My Little House Elves

As much as I mourn the loss of cleaning ladies from years past, I am grateful for the opportunity I've had to allow my children to share in the responsibility of household tasks.  Is our house clean?  not as in the days of the cleaning ladies and probably not as clean as yours, but it certainly looks a lot fresher on the day we get it done.  From the words of one of my best house elves...."the best part about cleaning all morning is relaxing in the freshness afterwards".

Marie Ricks and Don Aslett have been my gurus in training me to train my children to work.  I met with Don Aslett at his store in South Jordan and there he guided me to the best products and gave me the suggestion of dividing our microfiber cloths into 8 cleaning surfaces just by the way they are folded.

Marie Ricks, on one of her personal consultant visits, encouraged me to let each child have their own cleaning tools and allow them to personalize them.  That is what is going on in the pictures below.

When it's time to clean and hand out the assignments each child is eager to grab their very own cleaning cloth.  Also decorated were some pretty cool rubber gloves complete with watches, fingernails and blood dripping from them.

We try to make the cleaning fun and when it isn't fun we play music and try to get it done without too much whining.

As you can see from the first picture James takes his assignment very seriously.  He has the hardest of jobs including windows, mirrors and toilets.  William is the vacuum man and when he is through he is leader of the "Spotters" (spotter:  noun/ a little person with a damp cloth who spies spots, finger prints, and crayon on all surfaces of the house but mostly the walls, they then wipe and scrub what is spotted).  Peter is the sweeper, swifter, duster an mopper; Peter also refills toilet paper and replaces hand towels in the bathrooms.  Maryanna has the assignment up stairs bathroom sinks and vanity after which she takes on the job of a "Picker" (picker:  noun/ a little person who picks "stuff" off the floor and decides if it goes in the garbage or upstairs and downstairs piles).  Clara owns the downstairs bathroom sink and she enjoys shinning it multiple times a week.  Henry is given a mop and cloth and just follows the older boys around.  These jobs are a part from their daily kitchen jobs and house "zones" and are expected to be completed with great care.

As for me, I am the house master and float around with George on my back over seeing, encouraging, training, assisting and sometimes re-doing.  When I get the chance I'll do a quick run down of the tub and shower.  We are all sweaty by morning's end.

Cleaning day has been switched from Mondays then to Saturdays and now finally Fridays.  The reason for this is I like to have the house clean for the sabbath that way I'm more likely to rest.  There is a nice spirit in our home when it is clean and what better day to enjoy it than Sunday.  Saturday is now official family fun day or outside project day (notice outside the house and not inside messing it all up) and where we use to do field trips on Fridays we now spend the morning cleaning then afternoon with the local homeschool group.  Field trips have been moved to mid week as I recognize that training your family to have fun is just as important as training them to work.  So we try to do both.

It's great to have a houseful of little house elves........just have to be careful not to toss them a sock  - Ha!