Homeschool Fiction

I’ll say it from the start: I’m anti-chores, but I’m pro-clean.

How better to make our children resent cleaning and organizing than to force them to do it against their will? Think about which household tasks you dislike the most. Are they they ones you did with fun with your parents, or the ones you were forced to do?

Laundry was the first big household task I learned to do as a child. I clearly remember sitting on top of a warm dryer and having my mom hand me washclothes to fold. We talked, we laughed, we bonded (yeah, it’s cliche). To this day, I don’t mind doing laundry unless I’m short on time. [It's helped that I've learned how to streamline things like this, too.]

Somehow kids trust me, so I’ve been hearing their secrets for years and years. One extremely common one is how much they hate doing chores – how they cheat at them, how they swear they’ll never do those things in their own homes, how they lie about them. This is no way to show children how to keep a clean, orderly, and organized household. Chore charts don’t work, neither do chore schedules (unless your goal is to make your kids do only the things you require and nothing more – ever).

Is my house spic-and-span? Well, no, but it’s usually quite clean. I usually know where everything is (I like being able to find things when there are no lights on). But, most importantly, my kids are happy children. They can see and feel the difference between a tidy home and a disorganized one (like how it gets when we’re overcommited for more than a day or two in a row). I’m often seeing them picking up things and cleaning, without my asking. This is the reward of never having chores – Kids will clean when they aren’t asked to!

Include your children in your day-to-day life. Sit in their rooms and tidy as you go. Invite them to talk with you while you do the dishes (maybe hand a bowl over for them to put away, if it doesn’t seem imposing). If they are busy doing something with their hands – it’s imposing.

Ask for help, but don’t demand it. If you only ask when you are willing to accept no for an answer, then when you TRULY need help then your kids will understand this and help you. My kids always have, just as I always have for my husband and he for me.

Living without chores sounds radical and disgusting, but it’s not. It’s quite the opposite. Maintaining good relationships with all the people who live in your house is the only way to have everyone be willing helpers to everyone else.

Want to read more about how to live a slave-free maid-free happy-full clean-full life with children and NO chores? I looked for websites to list here and these are definitely the best:

• Joyfully Rejoycing (there is a whole Chore category on the right side of the page)
• Sandra Dodd’s “Living Better Without Requiring Chores“

Related Articles:

• Top 10: Reasons Why I’m Glad We Unschool
• Rules vs. Principles
• Organization of a Home (HOW TO with Unschooled kids)
• “Only 2865 Days Until I Can Live My Life”
• Unschooling: It’s what we DO, rather than what we DON’T DO.

By: Lisa