful kick in the butt, and this week is no exception.

I get a magazine called Above Rubies. It's a sweet little publication full of articles pertaining to women who are wives and mothers. This week I got the newest edition of AR and read an article entitled "The Life of a Queen: If You Train, You Will Reign!" The article was written by a woman who is mother to something like more than 8 children, and most of them are old enough to be a big help around the house. She explained that she has invested in teaching her children to do all the household jobs, such that now that so many of them are big enough to take on more advanced responsibilities, she does no housework at all.

Yes, she really said that.

She says she cleans no bathrooms, does no vacuuming, does not cook or grocery shop. None of it. Because she has enough productive children to keep the household running without her.

She shared that what she does is oversees all that is going on with the children, gardens, spends time with her husband, and takes care of her baby. She didn't mention if she homeschools or not but I suspect she does.

The family even does work coordinating adoptions of Liberian children, and her three oldest children are the contact people for this venture.

Wow! An interesting thought that I haven't had in a long time..... This woman worked herself out of a job! Of course, it helps if you have a whole big bunch of children that are old enough to work. Because, even though it sounds like a lot, when you divide it up among all those kids, I doubt it's very much work at all.

What this article did for me was caused me to take a fresh look at our household management and the jobs the children do. I have written here before about our chore areas, and this is a system that has been working very well for us for over 5 years now. The thing I had kind of lost track of is that my kids are a lot older now, yet I had not increased my expectations of them!

So here I have been, merely requiring my children to do a 15 minute per day room pick up, plus a 15-25 minute chore area, and I have been drowning under laundry, cooking, bathrooms, cleaning, changing sheets, meal planning, shopping, and now homeschooling. Huh. Methinks it is high time for an adjustment! Especially considering that two of my oldest kids are homeschooled this year and so they have plenty of time to be more helpful. Homeschooling can be done a whole lot faster than stuff takes in school. I was actually letting my oldest child play computer games and lay around reading for hours a day! Well, the reading is fine and dandy, I'm all for that. But, we've upped his work requirements around the house, plus my husband is working on including him in more handy man type things that need to be done around the house. I have also been looking around the house at various unfinished projects, considering whether or not my son would be capable of completing them. Happily, I think there are quite a few he could do or could at least help with. One project we want to have him do is weatherproof our deck. It seems like a perfect job for a 13 year old. It doesn't have to look beautiful, it doesn't matter if they spill. And it gets them out of the house and into the sunshine. :)

My 7 year old is the one with Lazyitis so the extra work is coming as a shock to him. He thinks every job is a punishment. I've just started greeting his whines and protests with the words, "If you want to complain, I will give you more to do." He shuts up right away every time.

Today I gave him a super duper deluxe training session on how to clean his area, since he had already "finished it" and believe me it looked no better than before he began. I tried to be very positive and praising what a good job he was doing all along the way. I guess it worked because when he was done he looked around his area with a big smile on his face and said to me, "When my wife comes over here and sees this house she is going to LOVE this because women really love it when you can clean stuff good!" I told him that a man who can do a job well is a man women like. :)

My other effort du jour for training so that eventually I can sit on my butt eating bon bons all day like the woman who wrote that article ;) was to help/make my 4 and 2 year olds clean up their pigsty. I brought in a garbage can, a laundry bucket, and a crate for toys and books, and told them to pick up everything on the floor so we could put it away. The floor was littered with about a million legos, popcorn kernels, pieces of fuzz that they ripped out of their pillow, toys, books, ripped magazine pages, discarded socks, and so forth. So I stood in there saying, "Pick up the stuff on the floor. Pick up the stuff from the floor." about 700 times until I felt like bashing my head into their metal bunk bed. It's amazing how they can step on the stuff, look at the stuff, touch the stuff, and yet not know what to pick up. Maybe there was just too much to choose from, eh?

But we hung in there and got all the crapola off the floor and next stop is vacuum land, which fortunately they both think is a treat. There is still stuff under the bed, but I had had about all I could take of queenly training for today.