Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Kids and Chores {Episode 2}
224 Plays6 years ago
Chores!!! Does any kid (or mom!) enjoy them? In this episode, we discuss 3 reasons WHY it's beneficial for kids to do chores. We also have helpful suggestions for age appropriate chores and a printable for you. Last of all we answer that burning question: money for chores or not?
Show notes:
Bonnie's DIY chore chart video.
FREE age appropriate chores printable
Outnumbered recommendations: Method All Purpose Surface Cleaner and Method All Purpose Lavendar Cleaner and Method Bathroom Cleaner
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Hosts
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. And we're moms to a combined total of 16 kids with two more on the way. Yes, we know that sounds insane, and it usually is. But we're here to share the tips that help us keep our sanity and to share inspiring thoughts that help us get through each crazy day. Uninterrupted conversation is foreign to us, but we'll try. And we invite you to join us on our journey as we find joy in the chaos of motherhood.
00:00:46
Speaker
Welcome
Episode Three: Kids and Chores
00:00:47
Speaker
to episode three of Outnumbered the Podcast. In this episode, we're going to discuss kids and chores. Hi, Bonnie. How are you? Good, Audrey. How are you doing today? I'm doing pretty good. I've got a question for you. Oh, bring it on. Do your kids love to do their chores? Chores? Oh my gosh, yes. They wake up begging me to do chores every single morning.
00:01:12
Speaker
Yeah, no. How about yours? No, nope. They comes chore time and they start having, they either disappear into the bathroom for half an hour or they have a lame leg or something. Seriously. So why do we force them to do chores?
00:01:32
Speaker
You know, that's a good question. I actually ask myself that quite often. Is this even worth it? It would take me one third the amount of time and effort to get it done myself. I guess for me personally, I just don't want them to grow up to be useless human beings. I would like them to be contributing members of society and that starts with, you know, knowing how to clean a toilet. Exactly. Not going to get very far in life without knowing that. Seriously.
00:01:58
Speaker
Okay, but I've
Importance of Chores for Kids
00:01:59
Speaker
got three reasons why it's good for our kids to do chores. And I'll share them after this week's episode of things I thought I'd never say. Ooh, okay, let's hear it. So I have at our house, we have downstairs with the kitchen and dining room, living room, and so on. And then upstairs is where the bedrooms are. And our downstairs is not carpeted, our upstairs is. So we have a no food upstairs rule.
00:02:26
Speaker
And usually no shoes up there either because, you know, by the time we make it upstairs, they've usually kicked off their shoes somewhere. So the other day I was upstairs in my bedroom and my four-year-old son brings me a container of yogurt. And he says, Mommy, please, can I have this for a snack? He must have forgotten the name of it or something. So I said, yeah, sure. But remember, we don't bring food upstairs. You know, take it back down and, you know, you can have some yogurt.
00:02:52
Speaker
So just as I had one of those moments where I could see it just right before it happened. And sure enough, skipping back down the hallway, he tripped and the entire container of yogurt is spilled across the carpeting like this perfect splatter across the entire carpeting upstairs. Oh, yeah.
00:03:12
Speaker
So, he's laying on the floor covered in yogurt, bawling, and he says, Mommy, Mommy, it's okay. I'll lick it up. And you can probably guess the thing I never thought I'd say was, we don't lick up yogurt off the carpeting, honey. But off hardwood is fine.
00:03:38
Speaker
Carpet just breeds so many germs. That's pretty epic. Yogurt on carpet. Yeah. That sounds like a good day. Yeah. So if you, our listeners have a thing you thought you'd never say, send it to us. Oh yeah. I can't wait to hear these. We need a good laugh, right? Absolutely. Motherhood man. So now let's talk some more about chores and why it's good for kids to do them. All right.
Chore Routines and Cleanliness Levels
00:04:08
Speaker
So number one, chores teach responsibility. Okay. And number two, chores are an opportunity to teach a work ethic and life habits. Yep. And number three, chores are training for future adults. Oh yeah, I can agree with all those. So let's get into the nitty gritty age of those.
