Blog Cruise - Household Duties while Homeschooling

This week, the Homeschool Blog Cruise asks how we divide household duties and needs with our homeschool schedule.

I like to have a clean, uncluttered house.  In a perfect world, this would happen when I wiggled my nose or waved a wand.  Unfortunately, I posses neither a magical nose or wand, so...

Having older kids - 18, 13 and 11, I do believe that they have a responsiblity to the household chores as much as the hubby and I do.  So, we have a list.  One that is followed loosely with the exception of a few key items.

Monday is our cleaning day.  My oldest gets the opportunity to dust the house from top to bottom.  I rarely have to break out the white gloves although I have called "re-do" a couple of times.  The second oldest is in charge of trash gathering.  We have numerous small trash receptacles throughout the house. He has to collect, get it in the bin and get it to the curb for trash pickup.  The 11-year-old has to clean three bathrooms.  He's working on that skill - I usually come behind him to polish everything off. He also has to get the recycling to the curb.  Me - I'm vacuuming and mopping.  Hubby - he does the laundry.

So, that's how we handle the "chores".  As for keeping it all clean and picked up, as with any family homeschooling or not, it's an ongoing chore.  Grocery runs might happen while the boys are in homeschool PE, the crockpot gets used for nights when we have activities during the day and in the evening, and repairs happen as I can get to them. 

The house looks like a tornado struck most homeschooling days as we spread from the livingroom to the kitchen to the bedroom to the car.  But, we each have a "bucket" where we keep our perspective stuff and everything gets collected and returned to the cupboards when we're done.  That's been our biggest success - keeping a bucket for each of us.  It's good for organization, keeping picked up and ownership of our own materials and tasks.

How do you do it?

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