As I’ve said before, home tasks cause the most amount of stress for me. scheduling home tasks is one way for me to relieve some of the stress here and letting go of your perfectionism to free up time and let go of stress. Just remember you’ve already been doing it all, now you can do it in manageable pieces. Another way to help relieve some of the stress of home tasks is to get everyone in the household involved. Now granted, a baby can’t help with these tasks, but you’d be amazed at the things a toddler and up can and will do to help you.
Give each of your children one thing they can accomplish off of your list of things to do for the day, and let them go at it. DON’T tell them how to do it, DON’T show them a better way to do it, DON’T show them the right way to do it. Just let them do it. When they are done, tell them what a wonderful job they did, and walk away from their work. Don’t tell them they did it wrong, don’t go back behind them and do it right. Just leave it be. Will this drive you insane? Maybe for the first week or so, but it’ll get better. It is much better than the message you will send if you tell them they did it wrong, or if you go back behind them and re-do it. You’re telling them their best isn’t good enough, and you shouldn’t have asked them to do it, because you could have done it better yourself. Truly be proud of them and their job, let them know you are proud, and move on to something else.
Children love to help their parents, but they also get their opinions from their parents. If they see you complaining about cleaning, or grumbling every time you do it, they will not want to help, because they see you saying it’s no fun. Change your attitude about household tasks, and then try to make their tasks fun.
Mopping the kitchen? Throw a pair of shorts and some old socks on them, give them a bucket of water, and let them skate the kitchen clean. Doing a general pick up? Set a timer and try to beat it, or race each other to see who can pick up the most. Doing some dusting? Put on some great upbeat music and dance away while you’re dusting.
Don’t forget the rewards either. You can use a simple chart with the days of the week, then at the end of the week, if they have all the stars, they can get a special reward. It doesn’t have to be something bought either. I have a bag of dollar toys my son can pick from, and a small bag of things written on paper he can pick from. It has things like an extra board game with mom, extra 20 minutes on the computer, stay up 30 minutes extra at bedtime, and a bunch more.
Break it up into child size pieces. Children will do anything for 10 minutes, as long as you stop when it’s time. Telling a child it won’t take long, and then taking an hour to do a task is going to show them that not taking long to you is long to them. They will remember, and they will not want to help with anything that you say won’t take long. If it is going to be a long task, let them work for 10 minutes, break for 10 minutes. Let them do something fun for those breaks too.
Be creative. Can your child dust the entire room? Mine can’t, he’s not tall enough, yet. He wants to help do it anyways. Get 2 dusters and have your child do the bottom and you do the top. Can my son wash windows by himself? Nope, especially in the living room where there are floor to ceiling windows. He washes the bottom, I wash the top. Another good thing about doing projects at the same time is they can learn by example. If they see that the way you’re doing it gets done faster, they are going to try to do it that way. Can my son wash dishes by himself? As much as he would like to, no. So I wash, he rinses, he dries, I put away. Get creative with solutions to your child/ren helping.
Getting your children involved when they are young helps in the long run too. As they grow, they know they can do anything even if they have to break it up, and they will be more apt to help and take on more responsibility as they grow. It teaches them how to do tasks around the house, so when they are old enough to go on their own, they aren’t stuck with not knowing what to do, how to do it, or when to do it. It teaches them that you trust them enough to let them do these important home tasks. There are so many great lessons in getting them involved that it really outweighs the windows being a little foggy after they wash them the first few times, or the stack of newly folded towels looking like the leaning tower of Pisa.
You might also enjoy this article on Teaching Kids to Clean out Clutter.