00:04:30
Speaker
Okay. How about chores teach responsibility? Let's go there. So chores teach responsibility because it's something that happens consistently in their lives with a system and with daily practice. It's something they do every day and that helps teach responsibility. Okay. So do you have a regular daily schedule you guys do to make sure your chores get done every day?
00:04:54
Speaker
We do. We have what we call four o'clock afternoon short time. Actually, it helps me in a couple ways. Number one, the house will be clean when daddy gets home. Nice. And number two, I can kind of let the mess slide if I know that at four o'clock, everybody's going to get up and clean two rooms or do whatever, you know, whatever their responsibility is for that, that week, that day. And so I know that it's coming. Cleanliness is coming.
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah. And there's generally only so much mess they can make after about 4.30 or so before bedtime. So it doesn't, it's not too overwhelming for you to pick up the last few things before you go to bed, right? Right. Exactly. I don't know about you, but at our house, we kind of have levels of clean. So there's like that daily four o'clock afternoon short time clean.
00:05:42
Speaker
there's once a week we do a weekly deep clean because we have a Bible study on Wednesday nights at our house so like that's you know company clean and like I mentioned the downstairs gets clean nobody goes upstairs but so it might be a disaster and then we have like overnight guests clean so you know not only the downstairs has to be clean but the upstairs has to be clean and that involves you know like a deeper level of
00:06:05
Speaker
Do you guys do that at your house? Yeah. For us, it's usually Saturdays or our days to deep clean a little bit more. And you know, I say deep clean. It's nothing like the deep clean that it used to look like when I had one or two children I could get around to it. But it's, you know, scrubbing bathrooms and scrubbing sinks.
00:06:24
Speaker
fridges and things that we can never get to throughout the week. But honestly, I've been struggling with a daily routine just because kids are home all the time. I feel like my kids are not very productive in the afternoon. They're just itching for dinner and some fun after a day of being around the house, doing their daily stuff. So I'm going to have to try that, see if that would work with my kids too. Because I kind
Personal Strategies for Teaching Responsibility
00:06:47
Speaker
of struggle with finding a good time for us to clean everything up so that I don't go crazy.
00:06:51
Speaker
Right. And once you have the system in place, then you can start hooking other things onto that routine. So like four o'clock is now when my teenage daughters and I get supper started as well. So that, you know, it's not eight o'clock and everybody's crabbing hungry and we are just, oh yeah, we need to eat, you know. Oh, that's smart. So that's a good time for everybody to shut down what they're doing, come inside from playing, clean up, and then mom and sisters start dinner or whatever.
00:07:15
Speaker
Yeah. Now that's the way we use it. How do you guys use chores to teach responsibility? Well, we do similar. There's at least some sort of chore happening going on every day. I try to make it part of their morning school time because my kids are still mostly fairly young and I want like even more important than math, I think is to learn to pick up after yourself. You can pick up math in college, but a lot of college kids do not pick up a
00:07:40
Speaker
Oh, it took me a while to learn too, trust me. They probably regress in college. Oh yeah, there's that too. I was a slob. But so we do that kind of as part of their school learning time, you know, is that this is your work time. And when you get that done, then you can do something more fun like writing practice. But yeah, and also for me, it's accountability. Like I cannot stand seeing kids just make messes as they go through life and never turn around and look at what they've just done.
00:08:09
Speaker
You know what I mean? I want my kids to be accountable for their own things, for the messes they create, and to be aware that their actions create more work for others, namely me. Yes, exactly. I have said so many times to my kids, you know, they come in, peel off their clothes, here's their coat, here's their socks, here's their shoes. I say, turn around and look behind you. Who is going to clean that up for you? Because I want to meet your slave because they must be a really nice patient person. It's not me.
