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Christine over at the Thinking Mother blog takes on this issue with her entry On My Mind: Starting Daily Chores For My Children.

We are going through a similar backsliding in our house. We do have a list of cleaning tasks, and it has become a natural part of their routine. But we have to keep on them to have the house cleaned by bed-time.

As a side note, I had a flash of insight a year or so ago. Our house was messy with toys, and they would add to and clean up about the same amount each day, leaving it in around the same messy state. since they were cleaning about the same amount as they are messing up, I realized that, if I could get the house to the ‘perfect’ state where I wanted it, they could return it to that state each night by doing the same amount of cleanup as they were already doing.

It took a lot of training and saying, “No, it’s not done yet. No, I won’t tell you what is left to do. I’ve shown you what it looks like when it’s completely done. You come tell me when you think it is finished.” It’s not perfect yet, but this system works pretty well. We have the luxury of going to bed almost every night with a clean house, and they have the closure of knowing that the cleaning really is done – it’s not just that Mom and Dad got tired to cajoling and said that was enough for the night.

Even with the list, though, they are not coming close to offloading enough of the burden to make Mom’s life easier.

I think part of the problem is that they have grown, so the old list needs to be updated, and tasks need to be added for the youngest as well, since she is now old enough to pitch in.

Still wondering how to handle the money issue. We want them to work just because they are part of the family. And we want to give them some discretionary money so they can develop good stewardship. It is natural to want to tie the two together, but I don’t think that is best. We might be due for a change in this area.