Chores. What a fun word, all you have to do is say it out loud and everyone scatters. When I was growing up I was the oldest of five children, there were lots of chores to go around and I did my fair share. Boy did I resent it! All that cooking and cleaning and laundry and babysitting, sucked the life right out of being a teenager. Or at least I thought so at the time.
I decided that when I had children they would never do chores. My kids would not be responsible for housework, I figured, as the Mom, that was my job.
Hailey is an only child. She knows how to do chores, she even works very hard at her job, and sometimes that includes cleaning and mopping. However, she has never been required to do chores.
There are no chore charts in our house, no allowances doled out based on the performance of said chores. If I am being perfectly honest, sometimes it was just easier and faster to do things myself. I’m sure that would have been different if I had more children or even a husband in the house but with just the two of us it seemed silly to pawn the household chores off on Hailey.
Things like laundry, even now, I do all the laundry. It seems like a waste of water, electricity and time for us to do our laundry separately. I wash, dry, fold, Hailey lives out of laundry baskets so I’m quite sure that some things that are clean wind up on the floor again and again.
I wonder if I did the right thing. My daughter is messy, messy, messy. Her room, her car, the bathroom she uses, pretty much anything she comes in contact with. Is this a result of not having to do chores, or is this normal teenage behavior?
I make her clean up after herself now, but I can’t help but wonder, what will her home look like? Do you make your kids do chores or is it more hit and miss at your house?