00:08:40
Speaker
And now they're in the habit like, me, mom, I'll do it, mom. Bravo. Good job, buddy. Another way that we do it to kind of have some consistency around our house is that we delegate jobs for like a little bit of a longer period of time. So for us, it's a week and I have some friends that do it for a month. So our chore chart rotates weekly. So for example,
00:09:01
Speaker
And my oldest will be on unloading the dishes. The next one will be on loading the dishes. The next one will be on clearing the counter. And they do that same job for a week. And then Sunday night or Monday morning, we rotate the chart. And then everybody gets a new job. And the reason I like that is, number one, it's a long enough period of time that they quasi master the skill. I don't have to reteach it every single day. And it's easier to remember. If you're changing jobs every single day, they're like, what do I do today? And I never remember.
00:09:31
Speaker
But I don't feel like it's so long that they get just burnt out. You know, we've had sometimes where the charts gone on for two weeks because I forgot to rotate it or whatever and the kids get, they get really burned out. So for our family, that's worked really well. That sounds like a good way to do it. Lately, I've just been saying to my kids, it's afternoon, short time, pick two rooms and I have one child who always picks the smallest, easiest room.
00:09:53
Speaker
for a kid. Yeah. All right. Let's go into number two. Um, chores are an opportunity to teach work ethic and life habits. And really, I think kind of this one's as much about us as it is about our kids. Oh yeah. So, you know, lead by example, do you make your bed every day? Um, I do actually, I'm quite proud of myself in that area, only because I'm a little bit compulsive. And if I don't, it would drive me crazy all day.
00:10:21
Speaker
Oh, me too. I'm exactly the same. I have to. I can't start my day without a maid bed. Yeah. Well, sometimes I start my day, but it gets done eventually.
00:10:31
Speaker
Um, and then, uh, teaching chores that, you know, teaching them the first time. So like, um, taking them with us and saying, this is how we clean a toilet and just, you know, show them how to do it the right way. Yeah. That's something I have kind of struggled with lately, uh, mainly because my older kids, my three oldest have all been trained in how to do bathrooms and you know, the things that have specific ways of, of being cleaned, but the younger ones haven't. And I, and I forgotten that I'll send them in to do.
00:10:59
Speaker
you know, whatever, clean the windows and I come back in and they're streaky and a mess and I'm going, how did you even do that? And they show me and I go, oh, well, that's the wrong way. Or that is an inefficient way, a less effective way, right? I can totally relate to that because there's such a broad spread between my kids. So my oldest definitely have training and my youngest don't.
00:11:20
Speaker
And we got to just kind of remind ourselves, oh, has this child really been adequately trained on how to scrub a toilet? Or is he going to make a bigger mess than when he first went in? When it comes to leading by example, so there are a few things that I'm pretty good at, you know, like picking up my room. My room is important to me that it's...
00:11:37
Speaker
It looks fairly decent before I go downstairs in the morning. But for a lot of things, I'm not great at it. For example, shoes, our shoe situation is a nightmare. I swear we keep coming up with new organizational tactics for corralling all the billions of shoes at our house every single day.
Chore Organization and Adulthood Prep
00:11:52
Speaker
But I'm bad at it because I'm just kind of lazy and I'll kick my shoes off at the door and not put them in the bin where they're supposed to go or I'll leave them by the stairs. And anytime I ask a child to clean up an area that
00:12:03
Speaker
contains a pair of my shoes, there's always some kickback. Well, if you can't even put your shoes away, why should I? And I go, oh.
00:12:11
Speaker
I'm tempted to get mad because they're being sassy and yet I just think, but they're right. That's a tough pill to swallow sometimes because I keep thinking, well, guess what? Who gets around to it eventually? I do. I'm always the one picking up the last minute stuff. But if I'm not showing them the example of how to do it right the first time, why are they going to do it? Do you have a system for making sure your children have been adequately trained in cleaning techniques?
00:12:40
Speaker
a way to make sure that little Johnny knows to scrub the inside and wipe the outside of the toilet. I keep coming back to toilets. That's a big part of motherhood. That's so big. Yes, that's number three. Chores are training for future adults. So think about organizing your chores into a system. You make a list of the chores that you want to be done. And you were mentioning your chore chart.
