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mamakay

managing a household of 10 by the grace of God

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Morning High Five

March 4, 2014 by mamakay Leave a Comment

Each morning we have our “high five.” To get a high five you have to accomplish your 5 things before 8 am.

1. Make bed

2. Brush Hair

3. Get Dressed

4. Feed Animals

5. Morning Job

Morning Jobs are an assigned job that helps the family such as:

  • make orange juice/smoothie
  • take out the trash
  • take out the ashes
  • take the scraps to the chickens
  • empty the dishwasher

If the child gets their high five they also can add a point to their tally otherwise they lose a point. They must get their jobs done before they can eat breakfast. Based on the Bible verse:

2 Thessalonians 3:10

For even when we were with you, we would give you this command:

If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

We have found this combination of incentive and natural consequences has made an effective enough motivation for getting the work done. It sometimes does take longer than it should but at least their is a goal and set consequences for not achieving it. And we have a lot less fights over what they should be doing. This has been a win win situation for us all!

MamaKay

Filed Under: Homemaking Tagged With: 2 Thessalonians 3, Bible Verse, Brush Hair, Chickens, Dishwasher, Feed Animals, Jobs, Morning Job, Motivation, Natural Consequences, Orange Juice, Scraps, Tally, Trash, Verse 2

Keeping a Clean (Enough) House

March 2, 2014 by mamakay Leave a Comment

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Our large household demands team work to be able to maintain any sort of order. As a family of 9 (ages 16 months to 41 years old) that is home all day every day (well at least some are), has lots of animals (current count: 1 dog, 4 cats, 2 cows and 25 chickens) and we make most of our foods from scratch just one day of letting things go can result in several days of catch up. It is crucial to have a plan and to have as many people working together as possible! Getting everyone involved is one of our keys to success.

I have tried so many different things over the years. Flylady, Side Tracked Home Executives (notecards), all kinds of chore charts, etc… But mainly everything dissolves to chaos and then we have company so we work really hard to clean up and then we are worn out and let it slide again. My latest inspiration has come from Leila at http://www.likemotherlikedaughter.org/2010/01/reasonably-clean-fairly-neat-and/ She is a wonderful source for good motherly advice. She is nearly done raising 6 kids and homeschooled too so she knows what its like to have a larger than normal family that is home all the time and she cooks for her family too.  I don’t follow her protocols exactly but she was the spark I needed to get on track for our family.

20140206_163615

For many years we have had assigned individual jobs that each person is responsible for but when we recently added a joint effort to the zone once a week I found that we were finally achieving a higher level of clean!

We spent a bunch of time over Christmas decluttering and clearing out the stuff we just really don’t need. We are big believers in a big clean out from time to time. I know Flylady always says baby steps but the amount of time it would take us to dig out 15 minutes at a time is so discouraging with so many messing it up as soon as you walk away! Maintaining is so much easier if we have a big resetting first!

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Here is our current strategy:

Each morning we have our “high five.”

After breakfast we work on our zone for the day.

In the afternoon before Papa comes home we do our afternoon chores where each child is responsible for picking up their assigned areas. Each child has two different areas to work on.

Each child also has two different table chores. One to prepare for the meal and one cleaning up afterwards. This has been the hardest habit for us to be consistent at but when we are successful everything runs so much better.

In the coming days I will have specific posts about each of these areas.

What are your strategies? Have you found something that works really well for your family? I’d love to hear about it!

MamaKay

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Filed Under: Homemaking Tagged With: 15 Months, 2 Cows, 4 Cats, Brush Hair, Cats, Chaos, Chickens, Chore Charts, Chores, Cooks, Decluttering, Dishwasher, Feed Animals, Habit, Homeschooled, Joint Effort, Keys To Success, Leila, Likemotherlikedaughter, Lots Of Animals, Many Different Things, Morning Job, Motherly Advice, Orange Juice, Scratch, Side Tracked Home Executives, Trash

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So glad you stopped by. I am a Christian wife and mother of 8 in the middle years. My kids are aged 4 to 20 and just about every 2 years in between. I write about our life as a big family, what God is personally doing in my life, food and books.

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