Household routine - where to begin?

[veganburgerqueen]

I have always been fairly organised though not necessarily the tidiest of people. Before the DCs I had a basic routine and would splurge tidy when things got too bad. I could always manage to keep on top of housekeeping, washing, shopping etc.
The two eldest came along and my routines were solid. Up until the middle one went to school the house ran fairly smoothly.
However, as their ASD became more apparent, the harder it got to maintain things. DC 3 came along and we just about managed.

Fast forward to today and I have two SN teenagers, an 8 year old and a DP with dyslexia, who is also very, very disorganised. I now have a chronic illness which leaves me 'out of action' for days on end and all pretences at household routines have been abandoned.

I feel like I am drowning in chaos . It stresses me that I can't clean and tidy as I used to and the older DC find every reason not to participate, even when we use rota's/pre plan with notice/ provide money incentives, etc.

Any suggestions about getting everyone on board and reclaiming our routines?
Thanks.

I don't have children but I have a friend with teen DC's. She changes the WiFi password daily and rewards the DC's with letters from the new password for every job they do :) For example, laying the table for dinner (1 letter), cooking dinner (1 letter), washing up (that's 2 letters I think), vaccuming the whole house (3 letters). As they work through the jobs, the letters get written up on a whiteboard :)

She also gives them the interesting, harder jobs not the easiest ones. For example, she'll ask them to plan and cook a family meal or do the shopping list, or she'll ask them to hunt down broadband bargains if that's what the family need. He favorite one is to ask them to re-organise the kitchen cupboards .. this often ends up involving elaborate organisation systems made out of cereal boxes that the kids have found on YouTube They are much much more interested in helping if the jobs are challenging!

I think the secret is little & often. Try to get everyone to clear as they go if the kids & your partner are messy. With your condition choose to do more on date you feel up to it i.e. Hoover whole house. Or if not feeling great just Hoover or dust one room.

I think the easiest way to get buy-in is to involve the kids & your partner in a way forward. Have a family meeting and agree a rota or incentives, this should be more engaging than just communicating it to them. It also means if people don't like up to their part you can remind them you all agreed. Hopefully the kids will agree set chores or incentives for doing their part. Perhaps also agree what happens if people don't do their part i.e. Less pocket money that week.

Good luck

BuggerOff, that's a fantastic idea. Wish my kids still stayed at home so I could adopt it. It's genius 😀

BuggerOff - sheer genius! Will definitely be doing this, though I can hear the howls of despair from the kids already!

User1471 - thank you for your suggestions too. We shall all be sitting down at the weekend and doing this.

Great suggestions. I feel much more positive now .

What a bloody brilliant idea about the wifi password!

It works really well, we don't have 3G or anything here (just GPRS!) so literally the only way to get online is with the wifi password. She uses a random password generator online so the kids don't guess it :)

They are 12 and 14, lovely kids but typical teens and hate helping out. When she introduced the new wifi system there was complete outrage, but she explained it by saying if they'd helped out like she asked in the first place there would have been no need for it which I think helped calm the storm!

Place marking for later- I'm in a similar boat op, don't despair we will sort it :)

Have some strategies / equipment t o make cleaning the easiest it possibly can be too - I recently bought one of those rubber brushes that work on carpet too so instead of hoovering every time - I can do a quick maintenance sweep instead. Little and often is definitely the key!

buggeroff your friend is a genius. I might put that in place for dd and dh

Mcchickenbb41 She's a Brownie guider, (that's how I know her) and if you think that's good you should see her craft ideas.. I swear the woman just has a Pinterest board constantly running in her head