Family Stewardships

Here's a simple idea for organizing chores in the home. I'm pretty sure I was the one who put the 'freak' in 'neat freak'. I really, really like a clean and orderly home, and find that when it is we are all much more at peace (especially Mom :) and my brain cells are much more free to be creative in teaching and learning with our children. The Lord's house is a house or order, and so I do believe that a level of neatness and organization is necessary. But with several children at home all day 'living', which entails making lots of messes, and many of them quite young, how does one keep order and cleanliness with as little trouble as possible?

In the past, we tried SO MANY systems and ideas for chores, but this is by far the simplest we've found, and has been the most effective and long-running for our family. It sounds complicated at first, but trust me, once the initial hard 'mom work' is done, it's very useful in a home with multiple aged children. I put in one good hard day in preparing it, and now years later, and with more children added to the mix, it is still in place and it really seems to stand on it's own at this point with very little effort on my part. That leaves me free to train the younger ones on the details of their particular parts, and lots and lots of time left over NOT cleaning, to enjoy our family.

So here are the how-to steps.

Step 1. I made a list of every single job, from the very simple, to the big ones like the bathrooms, kitchen, and yard work. Then I ordered the responsibilities into levels of difficulty. And we actually call them stewardships, not chores. 'Chores' imply work and drudgery, and 'stewardships' are an eternal principle. We order the stewardship levels somewhat like a ladder. The easiest groups of jobs on bottom, with each level, or rung, increasing in difficulty.

 Step 2. I match up children with groupings of jobs, in order of their age and ability. Each person has a couple of stewardships, depending on their level of ability. The harder the jobs, the fewer in number a child has.  Initially, I also made sure that the older ones that were 'starting' higher up the ladder could demonstrate to me that they could already accomplish all of the jobs lower down on the ladder rungs first, and I then trained each child in their stewardships. (More on how that can be very easy in just a minute).

Step 3. How and when do they move up and learn the harder jobs? Each person 'graduates' from their level, and moves to the next when they demonstrate that they can do it well. And for logistical purposes, everybody graduates up at the same time, every couple of years, so that by the time they leave our home, they have been trained on every part of running a home (just like in "Laddie" :) The stewardship chart is simply posted on the fridge.

For example, in our house it says this (except that I've removed our children's names):

Family Stewardships
"We work together to maintain the beauty and cleanliness of our home by fulfilling our Family Stewardships."

Dad
-work to provide for our family's needs
-mentoring children
-mow and weed eat

Mom
-mentoring children
-cooking (rotating children helpers weekly)
-help wash laundry

16 year-old daughter
-both bathrooms
-put away own clean clothes

14 year-old son
-kitchen
-help Dad mow
-put away own clean clothes

11 year-old son
-empty trash and take to street
-master bedroom
-vacuum house
-help mom wash laundry
-put away own clean clothes

9 year-old daughter
-the girl's bedroom
-sort clean laundry
-family room
-living room
-put away own clean clothes

7 year-old son
-boy's room
-setting table
-empty small bathroom trash cans
-put away own clean clothes

4 year-old son
-the entryway
-clean up after himself
-put away own clean clothes

2 year-old son
-clean up toys when finished playing with them
-put away own clean clothes

We have designated brief straighten-up times (in the morning before we start school, before dinner, before we leave the house, before they go outside to play, etc.), and all the kids know that nobody gets to do anything fun until their part is done. But since they already know exactly what to do, there's no struggle. It has worked very well for us.

So how do they know how to do the job as well as Mom could? Like this, (and this is the hard part initially, but SO worth it!). Each stewardship has daily responsibilities, and weekly responsibilities, and everybody knows exactly what needs to be done for every stewardship, because it's all in writing. This part took a whole day of immense effort on my part, but now that it's done, it will never have to be done again, unless we move, and then only altered a little bit.

Step 4. I went from stewardship to stewardship, and wrote down every tiny, little, needful thing for the daily responsibilities, as well as the weekly responsibilities. I fine-tuned it, then typed it, printed it out, made it pretty with markers on the borders, laminated it (VERY important step for it to last), and voila!

They are kept in a drawer in the end table in the living room (except the 'laundry' card which is posted next to the laundry machines) and whenever somebody needs to perform their stewardship, they go to the drawer, pull out their card, and get started. There is even a card for "setting the table" with a drawing of a place setting. The non-readers have help from Mom or an older sibling until they are so good at it, that they don't even need the card anymore, and everybody is training and learning to run a home. 

Here is an example of how it is laid out. This is the kitchen card. Daily jobs on top, divided from the weekly jobs on the bottom. Every little detail is clearly written out as a simple checklist, including putting away all the cleaning supplies, and they just go straight down the line. You could let them use a dry-erase marker to check the items off, but we've just never had need of that. But the laminating of the cards, is really a very important part of this. It makes them rugged, and last a long time. We've had little hands all over ours for years now, and they're still going strong. Well worth the money spent. 

It's been awesome! We have been doing this for several years now and it is now so effective that our "weekly stewardship time" on Saturdays (deep cleaning) takes only about one hour!  It's one idea of a simple way to organize the cleanliness of a home. It does take quite a bit of individualized effort on the part of Mom up front, but it has been so well worth that effort, and has saved countless hours of time I may have otherwise had to spend nagging or reminding (again) how to do a chore. The only part that ever really needs mom attention is the 'graduating' and re-assigning of the stewardships periodically as children move up in difficulty, but the 'how to' cards, the part that took all the work at first, are permanent. Happy cleaning!

Heather is the blessed mother of seven beautiful and talented children (ages 2-16), and warrior wife to her wonderful military husband. They have home educated their children from the beginning, and find no greater joy than teaching, and learning, together as a family. Heather is an obsessive compulsive organizer, and also enjoys reading classics, singing, nutrition, health, self-reliance, and teaching as much as possible through the best books and through the power of music. She treasures above all else her sweet family, and her membership in the Church.