But Moooooomm......

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This got me thinking.

Focus: Chores. What did you have to do? What did you hate?

Alt-focus: What do you wish you could make your kids do? What chores will your progeny have to do?

For me, I had to cut grass on a tractor that took four hours to do the whole yard and I hate grass to this day. Why the fuck does everyone I know have a lawn that needs constant care? I also had to take out trash, maintain 3 rooms of the house, and wash dishes. I feel like I got off pretty light, but I did a lot of odd jobs like cutting & stacking firewood, spreading mulch (again, why?), cleaning out fireplaces and garages and moving furniture that was sporadic. My favorite thing to do was "help cook" which mean sneaking slices of whatever looked interesting while my mom actually prepared food.

I really want my kids to work when I'm working, so they appreciate the time and effort put into things like clean clothes, hot food, and a non-decaying home. Also, fuck the kids who make it to college without knowing how to do laundry, cook a meal, clean the house or do basic home maintenance. Doing chores when my parents did chores taught me how to do a lot of shit that I otherwise wouldn't have learned.

 

My chores were to cook for and clean up after a family of seven. I also had to help maintain our property and was responsible for keeping up with the horses.

I am so glad nowadays that I learned how to care for a home, for children and how everything you want requires work and maintenance. I have a work ethic because of it. At the time, I was sure my mother was some sort of evil slave driver. Now I find myself incorporating many of her expectations, just with different methods of enforcement.

My kids are six and seven. They help load the dishwasher, keep their bathroom clean and put away their own laundry. Keeping their room clean is a hell of a challenge, that is a tough one for us. I don't pay them an allowance (yet) but they gain or lose privileges such as video games and ice-cream per their behavior regarding chores.

They will know how to to wash their laundry by puberty, I refuse to clean up their knuckle children.

 

I started being left on my own to watch the house when I was 11, so I more or less either did or helped with everything. The chores that I really hated all had to do with yard work. My least favorite one was a few times a year I would have to go around our yard and drag all of the really big branches that had been knocked down in the storms back to our wood pile. That and moving the piles of grass trimmings after the lawn was moved to our gardens to put in the pathways to keep weeds down were the worst. And yet, I really wanted to mow the lawn because we had a mower that you ride and I thought it looked fun, but no, my dad wouldn't let me. And twice a year I had to change the windows in our sun room between glass windows and screens, and when I was putting the glass ones in I had to clean them first. I don't know why I hated this so much, but I did.

All the usual house chores weren't exactly fun either, but I never felt so miserable as with those things.

 

Both of my parents grew up on big farm families so chores were quite present in my family. I started doing my own laundry in 7th grade and helping in the kitchen (before and after) much younger. My brother and I took out the garage, mowed the lawn, garden maintenance, etc. weekly. Just about every other Saturday morning through early afternoon was spent vacuuming/dusting/cleaning up the house. We also got to help with building the front porch, painting the house (twice), and shingling, or whatever fun stuff my Dad needed help with.

I was pretty shocked when I went to college and some people didn't have a clue how to do their own laundry or cook the most basic food. Sometimes I hated my parents for the chores but now I'm glad I can handle myself and have a strong sense of self-reliance, which living with plenty of different roommates reinforced.

My parents had it way, way worse. No doubt. Especially my dad, who grew up on a dairy farm *shudder*.

 

From the age of six or seven, maybe younger, I was responsible for washing all the dishes after dinner, helping brush the dogs, keeping my room clean, making my bed, cleaning the dog crap out of the back yard, and keeping perfect A or A+ grades. In the summer, I got to pull hundreds of those big, prickly green weeds from the sides of the house for $1 an hour.

Through these chores my parents taught me an excellent work ethic. Unfortunately through their behavior, I also learned defensiveness, burying shit until I explode, and running from problems. In all, this means I've had a history of a shitty attitude while doing the workload of three people, something I've only recently gotten in check (mostly).

 

The Whatsername and I can get pretty lazy when it comes to some chores, but we make more of an effort since baby came along (I guess one would hope so).

