When we grew from a family with two kids to a family of four kids a couple of years ago, chores where a challenge that I couldn’t deal with at the time. I had four kids with very different needs and abilities, but did not have the time, patience or desire to create a chore system for each one of them. Remember that two of my girls didn’t know English and the youngest was only three. Meg had been the only child who had a history with chore charts and allowances and such.
When it came time to start the chores again nothing seemed to work. It was either too elaborate (or time consuming) or to tempting to mess with (sticker charts are hard not to touch!). Everything seemed to fail miserably and I was really needing the kids to start helping out around the house.
So I instated the House Elf System. It is simple, easy, non-stimulating and the kids understand what a house elf does. They clean the house! Our love of all things Harry Potter made us familiar with Dobby the house elf. The kids love Dobby, I love Dobby. It is hard not to love Dobby. Sooooooooo the kids get to be Free House Elf Dobby every fourth day. It goes like this:
Kitchen Elf- Helps with dishes, cooking and taking out trash/recycling
Laundry Elf – Helps sort, load and fold laundry (it depends on the age of the house elf that day)
Clutter/Table Elf – Goes around and arranges pillow and clears out the clutter that multiples and also sets and clears the kitchen table after meal.
Dobby – Gets to do no daily chores and is the first on the computer for the day.
The kitchen Elf gets the computer next (we have a timer for computer time) and so goes the rotation. Every morning I rotate the names on the white board on my fridge. On days we are gone all day, I do not rotate if they kids don’t have time for chores.
This system is simple and it works for us! We have used it since last August when school starting. After our trip to Disney, it took a while to get back into the rhythm, but it did come back eventually. The whining is less, the system is clearly fair and my house-work is lightened a bit. We do give a monetary allowance for helping our house run smoothly, but have decided not to pay the kids over the summer as the summer camp costs and the pool pass cost us a pretty penny this year. They are amazingly okay with this (or maybe they are plotting to use an unforgivable curse on me?)
So why am I sharing this? To say that I hope other mothers are not feeling bad about traditional chore systems not working for them. A sticker chart isn’t going to work for all of us, nor is the marble jar or point system ( all fine systems, but not for my girls). This is okay! Keep on trying until something works.
We have to stick with what works sometimes, even if it isn’t pretty or super creative.
