Keeping a home when you have a young family

Katherine is asking her readers to write a post if they would like to help a friend out who has 5 young kids all under the age of six! she was asking for some advice about keeping a home when you have young kids. i am excited about this because i think this would be one of my strong points (and believe me there is not many so i take what i can get in the mom department, because it seems i mess up in all the other ways possible)

we have 4 kids ages 10, 5, 4, and 1. i love to keep a clean and tidy home. i think that the key is to be consistent and organization, now i do not mean bins and buckets i mean having a routine of how you do things and actually do them. everyday...... in our home our kids love to watch TV, i mean love it and there is no TV on until chores are done. every morning when i get up i have my own set of chores i do and then the kids have the ones they do. here is a example

mom:

• make bed
• collect any laundry
• clean my bathroom
• put anything that needs to be put away where it goes
• start some sort of laundry
• take out anything for dinner that needs defrosting

the kids:

• make bed
• pick up any toys
• pick up any laundry
• clean playroom

here in our new home we have a playroom, well it is actually a bedroom but we make the boys share a room so we can have a play room, and all toys stay in that room. Jake's (1) toys stay in his own room. but we do not keep any toys in our family areas. not to say they do not play in there we just don't have toy boxes in there they can bring one toy in there at a time and when they are done playing with it they put it away and can get another. and we only keep a limited amount of toys if we buy something new we go through and get rid of something.

another big thing is we repeat our chores throughout the day usually before lunch and before dad comes home, then before bed. doing this several times makes it less overwhelming, it is much easier to clean up 2 hours worth of mess than 10 hours worth. i have John my hubby call when he is on his way home and i tell the kids daddy will be home in a few minutes lets get the cleaning done so we can have dinner. i think when kids have a clear direction of what is going on next they are more likely to finish the task at hand.

i try to remind myself it is only a season and they are only little once so a little mess will not hurt. and living in this house while remodeling has relaxed me a bit the dishes will still be there and the toys on the ground are not the end of the world. there are many days that i feel like i do the same thing over and over and over and over again but that is what teaches our kids to have good habits and how to do things. the way they need to be done. i remember reading somewhere that a person must do something like 15 times in a row before they really grasp the importance of it so just keep at it, be consistent.

oh and real quick if my kids don't help they do not watch TV that day but remember only give punishments you can handle because sometimes when i have tons of stuff to do and the baby is napping i love to let my kids watch some TV while i get things done. we are going to be starting some new chore charts and "allowance" over the next few weeks so stay tuned i will be posting details