My parents were both from Dairy farming families, and they went back to it when I was 14. Most of my chores then included farmwork, but before then we were all taught how to do laundry, cook, vacuum, etc, and the dutys were rotated between me and my many siblings each week. I can still get really lazy, which I think is down to ADD mostly, and while I've always been messy, I think at least I've never been dirty (in the non fun way).

We want to impart life skills on to the boy. make sure he cleans up after himself. Reading that quote in the article, thid kid asking "how am I supposed to eat?" made me think of the days when it was our job to set up the dinner table. What an absolute eunuch of a father would simply respond by getting up and getting the cutlery.
If that was my kid, I'm not sure how I'd react, as in what the anger:amused ratio would be. It'd probably range from "what fuck are you going to do about it?" to something spoken entirely in open handed blows. Little snot nosed brat.

 

I'm gonna be one of the few to say I didn't really get many "chores". Occasionally taking out the trash or something when it needed to be done. Setting the table, etc was never a thing in our household.

I really think the idea of "chores" as a separate, character-building parenting strategy is a Western culture thing. For us, if Dad told you to take out the trash, you gotta do it. If Grandma asked you to help with the yardwork (and you can't talk your way out of it) you gotta do it. Once Mom had bitched at you to clean your room for the 50th time, you did it, upon pain of her doing it and you not being able to find any of your shit ever again. Anything you could weasel your way out of, you did (and for me that was most of it). When I went to college, I picked up the life skills I had missed out on reasonably fast. I turned out OK, I think.

Oh, and allowances are bullshit.

 

Nothing. My mother was and is a weapon of domestic destruction. When I'm visiting home I have to sneak off if I want to make a cup of tea, otherwise she will insist on taking over. The woman will make me fresh hollandaise to go with my bacon and eggs, I can gain 3-5 KG after a long weekend with the folks.

This did take a little while to shake off, however the strong dislike of mess and bad food was motivation enough to pick up the skills when forced. My partner is horrified at my mother though, her's wouldn't get out of bed unless there was a coffee made for her and the girls had to do their own washing and pack their own school lunches.

The difference, I talk to mum at least once a week, Lesstalkette hasn’t spoken with her mother for over 3 months, not even to tell her about the new property we just purchased.

 

For a suburbs kid, I did more chores than anybody else I knew. I had to make the beds every morning before school, I also had to empty all trash baskets/cans, vaccuum, collect the laundry, mow the lawns rake leaves in the fall, shovel driveways in winter, load/unload the dishwasher, dust (when needed), take out garbage. etc.

Pitfalls of being an only child. Eh, didn't bother me. It's not like any of them were super-hard and it's better than being a lazy couchstain that treats their parents like fucking maids.

 

Autumn rolls around and it's time to rake leaves. Raking fucking leaves. I hate those brown and yellow and red bastards.

 

We have a fireplace at home, so my father will go out of his way to get free firewood from anywhere. Then once he brings it home, he'll saw it as far away as possible from the back shed, so I get to spend a few hours of my weekends taking it down with the wheelbarrow. Like I need another reason to hate winter.

 

Lawn was my responsibility. But I actually enjoyed it. Never really let on though - wouldn't have been a 'chore' if my parents knew that. But holy fuck did i ever hate shoveling snow. and for some reason, Santa Claus would bring me a new shovel every year, even after I specifically stated that I did not want one in a letter I sent one year.

 

Oh God, where to begin?

This was the downside to growing up in the sticks. Besides the usual cleaning my room, doing dishes, feeding the dog, picking up dog shit, weeding the garden, taking care of the compost heap,etc...I had plenty to keep my hands from becoming idle.

During the summer three days a week were devoted to getting firewood (Bear in mind I was 8-12 years old at this time.) Gathering firewood meant Granddad and I piled into his old Willys pick-up with side racks so the truck could hold approximately a cord of wood. Granddad would drive through the woods falling, limbing, and cutting trees with his chainsaw. My job was to stack it NEATLY in the truck. When the truck was filled we would head home and Granddad would head for his recliner for a well deserved rest. I, on the other hand, would have to unload and stack, once again NEATLY, the wood. If I worked hard and didn't complain I got a shiny quarter. Seriously.