00:13:03
Speaker
and we can put a link in the show notes to your, I think you did a blog post about that, right? Yeah, I've got a video about it. Okay, cool. We'll link that in the show notes. We use,
00:13:12
Speaker
For a while we were using a system that worked really good and I need to get my kids back on it and we used chore cards. So I list on the card an area, let's say the dining room and what needs to be done in that area. On the chore card it has things to be done daily and things to be done once a week. Daily things like you know wipe the table and vacuum the rug and then a weekly thing would maybe like wash the windows in the dining room and
00:13:36
Speaker
and just the woodwork, that kind of stuff. And then also, like on the back of the card, there's a picture of what clean looks like. Oh, I like that. For that room. Yeah, exactly. Because they might not bring it up to that standard if they don't remember, oh yeah, we need to pick this thing up off the
00:13:55
Speaker
Floor, and fold it and put it back over here, you know, for example. Right. I think that to us as adults, especially as women, we just are good at that. We're good at looking at a room and kind of breaking it down and seeing what needs to be done and maybe what order needs to be done and how long it's going to take us. We just analyze all these things simultaneously, right? I think it's a lot harder for our husband and kids to do the same thing. So, I've helped my daughters, for example, my three
00:14:20
Speaker
big girls, I'll share a room and it's always a disaster. And so I have gone in there and helped them clean the whole thing, vacuum it all, make it look top-notch, under the beds are cleaned, everything is immaculate. And then I say, step back, look. How does that look? Oh, it looks so good. Oh, we love it. Oh, we wish it would look like this all the time. And I say, it can.
00:14:42
Speaker
You just have to remember, I love the idea of a picture to have that, you know, stuck on their mirror or their chest of drawers and say, look at the picture, you know, and then so visually they can say, Oh, actually I do see some stuff under my bed and that's not in the picture. We better clean out. Right. So what do you do to help your kids come up with an organizing chores?
00:15:02
Speaker
Well, like I said, we have our chore chart, which has worked pretty well. But I think the key to chore charts or systems in general is just flexibility. You have to be flexible when things don't work so well, you revamp it, especially with kids because they change so quickly. In a year, my seven-year-olds will be able to do things that they couldn't do this year. And my 13-year-old will need a little bit more responsibility. But one thing that's worked really well for us as far as just picking up, because I think that's the biggest obstacle that we deal with, with having a bunch of kids home all the time.
00:15:30
Speaker
is that there's just stuff on the ground all the time and it's enough to make you crazy. Yes. So what we've done in our house is broken them up into groups of rooms, basically, like you were saying. So somebody has the living room, somebody has the family room, somebody has the kitchen and dining, you know, whatever makes sense for your house. And then when I say, all right, guys, time to pick up zones, which we often do in the afternoon, like before dad comes home or before we have people over and then hopefully within five to 10 minutes.
00:15:54
Speaker
the whole house is picked up because everybody's run out and taken care of their zone. And I think the best part about this is not only the efficiency, you know, it gets the whole house cleaned up quickly, but it gives them some sense of accomplishment and accountability. So I've seen kids say, hey, don't leave your shoes there. This is my zone. Like I'm responsible for keeping this area clean. I'm not going to have you put your stuff down there, you know? And so I think they really take ownership for the house instead of just thinking, oh, this is some mess. Mom will clean up later.
00:16:24
Speaker
Exactly. When my kids are cleaning their bedroom and there's something from someone else's bedroom in there, I tell them that they're allowed to put it in the doorway of the other person's bedroom, but they can't go in. And then the other kid can't say, oh, you made my room a mess. Smart. They weren't in there. Yeah. I do struggle a little bit with that with my kids that share rooms because it's always somebody else's fault.
00:16:48
Speaker
That's not my mess. That's his mess. And so we've just said, sorry, it's your room. You clean until it's done. You know, and when it's done, you can come out. How do you decide age appropriate for certain chores? Like, do you let your three year old clean the toilet? I mean, how do you decide? Well, that's a good question, actually. I think it's totally trial and error. I know there are some charts.
00:17:07
Speaker
online where people have said, oh, this is a great chore for a seven-year-old, for a nine-year-old, et cetera. And I like looking at those. But honestly, I think each mom knows their kid better than any chart, than any expert. I have twin seven-year-olds. And one is exceedingly responsible and very detail-oriented and can do lots of those harder jobs. And the other is not. And so I'm not going to give them equal jobs, even though it doesn't seem fair. It really is because their personalities and their abilities are different.
