Chores

Since Aiden is five and in his opinion, "basically a grownup" I thought it was time to have him start doing some chores.  Up until this point, his only chores were unloading the silverware from the dishwasher (on the rarest of occasions) and cleaning up his toys.

After having to clean his bathroom nightly, I decided he should start doing it himself.  This plan was twofold because 1. I am tired of cleaning up pee and 2. I was hoping that he would get tired of cleaning up pee and start paying more attention to his aim.  The good news is that it's been nice not having to clean up pee.  The bad news is that he couldn't care less about his aim so at times I have the misfortune of forgetting about his bad aim and step in pee puddles on the floor.  Seriously, I will never understand how one pees on the floor without noticing.  However, I guess a puddle on the floor is an improvement from pee dripping from my picture frames on the bathroom wall so maybe his aim is improving?  Anyway...the boy cleans his own bathroom now and he totally loves it.  After the first time cleaning the toilet himself he made anyone that came over go straight to the bathroom to look at the toilet.

We sometimes call Evie "The Inspector" because he army crawls through the house picking up and inspecting every single crumb that he finds.  And the inspector can spend lots of time crumb hunting with the amount of food that hits the floor when Aiden eats.  So after prying macaroni noodles from Everetts sweaty grip I decided it was time for Aiden to learn to vacuum. We ran to Target and picked up a stick vacuum for him and he thinks it's pretty much the best thing in the world.  He loves to vacuum and he vacuums the dining room and his craft area almost every day.

After finding 20 broken hangers in Aiden's room from him yanking his shirts out of the closet we decided to install a shorter closet rod for him. The bonus is that he can now hang his own clothes.  So his third chore is putting his clothes away after I do the laundry.  The first few times that I asked him to put his clothes away I walked into his room to find all of his clean clothes on TOP of his dresser in a pile. When I'd ask him about it he'd say "oh, you didn't say to put them IN the dresser".   So I've learned to now ask "please put your clothes all the way away...like in drawers and on hangers please" and he does it quite well.  The only downfall to the shorter closet rod is that wardrobe changes are much more frequent than they were before.  During his "rest" time each day I think he goes through about three outfits.  But as long as the clothes get put away in the end, who cares?

For now that is the extent of his chores but I think we're off to a pretty good start.  He told me last night that he'll start cooking when he turns eight...so if I plan this just right I can retire from housework in just three short years. Ha