Do your kids help you clean the house in the summer? Or during the school year? Or both? There are lots of different philosophies on kids and chores, especially for summertime.
Some people want their kids to be able to have fun on their summer holidays and not worry about chores. Others feel that with the kids home there's more mess, and the kids should help clean it up.
I fall mostly in the second camp. I know many parents get overwhelmed keeping up with cleaning, while also taking care of their kids all day, and trying to spend time making memories together.
So it can be helpful to have your kids chip in and help clean the house. It's also a great life learning experience and it teaches them to be more responsible. Summertime can be a great opportunity to help your kids learn some new tasks too because they have time to practice them and gain mastery and independence.
But, involving your kids in cleaning often means extra work as a parent during that learning process. Not to mention the grumbles that may happen :) It's definitely a trade-off. And how you decide to handle cleaning tasks in your home will be different than how someone else may do it.
Last week I mentioned in my
Organizing Our Summer post that I'd talk about our summer cleaning plans. So today I want to let you in on how things are going to work this summer. And share some tips to help you put together a summer cleaning routine for your kids.