I know y'all think I'm ancient, but even in my youth that was ludicrous pay.

Three other days of the week we went fishing. This may sound silly, but at 8-12 years old it was a chore and probably why I haven't really fished much since then. We would awaken at 4:30AM, get in the boat, head for the fishing grounds, and troll until about noon. I enjoyed the boat ride there and back, but the in between time was torture for a kid. Once we got home with our 40-75 trout, I had to clean them and compost the guts. My pay was getting to eat fish for lunch and dinner approximately 300 days a year. Fried fish, baked fish, smoked fish, Surprise Casserole (The surprise being it was fish. Sur-fucking-prise.)

My grandfather was a minister and Sunday was a day of rest. Kind of. My rest was sitting through the same sermon four times when he was preaching a circuit. By the third time I could've run the service.

Come Fall/Winter (About 8 months of time in North Idaho) I had to split the firewood and carry it in the house, keep the fire stoked, and shovel snow.

By 12, I started bucking hay in the summer...what a hot, miserable, itchy job that was, but it payed more then a quarter.

Truth is, I wouldn't have trade any of it for the whole world on a platter.

 

I had the typicals of cleaning my room weekly, making my bed daily, drying dishes after dinner (which eventually became emptying the dishwasher once Fred & Wilma took the leap). And as I got older, I got more. My brother suddenly developed "an allergy" to cut grass, so I got that chore (oddly, it never affected him as he mowed his own two acres in CT). My sister got a puppy for her 7th birthday--I got the tasks of feeding, walking and brushing him. Summertime, various other projects were thrown in--paint the foundation, take the screens out and scrub them and wash all the windows, paint the railings, paint the fence (painting a chainlink fence sucks).

I joke a lot on here about what a horrible cook my mother was (and she was). When I was in high school, I would be the first to get home, so my mother had me get dinner started. The instructions she would leave me never included anything to do herbs, spices or any other seasoning. And when I was using packaged food like frozen veggies and read the directions, imagine my surprise that they're not supposed to be boiled for 25 minutes like mom did (I don't think she wanted to run the risk of anything being contaminated with flavor). So, I started reading cookbooks. The spice rack in our kitchen was a gift she received at her bridal shower and when I began cooking, these were the original spices that came with it. I would go grocery shopping with her on the weekends and each week, I'd slip a new spice or herb into the cart and slowly replaced the "bottled dust" one by one. I really got into cooking and learned my way around a kitchen and still enjoy it. Cleaning, painting and yardwork? Still hate it.

 

The front yard was generally my job to take care of pretty much all the way through high school. One time when I was probably about 14 the neighbors yard was being cut by a mexican lawn crew at the same time I was supposed to be mowing ours. I paid one of them $10 to mow our yard and went to a friends house, seemed like a great idea until right about the time dad got home.

 

I used to do most of those usual chores mentioned (taking out garbage, washing dishes, etc), but I also used to have to assist my dad with whatever project he was working on at the time. My dad and I did not get on well then (it's still a pretty tenuous relationship at best), so those weekends were torturous. It'd usually result in a shouting match and someone (me) getting hit somewhere. Fun times. I do not miss it. I don't offer to help my dad with those kinda jobs anymore.

I still do the chores at home (my mom takes care of some of the meals during the week, but I end up cooking at least 2 nights a week). This includes all the laundry (I'm, unfortunately, better at that than my mom) - she makes it fun for me by buying stuff that is cold water, hand wash and separate wash only, which means I have to get out the bucket and soak each item individually - there is two different buckets being used as I type this. The next time she buys something like that I will most likely strangle her. She then complains when the fucking dye runs - it's because you bought a cheap top that was made in China that cannot be cleaned or soaked without the dye running! Fuck. Dealing with my parents in matters like this is like trying to explain quantum physics to a gerbil sometimes.