00:17:36
Speaker
So, honestly, it's just, like I said, trial and error. Our current short chart, so we started out giving everybody pretty equal jobs from the seven-year-old on up to the 13-year-old. And I quickly realized that that was dumb because my teenager should be doing more work. Second of all, I didn't want to have to clean up the mess that my seven-year-olds made when cleaning out the kitty litter, you know, so that sort of thing. So then we took those things away and gave more to the bigger kids, but just has to be a living, working system until you get it down perfectly, you know?
00:18:06
Speaker
Right. Exactly. So keeping that in mind, like you know your own kid best and you know what's going to work and what isn't going to work. Bonnie and
Age-Appropriate Chores and Life Skills
00:18:15
Speaker
I came up with a list that works for our kids of semi age appropriate chores. And in the show notes, we've got a printable for you if you want to look at it and print it out. Yeah. If you can start as early as about age one, if your kid can walk around and bend over, he or she can pick stuff up.
00:18:32
Speaker
And the earlier they learn that, um, the quicker they will be helpful later on in life. So my kids at our church, they go to this little nursery where all the under three year old, the three and unders go and they play with toys and have snacks and activities. And at the end, they always do a big cleanup and they sing the cleanup song or whatever it takes to motivate them. And I've noticed that, you know, the couple of days after church, my kids are, my little ones are really motivated to clean up because they remember that's what they're supposed to do. And I go, Oh yeah, I'm capitalizing on this. Cleanup time, clean up, clean up.
00:19:04
Speaker
So that's one of the easiest things that those little ones can do. Really ages one to five can pick up their toys. They can pick up anything they see on the floor. They can put away their own laundry. It's not going to be pretty. And you got to kind of let go of the OCD laundry tendencies that I have. And they can help clean up dinner or any other meal. They can take their plate and maybe a one-year-old can't bring it to the sink, but they can hand it off to mom. Really anything that gets them involved in tidying the house is going to help them later on in life.
00:19:30
Speaker
And then ages six to 10, they can make their bed. They can clean and vacuum their bedroom. My six to 10-year-olds, they fold all the laundry. They can also gather all the dirty laundry in the morning. And then in the evening, they put away the laundry. And I let my six to 10-year-olds listen to audio books while they fold laundry for me. And they actually come and ask me, mom, I've got all my work done. Can I fold laundry now? Nice. Bravo.
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah, they can empty the dishwasher and set the table. Washing windows and mirrors is a good chore for them. And then pet chores. We live on a hobby farm, so we have chickens, rabbits, dairy goats, and they go outside and do all those chores. They can help with those chores. They're not old enough to be responsible and accountable for those chores, but they definitely are out there learning and helping. That's great. That's great. I feel like responsibility for any other living thing,
00:20:25
Speaker
is really beneficial for kids as they grow older to become a parent or a really good roommate or whatever to understand, oh, that living thing that I like to play with doesn't just get fed on its own. Its poop doesn't get cleaned up on its own. We got to do this. Absolutely. We've had some really good teachable moments where we've had an animal without, you know, rabbit water bottle was not filled up for, you know, half a day and the animal was in obvious distress. So, you know, we'd talk about that and we'd say, okay, now,
00:20:55
Speaker
One of your consequences for this is that you're gonna go for one hour without drinking any water and you know how it is when you can't have it. That's the only thing you want. Yeah, I found that my kids won't drink water for four or five hours at a time, but the minute we get in the car, it's, I'm so Thursday.
00:21:14
Speaker
We were driving for five minutes. I'm going to die. Well, that's really interesting. I like that. I like that so that they understand that they just caused some distress or some pain to another living thing. That's a big lesson. Right. Exactly. Cool. Okay. So that moves us on to ages 11 to about 15. They can do some big stuff. They can change sheets, take them off, put them on.
