Advice on home management from a large family mom
If you’ve ever struggled to keep up with the laundry, figure out what to make for dinner, or keep your bathroom from becoming a disgusting cesspool, join the club! Taking care of a home is not something that anyone is just born knowing how to do. It requires a certain amount of actual research, planning, and trial-and-error to figure out, and there will always be more to learn (and more to do). I’ve been a mom for a long time, and I’m still looking for better ways to plan meals, clean windows, and remove stains (along with about a million other things).
Originally, this was just going to be one post, full of practical advice on how to divide up housework. However, before you dig into who does what and when, I think it’s important to understand (and embrace!) the true value of the work that goes into maintaining your home. Before you start to figure out who’s going to be in charge of dinner and which day to clean the bathrooms, have you thought about the big picture? Did you know that housework is basically the glue that holds the world together?
Housework has value
One of the reasons I used to hate housework is that I completely devalued it. I thought of it as just a bunch of mindless chores that really had no significance; real work was PAID work, and real work was VISIBLE. Housework (at your own house, anyway) is neither of those. I thought that if I did most of the housework, it meant that my time was less valuable than my husband’s, or even my children’s. It made me feel like I wasn’t much more important than – or different from – the vacuum cleaner or the washing machine.
What I didn’t realize is that housework is the foundation of the physical life of the family. Without housework, none of the fundamentals of life here on earth are available to you or your family. Without someone to cook, do laundry, and clean the house, you would have no food, no clothing, nothing to sleep or sit on. No one would be able to find anything because it would all be sitting where they happened to drop it, and it would be covered in all the garbage no one bothered to throw away and take to the curb. Your family would be covered in dirt, bacteria, and parasites. They would be sick, starving, dirty, and eventually, dead. Home management is the most important work on the planet. Anyone who looks down on it is looking at the world – and work – entirely backwards.
Actually, housework has tremendous value
The role a mom plays within her home is not just the foundation of the physical life of her family. It is the foundation of our entire society. It is serious work that requires just as much intellect, creativity, wisdom, strength, courage, and tenacity as any paid position. If you recognize the tremendous value of the work you do within your home, you can reframe it from the worst sort of drudgery to the best sort of challenge to your mind, body, and soul.
Housework is real work
Along with recognizing the value of housework, you have to acknowledge that it IS WORK. It’s A LOT of work – and it will get monotonous, overwhelming, exhausting, frustrating, discouraging, and disgusting at times. Housework is hard. It is often unrewarding. It is often unnoticed. If you are always fighting against those facts, trying to avoid it or make it easier, trying to get recognition for all the work you do, getting angry when it all piles up again and no one else seems to care…you will be miserable. YOU know the tremendous value of what you’re doing. So does God. If no one else ever figures that out, well, you can choose to be okay with that.
Someone has to be in charge
Even if you decide that every member of the family will do an exactly equal amount of work around the house, someone has to be in charge. Not designating a “chief homemaking officer” makes it very hard to get anything done or hold anyone accountable, and it tends to make everyone resentful of everyone else for not doing their fair share. Someone has to have the overall vision and a plan for making it happen. In most homes, mom is the best candidate for this role.
Wait – don’t get mad yet. It is certainly possible for your husband to be the manager of your home. If you both agree that he would be better suited to that role, then I say do it. My own experience as a daughter and a wife leads me to believe that most women are better than most men at home management, but that doesn’t apply to every woman or every man. Remember, the person in charge doesn’t have to do ALL the housework alone; much of their work is in assigning and overseeing the work done by the rest of the family.
Deciding who does what
The best way to approach the division of work within the home is to play to each other’s strengths. If one of you is a great cook, that person should be in charge of most of the cooking. If one of you loves being outdoors and caring for plants, that person should be in charge of most of the yardwork.
Your husband’s job might prevent him from being able to prepare all of the meals all of the time. But, if that’s something he loves, arrange for him to be in charge of food on the weekends, or of creating the meal plan and shopping for groceries. I really and truly love to clean, and I love to do it MY WAY. So, in my house, I do most of the mopping, vacuuming, bathroom cleaning, and so on. Your kids will also have certain chores that they prefer – and even enjoy. Let them have some say in which chores they do; you might be surprised at how eager they are to claim their favorite tasks.
Some good chores for kids
Depending on the ages and preferences of your kids, some of the best chores for them might be:
- Helping prepare meals (chopping veggies is a favorite at my house, as is cracking eggs)
- Setting and clearing the table for meals
- Sweeping after meals
- Tidying their rooms
- Vacuuming
- Helping load the washer and dryer
- Folding and putting away their laundry
- Cleaning the windows and mirrors (my kids fight over this)
- Pulling weeds
- Watering plants
- Dusting
I can’t overstate how important it is to get your kids involved in housework at a very young age. From age 2 to about 5 or 6, most kids BEG to help with everything, from cooking to laundry to pulling weeds. They will never be more eager to help and to learn than they are at this age, and you have to let them do it. They won’t do a great job, they’ll be painfully slow, and they’ll need lots of help and direction. You might end up having to redo things (in secret – don’t let them see you “fix” what they’ve done). But the payoff is huge – extra time together, lots of new life skills, and a sense of importance and identity within the family. Let your kids help you, assign them their own work to do, and congratulate them on a job well done. There aren’t many better or easier ways to build self esteem than that.
Get More Practical Advice in the Next Post!
We’ll be back with part two and more practical advice on how to manage housework so that your home stays clean, and you stay sane.
