03 October, 2013

Followup on our teenager's washing

So what happened about the washing . . .

For anyone who remembers this post back in June, you might be wondering (actually you're probably not) how we're going with getting our teenager all domesticated and doing his own washing.

Actually, it's going very well. He's washing approximately twice a week and often at night-time, hanging it inside. Occasionally we're asking him if he needs to wash again, but mostly he's managing it all on his own. Wow! It's actually working.

We ceased having them intensely involved in washing and putting dishes away once school started, but it was a great way to get them involved in helping out over the long summer holidays.

But we've made other changes to our boy's household jobs.

Our younger two used to take it in turns to vacuum the dining room during the week, but as they've gotten older the mess under there isn't so bad, so we've reduced that to once a week each. However, our 8 y.o. is now cleaning toilets once a week and our 11 y.o. is washing up and putting dishes away once a week.

Sometimes I look around and think, yes, that could have been done better (I had to rescrub the toilets yesterday after he went to school, for example), but on the whole they do a pretty good job and I'm happy. The down-side is sometimes having to chase them to get the jobs done and the occasional whinging, but on the whole they're pretty good about it. I know that the longer we stay in this routine the better they'll get at just doing it.

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