Part 4: Chapter 2

Chore Chart

Tuesday, May 12, 2020
	Since Mission Square Restaurant has asked Shannon to waitress there again, I’ve lost my house cleaner and cook. She will still watch Johnny in the mornings while I do school with the big kids, but she waitresses now most evenings, except for Thursdays when she goes to Beatrice's to clean most of the day. This means I'm back to shouldering the responsibility of cooking and cleaning for my household once again.
	Inspired by Dianne’s chore chart, I’ve constructed one myself. The chore chart is made of a large paper wheel divided into seven slices for each day of the week. Each day is color-coded pink, green, or white, and has a daily job and a weekly job written on it. The daily jobs consist of items that must be done each day such as unloading the dishwasher and clearing the table. The weekly jobs consist of things that need to be done once a week, such as wiping down the toilet, emptying trashcans, shaking out doormats, and vacuuming rugs. Sundays have no weekly jobs. Fasten an arrow to the center with a brad so it can swivel around and point to the current day and viola! The schedule is set.
	Assign a color to each child and explain how they’re now responsible for doing a job each day. Opal and Theo want to know if Johnny will do any jobs too. Explain that Johnny is too little and that the white spaces are for me. Have also included on the outer crust of each slice once-a-month jobs for myself such as cleaning the inside of the fridge, scrubbing tubs, and mopping wooden floors. Point to these jobs and hope they perceive how much more work I will be doing than them.
	Theo, whose reading is a bit behind Opal’s, sounds out the chores on the first day and then falls on the floor, saying it’s too hard. Opal observes Theo’s distress and says that she’s a girl and knows how to do stuff. Explain that we will undergo a few weeks of training for each job to see how the new system works. Theo runs out of the room shouting, “I’m not going to do it!” and Opal rolls her eyes at him and says, "I already know how to do everything, Mama."
	Setting expectations low and giving thanks to God for mops and squeegees and bleach. Sure wish these tools worked on their own like in that old Disney film The Sword in the Stone.