Chores

Believe it or not, my girls are having a great time in these pictures.  When I ask, "Who wants to help me clean the toilets?!" they stop what ever they are doing, yell "Meeee!!"  and make a mad dash for the bathroom.  However, their immense enthusiasm is directly disproportional to their actual effectiveness in cleaning the toilet.  They just like to stir that wand around in the water.  I do the real scrubbing.  I figure when they finally gain the skills needed to scrub it clean, they'll have lost all interest.  Sigh.  

Despite their obsession with cleaning toilets I can't elicit the same excitement when it comes to other chores.  In the past when I've asked Emily to pick up her toys, she looks up at me and calmly says, "No.  I don't want to."  As if!  I swear I never so brazenly talked to my mom like that, especially as a four year old!  But my wise sister who is a mother-of-five tells me kids are more headstrong and obstinate these days because the Lord has saved them for the latter days to fight against Satan whose influence is stronger than ever.... I'll take it!  But, in the meantime, I've got to deal with an obstinate four year old.  So, I created this handy dandy chore chart.  I'm pretty proud of it I must say. 

As you can see, she's not too great at cleaning her room before bed

And Em is all over it. At first I was trying to figure out what kind of reward I should attach, but for the time being, putting a star on the square is reward enough!  Em is asking me in the middle of the day if she can set the table just so she can put a star on her chart.  She was so funny the other day.... I had set the table because she was out with her dad.  After dinner she put a star on her square.  "What are you doing Emily?"  She replied all proudly, "I set the pepper."

Of course making a chore chart for Em brings back memories of the "job lists" my mom made for us eight kids.  Each summer and school year she would come up with a new list as we graduated to more advanced chores.  There was a lot of anticipation waiting for the new lists to come out. My all time favorites?  Unloading the dishwasher (ironic because it's my least favorite now) and watering the plants.  My least favorite?  Vacumming the edges, which involved me on my hands and knees going through the whole house (including the stairs mind you) with the vacuum hose.  And when I was a teenager, the all time worst was sweeping and mopping the tile floor in our new house.  For whatever reason, my mom picked out white tile that went through most of the main floor and every Saturday I had to sweep it and mop it and it took me a good hour (which was an eternity back then).  Then my mom would inspect it and I swear I always had to do part of it over again!

What were your least favorite chores?