Tuesday, August 28, 2012

A highly entertaining bathroom cleaning demonstration

My Audience - Don't they look excited? Not!
 Lately we decided that it was high time to update the kids chore chart. When I wrote it I think Megan was around 2 and 4 years later all of the kids are far more capable than they were when I wrote the old one.

  It wasn't that the kids were only doing chores that were on the chart but those were the only ones that they did very automatically and sometimes I was feeling overwhelmed by all that needed done as well as feeling frusterated with myself for not fully utalizing all the energy at hand (namely in my children!). I also have wanted to make sure that all of my kids are fully trained in running the house and sooner rather than later.

  Anyway... When writing up our new chore chart we made it so the upstairs bathroom would be cleaned more often (it was needing that!) and that more people would share that chore. Previously Mara was cleaning the tub and shower (which is continuing to be her chore) and Jonathan and I would rotate at cleaning the rest of the bathroom. Now we have each of the 3 younger kids cleaning it once a week (basically every other day).

  When I had Aaron do it one day however I realized that he really needed some training as his finished job was not very good. Jonathan was also needing some reminders on how to do it well and Megan needed training too. Mara is now cleaning Ken's office (including bathrooms) so she figured a cleaning demonstration would be useful to her as well.

   When I announced that there would be a cleaning demonstration I wasn't exactly greeted with excitement. So I announced that I would be highly entertaining. They were pretty sceptical.
 I figured I had work hard to put on a good show. They figured a would probably need a microphone (This is Ken's toy- given to him one year as a joke after him having fun playing around with one - just being silly- at somebody else's house. He generally doesn't let anybody else use it- which makes it very special- but I was able to use it for the demonstration) so I used it which slowed me down greatly but added to the amusement of the show.
 We sang. We were silly. We had fun. And.... My children have a better understanding of how to clean a bathroom.
Getting out of their "seats" (the tub) for a better view of scrubbing the sink.
I am willing to spend a little extra time on fun and silliness in order to have a job done well. I wonder what I should demonstrate next?

Do you have cleaning demonstrations? Are they highly entertaining? I would love to hear your tips on how you get your children invovled in keeping your home looking nice.

Cleaning demonstrations work for me.

1 comment:

Liberty said...

have never thought of having a funny demonstration - buy am willing to try anything at this point!
Blessings
http://bit.ly/O1mA7P

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