00:21:33
Speaker
They can start and switch laundry loads. They can do some ironing. I love putting big kids in charge of laundry because I feel like I didn't really get a chance to understand how laundry worked and really do it until maybe my senior year of high school. And that was definitely not enough experience to feel confident when I left home. So I think the earlier, the better. Oh my goodness. I have a funny story. My grandma, um, she lived in a little cabin on our property growing up and she did all the ironing. And so I had never ironed a pair of men's pants in my life ever.
00:22:03
Speaker
So, we get married and my husband, he had a job interview and he asked me to iron his pants. My new bridegroom is, could you go iron these for me? He's trying to get ready to go to this job interview. And boy, I worked so hard on getting that wrinkle out of the front and back of the pants. I mean, I worked like 20 minutes.
00:22:24
Speaker
good job. And I did, I got it out and I took it to him and he just gave me such a look.
00:22:40
Speaker
They know about a press in some pants. That's funny. Conversely, I worked at a dry cleaners when I was in college. That was one of my lame old college jobs. And I did so much ironing that when I was done, I'm like, I think I'm never going to iron again. And of course I so, so I do. But if I can get out of it, I get out of ironing.
00:23:00
Speaker
Okay, so we talked about laundry, ironing. They can make meals from start to finish. My 11-year-old makes lunch all the time and they do a good job. Absolutely. And it gives them an immense sense of pride to be able to feed other people, you know, say, I made this. And it also gives them a lot more appreciation for mom's dinner, especially when they say they hate it. Yes. Yes, exactly. They can vacuum. They can move furniture around to get a really good vacuuming job done. They can clean bathrooms really well.
00:23:28
Speaker
They can do other animal responsibilities like you were talking about. They can actually take entire responsibility for another living thing. You can say, all right, everybody really wants a dog, but it's going to be...
00:23:41
Speaker
so-and-so's dog and they have to make sure that it gets walked every day and that the poop gets picked up and that it gets fed and watered. And I think that's a great way to teach him responsibility. Yes. And then you don't have any kids over 16, right? Right. I am. Yeah. Well, this is really when that third thing of future adult training comes in.
Complex Chores for Older Children
00:24:01
Speaker
Again, it depends on when they become responsible enough. But okay, so a 16-year-old, they can drive. I have them plan the meals. I have them go do the grocery shopping because they have a driver's license and they love to drive. They go run the errands for me. We have them start helping with financial tracking and paying bills and saving and, you know, like financial goals. I love that. Next year we want to go.
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah next year we wanna go here on a vacation so let's talk about this let's say how we're gonna get there and everything that goes into that. I found that they really get into decorating and redecorating like you know painting and so before this we leave the chores you know all boys cook.
00:24:41
Speaker
all girls cook, you know, we don't make any differentiation between any of the chores. But after this age, we do get a little more specific on like our girls are more likely going to be doing more of the cooking and our boys are more likely going to be changing the oil and changing the tires on the vehicles. You know, that is something they, yeah.
00:25:00
Speaker
And then again, on our little farm here, we have, uh, they learn how to build animal shelters, you know, so we need a new chicken pen or whatever. And they go out and they build it and they, and they love to do that, that kind of thing. And it doesn't really matter too much because you know, it's just a little house for chickens. It can be totally slanted, right? Yeah.
00:25:23
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, that's cool. So this is, this is when chores get moved from really chores into more life training, life training. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I'm looking forward to that. That's going to be great. And also Aaron running. Yeah. I need another Aaron. Oh yes. Yes. Okay. So I got a hot button question for you. Do you pay your kids for doing chores? I do not pay my kids for doing chores.
00:25:45
Speaker
Um, I give them rewards and we have a little system with our chore cards. If they get all their chores done for the week, they get into the reward box and I go down to the dollar store about once a month and just fill it with dollars. So, you know, they're doing, if they're looking at it for money, they're working for a dollar a week, you know, so it's really fair.
00:26:02
Speaker
But then also praise is really good. You know, wow, I really like the way you wash that window. I looked on it from both sides and there's not a single streak. You know, praise is right. How about you? Yeah. No, we don't either for a number of reasons. We do give an allowance though. A couple of years ago, we decided that we really wanted to give our children some spending money so that they could learn how to manage money, but without it being tied to chores because I didn't want them to say, I'm not going to clean my room because I don't want money this week. So it's not negotiable. You just do your chores.
