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chores rota help

5 replies

lechatnoir · 04/02/2024 12:16

DH & I b

OP posts:
lechatnoir · 04/02/2024 12:22

Oops! Lost the original post, but abridged version is since I've started working from home (full time) I've become the bloody home help and it needs to stop! teenagers 14&17 and DH will do stuff if I direct them (kids with usual teenage resistance!) but I want to divvy out specific jobs to just do each week without me prompting all the bloody time. Will include a meal each for dc and 2 for DH .
What is reasonable to expect kids to be doing and can anyone share their family rota? I will continue to do washing (if it's put in the basket) all pet duties and daily downstairs hoovering but want to share everything else.

OP posts:
theduchessofspork · 04/02/2024 12:37

My main thing is divide whole areas for you and DH eg you shop and change the beds, he does laundry, you do GP, he does dentist, you do house bills, he does insurance - because it avoids you creeping in to do more. If no one has clean socks the finger is firmly pointed at him.

I’d also do one batch cook a fortnight each.

Kids can be made responsible for unloading the dishwasher, taking out (and washing) the bins and recycling and putting them back.

Everybody cleans their own bedroom, brings down their laundry on a set day, and puts all cups and plate in the dishwasher and cleans up snack making.

Everybody has a basket their clean laundry gets dumped in and they take it from there. (It helps to colour code towels, socks and bed linen per person). Everyone does their own ironing.

Kids do a bathroom, you and DH alternate a bathroom, you do kitchen, DH does hovering and dusting in halls and sitting rooms.

in so far as you can try and divide the bigger jobs according to what people like doing. If there’s something everyone hates, it might make sense to rota that.

The other key thing is to drop your standards - they might not clean bathrooms or do the laundry quite as you do - but the only thing that matters is it gets done. This is the big way women trip themselves up.

One of your teens is an adult, so treat them as such, have a monthly family meeting (followed by nice nosh and wine) where everyone can raise issues and vote on where you go on holiday and stuff.

So lots of carrots, but hitting teens in the pocket when jobs don’t get done is fair.

BertieBotts · 04/02/2024 12:51

Can you get them together, put all the jobs out on the table and everyone picks some and then you work it out like that?

have a monthly family meeting (followed by nice nosh and wine) where everyone can raise issues and vote on where you go on holiday and stuff.

Do you actually do this? I would love to know how it works for your family. I made a post asking about family meetings and just got a reply that said it sounded like a ridiculous thing to do Confused

theduchessofspork · 04/02/2024 13:05

@BertieBotts yes we do. It’s genuinely a great idea, they are quite fun and give everyone a sense of agency - if you have a meal rota you can have little votes on what you want more or less of. Stuff does also get sorted out because it’s a specific space where someone can complain about someone not cleaning the rabbit hutch properly.

I don’t know why people don’t do it more.

BertieBotts · 04/02/2024 14:12

How old were your DC when you started? I have DC 15, 5 and 2. Whenever we've done it previously with the 15yo nobody else is that interested except me, so it only happened once and then never again and I don't think it was very helpful. I was thinking it might be better once the younger ones are able to participate.

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