Ask a mother of 14 continued

Question: hi barbara,i have 8 children and i am really struggling with getting a schedule put in place. what is your advice?blessings

Answer: With 8 kids you need order. Does not have to be rigid but you do need a schedule. If you don't have things laid out in writing, you will spend all your time with every dodging work!

Sit down WITH the kids. make a list of all the daily chores that must be done.

Here is ours for an example:
Dishes- breakfast( lunch,dinner are scheduled also to different children).
Sweep and pick up livingroom
Sweep and pick up kitchen
Sweep, mop pink bathroom
Sweep, mop blue bathroom
Coats and shoes area picked-up
Hall swept and cat litter cleaned
Each of my children that are home all day, does one of these for a week at a time. (Except my 6 year old. She is not alone on the schedule yet- she is another childs "helper" each day)

They do it every morning after breakfast. The schedule rotates, so eventually everyone one does each job- then the schedule begins over again.

You have small children that won't be alone either. REALLY small kids are just to get dressed! LOL!But figure out what each child CAN do. At 7 my kids can clean any room in the house alone. :) Not DEEP clean like an adult, but enough that company can drop over and we wouldn't faint. Make yourself a schedule that is do-able.

You can put yourself on there if you want to, since you have fewer older kids. I am not on ours. I DEEP clean ONE room a day. I just rotate through them one by one, then begin again. That way the fact that I have little kids that miss things never shows up. :) I am the one who cleans toilets and tubs, washes out the dish drainer, cleans light fixtures, things like that

.I tend to be the one to start laundry as I putter around. All my kids can though, and if I am busy when the bell rings on the dryer I ask who-ever is in sight. ;) It goes into baskets all day. After school and before supper we fold. Each kid does a basket. Then it HAS to be put away before we eat- since we fold on the table. :)Making a schedule saves time. No fighting over who did- or did not do what. No having to remember who did the job last either. Anything not done is trace-able! Pare the work down so it is do-able on a schedule.

With 8 kids to take care of and school, you have to decide what is important. other things might be good, but not in THIS season of your life.

One more thing. Use that 15 year old as a helper, but don't make her carry too heavy a burden. It is easy to do. I have seen big families do that- and that older daughter tends to get a lot of head-aches. She is not mom. She IS old enough to carry her weight and a bit more. So let her do a bit more, but spoil her with a girls day out once in awhile too! Hugs, Barbara