00:26:28
Speaker
But I do like giving them a very small amount each month. It's actually the number of dollars coincides with their age. So if they're seven, they get $7 a month. So not a large amount of money, but it's something that they can use to spend on whatever. So we go to the store instead of buying a pack of gum when they're hounding me, they use their own money. And that could be a whole other episode we talked about.
00:26:49
Speaker
money management that we should kids and money. Yeah. But you do have to get creative with other motivators when it comes to chores. One thing I have learned that I wanted to mention is that when they feel like the cleanup or the obligation is their idea and that they're doing you a favor.
00:27:06
Speaker
Oftentimes they can be more motivated than when they feel like it's an obligation. So I'll give you a little example. One time I had to run an errand and my oldest wasn't there but the next two were so ages 9 and 11. I don't even know if I gave them a job to clean up the house. I just said try not to make a mess or something.
00:27:23
Speaker
And when I came back, they were so excited and they said, mom, we have a surprise for you. We have a surprise for you. So I came in the house and they had cleaned that entire main floor, spic and span. I have honestly never, never since and never before seen it clean to this level. And they just got so excited about, about doing the surprise for me.
00:27:42
Speaker
So any way that we can add some excitement or some bringing joy to another person into that motivation can be really helpful. That's why I like, I do like trying to pick up before guests or before dad gets home because that can add like this little fun, exciting surprise element. Oh, let's see how clean we can make it before daddy gets here. Or let's, let's see if we can
00:28:00
Speaker
make our faces shine in the floor before grandma gets here. You know, just something to make things a little bit more fun because they really, they really do want to please. And then to give them, like you said, plenty of praise afterwards. I am so proud of you. You worked so hard. And honestly, my jaw dropped when I walked in. So they got lots of praise that day. I was just so impressed with how well they did it. So.
00:28:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's right.
Motivating Kids with Praise and Structure
00:28:21
Speaker
Motivating kids to do chores is, I think it's really important because like we talked about earlier, it's something that they're going to be doing every day. They're not going to get out of chores. So if we can make it more fun or more motivating for them to do chores. Yeah. Well, and on that note, sometimes it's important to just step back when everything is done and go, guys, just breathe that in. How does it feel to sit around a house that's clean?
00:28:44
Speaker
Oh, it feels great. Does it feel nice to walk through the floor and not step on somebody's Legos or know where your socks are because they're clean and put in your drawer and they really are able to open their eyes and go, yeah, it does feel better. Huh? Who knew? One thing I tell my kids all the time is like, I won't let them sit down at the computer desk if there's a bunch of toys or something all over the computer desk to do, say they're, you know, they're math or something.
00:29:09
Speaker
I say, no, how can your brain work and organize and work on this problem with this clutter and this chaos around it? So like I'm trying to make the external space clean so that the internal space. Yeah, that's good. You know, I don't think I was, I was probably a grown adult and well into college before I realized that connection, huh? When there's stuff all over my apartment, I can't focus, you know? So it's kind of important. One thing that we've started doing,
00:29:36
Speaker
to both help train the little kids and give the older ones motivation to get done is partnering up a big kid with a little kid because
00:29:47
Speaker
Oh, good idea. Well, we will have an external motivator. So I'll let you guys watch an episode of TV when everything is clean or whatever. But then everybody's waiting around for that little kid that is having a hard time or that one stubborn kid that doesn't want to finish. But when they have a buddy, they can kind of motivate each other. Here, I'll do this part and you do this part. And it gives the older kids kind of some experience being a parent and making things fun instead of like I say, you can't yell at them. You have to just make it fun. You have to
00:30:13
Speaker
have to be their, their buddy and help them out. And then they, and then they were able to do that and give that small child a little bit of extra motivation to get done. All right. One thing my kids really like is if, um, I give them a special, like their own special tote filled with their own cleaning supplies. So they get a little spray bottle, you know, their own cleaner and, and this is their clean, you know, so they feel like, like they take responsibility and ownership of it. Cause this is their cleaning. That's a cute idea. That's really cute idea.
