I am a homeschool mother of 6. I don't have everything figured out, but I can help you with the experience I do have.Please join me as Christian mothers who seek answers through prayer in study in raising our children in a Godly way.
There was a time when I had two toddlers at home that, besides laundry, my house was really clean. I remember going to a friend’s house who had three kids. I wanted to quickly sweep her floor, put all the dirty socks in the washer, and wipe down her messy counters. I couldn’t understand why that didn’t bother her. Now fast forward 10 years. I have 6 children and my house is so much worse than my friend’s house. My children help often, but our house is never acceptable to my approval to have guests just drop in at any moment. I shouldn’t be so surprised about this. When I was asking my friend how she keeps up with her house and educates her children, she told me I just need to let my house go. That is really difficult for me. Here are a list of things we kind of try to do.
I wish I could say I have a miracle chore system to really help out our family. However, I do not. We do use bits and pieces of the chore system Family DoDots. I love this system, but it really only works for our family on weekends when we do our extra cleaning. Most of the week what works best for me is to see something that needs help and ask a child old enough to get it done.
I would really love to implement putting on a family clean up song that my children know means to clean up our house. One song we all love is Friday Night by Eric Paslay. If we decide to do this, I will most likely use that song.
“I homeschool my children not to prepare them for exams, but to prepare them for life.”
~ Tamara L Chilver, https://themulberryjournal.com/writing-collective/200-homeschool-quotes, The Mulberry Journal, 200 Inspiring Quotes about Homeschool, Learning and Creativity, Eric Koelma, date found January 22, 2025
I wish I could tell you I am very good and organized with a laundry system. However, even my late mother in law would say I am not. I can probably count on both hands how many times I have taken laundry out of the dryer right away and folded it. Right now, our clean laundry is downstairs on a laundry shelf. When I get time, I go downstairs and sort it into 4 different piles. They are parents, older boys, younger boys, and girls. The kids then take their clothes to their rooms and sort them. However, I help the youngest boys to put away their laundry. For laundry that isn’t clothes, I have my children help with what i call deliveries. They deliver the towels, wash rags, and such to their places.
As a way to make my life easier, I decided to change American tradition with one of my sons. Often when I ask him to put away his laundry, it doesn’t happen. Some of his clothes are look ashamedly left on his floor and mixed in with dirty clothes. All to soon, they end up back in the dirty laundry for me to wash. As a result of this, last time I went shopping at Walmart I bought a big tote. My sons dressers are broken anyway. He took his clothes out of the dressers and dumped them in one tote. Now to put his clothes away, he simply needs to just throw them in his tote. Despite my efforts, he never really used to sort them anyway. Sometime when we have more money, perhaps I will get him a fabric dresser like the rest of my children. That will allow him to learn now to be organized and better responsible. However, I want to wait for that until we have more money, and I have the emotional energy to invest into teaching him to be more responsible.
As my husband told me just last week, with six kids and homeschooling how do I expect to keep my house clean. I grew up in a home with 5-6 children in the home at one time. Our house wasn’t clean growing up. However, I just went to visit my mother that is single. She didn’t have enough dirty laundry to even do a half of a load. That was crazy to me since that never happens in my house. There will be a time Mommas when you will have a clean house, and it will be just way too quiet. Until then, just keep on keeping on. Be kind to yourself just like you would to others. Enlist your family to help clean up the messes they helped make. Be proactive about having a clean home, but remember to take time to get rest and love yourself too. This will pass sometime.
Here are a list of what ages my children are and what chores they do.
13 year old- take out gargage, load the dishwasher, clean bedroom, vacuum, mow lawn, feed farm animals, let dog in and out, help clean bathrooms, sometimes clean kitchen counters, fold towels, put away laundry, make bed
11 year old- wash dishes, put away dishes, put away laundry, fold dish and face towels, clean bedroom, clean up toys, clean bathroom, make bed, take out garbage, take care of pets and farm animals
9 year old- put away dishes, vacuum, help clean bathroom, put away laundry, take care of pets and farm animals
6 year old- put away silverwear, help put away laundry, clean up bedroom, help take care of pets
5 and 3 year old- help put away laundry, help make beds, clean up bedroom
Some of my husband’s family use a over the door shoe holder to hold water cups while camping or in their houses. Much to my distress, my children use so many cups. Needless to say with eight people in our home, that creates so many extra dishes. This has really cut down on that issue.
Our first year of homeschooling we purchased a Shark brand robot vacuum and mop. I wanted to name it Alfred for Batman’s housekeeper. However, children chose to name him Sevi. This vacuum has been a tremendous help and really cuts down on my work load. I recently decided to make my life easier by not having rugs in my kitchen. That will allow me to send the vacuum around without spending a significant amount of time moving rugs.
