Back when I only had a few kids and they were young, I knew very little that it was actually fun to manage a house! Well, experience is the best teacher. I learned very soon that it is simply not possible to do everything by yourself, especially when you wear several hats. In fact, this is one of the worst ways to manage your house, as soon you will be running on a hamster wheel, and out of energy. When you are efficiently managing your house, you are pretty much being the CEO of your house!
Managing a house effectively does not mean running around the house and doing everything yourself. It basically entails delegating responsibilities and ensuring that everyone is happily doing them.
While this may sound like a strict business model with little room for flexibility or overlap, that shouldn’t be the case either. You have to find that happy medium where everyone performs their role joyfully.
It can be quite challenging to get everyone to do their respective jobs without complain. But if you emphasize on these two things, it should help.
(1) Good stewardship -We as Christians, are required to be good stewards of God’s abundant gifts. He demands that we take care of what He has given us. What this translates into the family, is that all members need to pay their fair share, according to their capabilities.
(2)Joyfully serving others- Again, we as Christians, are called to joyfully serve others. The essence of Christianity is love. By following Christ who willingly lay down His life for us as He loves each one of us, we should also imitate Christ in loving and serving others. It is very important to impress this upon our children.
So, the basic recipe is to assign different roles to different members, and make sure they carry through joyfully!
I am sharing what has worked for our family for an efficient and practical workflow.
The key is to put into consideration, few things:
(1)Who has a passion for what?
(2)How practical is it to fit into the workflow?
(3)Experience, age and other practical considerations especially when assigning roles to kids.
We have kids from ages teenage to infants. This is how we have currently assigned some roles in our house:
Apart from his full time job as a Pediatrician, my husband does all the grocery shopping, as he has much more easy access to all the stores, hands-free, on his way back from work. He works about an hour away, so pretty much every store we regularly go to is in his route. For me to go out for grocery with 8 kids is an ordeal, as well as doesn’t ‘fit the workflow’.
My husband has a passion for gardening, so he maintains a vegetable garden, which he seeks help from kids at various times. My oldest daughter has some assigned garden duties including picking produce and watering plants. Other garden duties, he calls the kids randomly to help out, whoever is available at the moment.
I currently take over the reigns of homeschooling, as I am the one staying at home for the very reason, and I also have a passion for it.
I also do most kitchen duties including cooking, loading the dishwasher, washing dishes, and kitchen cleanup, as I tend to be fast and efficient at it. Occasionally I have the kids help with vegetable cutting, whoever is available at the moment; sometimes even the whole crew from 3 years and up. My husband chops meat (we buy meat in bulk, chop and freeze) and occasionally grills. He stays away from other routine kitchen tasks, and I am very ok with that, as I know he can make much greater productive use of his time with something else.
Most of the rest of the day-to-day cleaning is managed by the kids, with our oversight, and help. Ages 4 and up have officially assigned roles, but younger kids also participate voluntarily as they don’t want to be left out. I had several 1 year olds transfer laundry and even unload the spoons from the dishwasher by their own interest! Daily chores assigned include picking up toys, brooming, mopping, vacuuming, unloading dishwasher, laundry transfer, helping to put away laundry, wiping and dusting furniture, and wiping the tables after meals.
Once a week or 2 weeks, we try to do deeper cleaning with randomly assigned roles.
Whenever there are any major household projects (painting, laminate flooring, some plumbing work etc- My husband likes to do such tasks by himself as much as possible, without hiring outside help), we have kids help out. We also do not routinely hire anyone to do cleaning, as we want our kids to be involved and want them to realize the value of hard work as well as the fact that they are instrumental in keeping the house clean.
So, even if the house is in utter mess by evening; at the end of our 15 minute chore time, the house is in ‘perfect condition’ with so many kids to help out!
Even though the training process may not be as easy at first, it is important to assign roles according to their capability early on. Many a time, we think it’s just faster and easier to do it ourselves. And I have been there! But don’t get trapped in that mentality! When you assign chores to small kids, they are at an age when they think it’s super fun to do ‘adult’ work. They are very willing to help at that age. If you have the patience to train them during this time, it will turn out to be a huge blessing later on. This will not only help you in the long run, but it instills a good work ethic and it will later become ‘natural’ for them to help. In some cultures, there is heavy emphasis on academics, and parents tend to send their children away from helping, by telling them to go and study. That should not be the case. Kids should be allowed to be a part of the family by being involved in day to day activities. Emphasis should not only be given to academics, but also to the wholesome growth of a child, who need to learn to be independent.
So when people ask how we manage everything with 8 kids, I’m actually thinking to myself, “That is how we are able to manage. We have more helpers in the house”!
(I’ll tell you another secret. I even starting gaining pounds as lots of the chores were taken up by kids, so I had to reclaim some back to keep fit! 😂Lol!)