I love Saturday

 

I love Saturday.  It is my favorite day of the week.  I’m sure that seems like a pretty weird thing for a stay at home mom to say, considering that every day of the week looks about the same, but at the Healy House, Saturday is chore day!

This tradition started out of necessity, but I love that everyone, down to the 5-year-old, is gaining life skills.  Everyone from 5 to 46 draws popsicle sticks to determine their chores for the week.

The systems is probably more complex than it needs to be, with weekly and bi-weekly chores in the mix.  There are chores for the littles and chores for the bigs.  There are rules about trading (you have to have done the chore at least once before you are allowed to trade), and so on.  But everyone in this house (well, almost everyone) now knows the proper way to clean a kitchen sink.  And a toilet.  And a window.  

I spend a lot of time hand holding with the littles, and once in a while a rush job needs to be redone.  I’ll be honest, some days it’s more trouble than it’s worth.  Some days I’m sure I could be done quicker if I just did it all myself.  I could definitely have it done better and with less whining if I took on the full load.   But we’re big on teaching personal and group responsibility in this house.  We share in the work, we share in the fun.  For the most part, they are ready and willing to do their part.

They cheer and groan as they draw their sticks and then they begin bargaining for trades.  Not surprisingly, by the end of the exchanges, someone is almost always coming to me or DaddyHealy to ask to trade for toilets. I get it.  We all have favorite and least favorite tasks.  I’m not partial to toilets myself, but I love that D does an amazing job on the kitchen sink, and M will gladly take cleaning a shower off of anyone’s hands.  Sometimes you need to wait for someone to finish their job before you can do yours.  Sometimes you find if you help them, it goes a little faster.  Isn’t that just like real life? Our work, our lives, are all interconnected and try as we might to be independent, we really do need each other.  So we jam to some Disney tunes and get the job done. Together.