00:30:41
Speaker
One thing I wanted to mention when we were talking about being motivated to clean for someone or for a surprise is sometimes we'll do our little cleaning blitzes to music. We'll try to beat the timer, you know, anything else to make it a little bit more fun. So sometimes I'll just say two song cleanup. So we turn on a fun dance song and they do a little dance cleanup for that song and then the second song and it's like you got to get done before the second song, but it can also be fun at the same time. So that's fun.
00:31:07
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. One thing that my kids sometimes motivates them is if we work together like in the kitchen, especially we'll be, we'll be making a meal and we'll, we'll do it together and we'll say, okay, I'll do the meat for this meal and you do the, you know, you do the vegetable and you know, we'll kind of work on it together. So that's training, but they like working together too. Yeah. My kids are obsessed with helping in the kitchen. In fact, if anything, I'm trying to get them to not help so much.
00:31:34
Speaker
You are driving me crazy. One thing I do so that I don't have eight helpers in the kitchen is I make one kid my special helper for the day or for the week. So they get to be my special kitchen helper for the day. I like that idea. Yeah. I like that. So you don't have 14 tiny elbows in your
00:31:52
Speaker
That's cool. Okay, so
Kid-Friendly Cleaning Products
00:31:54
Speaker
let's recap the three reasons it's beneficial to stick with it and keep teaching our kids chores even if we want to give up. So number one, chores teach responsibility, obviously. Yeah. Number two, chores are an opportunity to teach work ethic and life habits. Make sure our children don't end up slobs. Right. Number three, chores are training for future adults. Make sure they get out in the world prepared for what the world has for them. And they know how to iron pants.
00:32:21
Speaker
so they don't disappoint their future husbands.
00:32:26
Speaker
All right, now it's time for the Outnumbered Podcasts recommendation of the week, and it has something to do with chores. So we have a favorite kid-friendly cleaning product. Like we were talking about age-appropriate chores. Well, my four-year-old is a little young for this, but he loves to clean mirrors and windows. And he could spend, if I give him a spray bottle of Windex, he could spend 45 minutes on a window with a roll of paper towels and go through them all or something.
00:32:56
Speaker
But I don't necessarily think it's great for him to be spraying. He doesn't just hit the window, you know, he hits everything. So we have a brand that we like to use of cleaning products that are environmentally friendly, which also means kid friendly. And it's called the Method. Have you seen those? Yeah, we love Method.
00:33:16
Speaker
Okay, cool. So we can link those products in the show notes, but that's what we use. And I'm not afraid to hand a bottle method to my kid. It's okay. My four-year-old cat or themselves in the face. Yeah. Yes. And 45 minutes later, they're happy and the window's kind of clean. And I'm not worried about their health. That's cute. You guys have a fake product do you use? No, we're similar. We try to...
00:33:40
Speaker
Keep it fairly environmentally friendly so that if somebody drinks it, I don't have to call Poison Control for the 40th time because let's be honest, they're on speed now. Exactly. Well, all right. Keep it up, mamas. You keep working on your kids with those chores because it's going to be worth it. Yeah, they're going to turn out to be awesome.
00:33:57
Speaker
And that's it for today's episode. You can
Listener Feedback and Contact Information
00:34:00
Speaker
find everything we talked about in our show notes at outnumberedthepodcast.castos.com. Thanks so much for listening to Outnumbered the Podcast. You can contact us at outnumberedthepodcast.gmail.com
00:34:15
Speaker
and find us on Instagram at Outnumbered the Podcast. We're so grateful for our listeners and would love it if you take the time to leave us an honest review on iTunes, Stitcher or any other podcast platform. And don't forget to share the podcast with your mom friends. Can't wait to talk next time. Bye. Hold on one second. What?
00:34:45
Speaker
At 3.30, you can. You can't bang on the door, though. Go back inside. Go. Go. Oh my goodness, my sitter keeps letting him out of the house.