How to Manage Your Household Chores (without cloning yourself)

Are you familiar with Naruto? It’s a  manga series about Naruto, a ninja who wants to be the strongest of them all. He has the ability to clone himself which is called Kage Bunshin Technique. Each clone has his equal energy and can do whatever the original can.

Moms wear many hats and do A LOT in a day. It’s like the whole 24 hours is not enough to compress our daily tasks. Before we hit the sack, the list of things we need to do the next day goes on and on and on. Kage Bunshin technique would definitely help us accomplish everything! Imagine if there are five “yous”. You can be everywhere in the house and do a couple of things at the same time. Wouldn’t it be great? Yeah, AS IF.

Sometimes we get overwhelmed by the bunch of work that needs to be done at home. We don’t even know where to start. I have here some tips on how to manage our household chores. Read along and you might find them helpful 😉

1. Ask your family members to help you

My mother-in-law washes our clothes (she uses a washing machine) and often cooks for us. On weekends, my husband and I are the ones in-charge in the kitchen.One of the things I ask my husband to do is help me fold our laundry. We also assist each other when we cook. Back when my youngest was still bottle-fed, we took turns in scrubbing and steaming his feeding bottles. We do these while we tell each other stories. Call them bonding activities. He’s the one who babysits the kids at night up until now. Prepping Ate for school is his job while I’m the one who fetches her in the afternoon.

I know there’s an unwritten law in our society that men should not be obliged at home but I don’t see any reason for them not to help. In good times and hard times, remember?

You can also teach your kids how to lend a hand when you need it. My daughter is the one who makes our bed on weekend mornings. She looks after her younger brother when Papa and I need to run some errands outside. Sometimes, we let her do the dishes.

And oh, the baby boy? He’s 28 months old but already knows how to arrange shoes in the rack and to pack away his toys. See, your family members are great helpers, too. Assigning some housework to your children is a good practice for them to be disciplined and responsible.

Here’s a list I’ve found from Pinterest. It includes chores that kids can do:

2. Schedule your chores daily, weekly, and monthly

I’ve learned that not all tasks need to be done daily. You can wipe doors and windows on a weekly basis. Some you can attend to monthly. Dusting your blinds or cleaning your refrigerator for example. Throwing out the trash is one thing that you do everyday.

List down your chores and mark how frequent you need to do them. It’s a great tool in managing your time. You can do more and might have a short but sweet “me-time” to take some rest. Take note that we shouldn’t abuse our bodies.

I got you these from Pinterest. Print and hang on your kitchen wall:

3. Maximize the time when the kids are asleep or at school

It’s more efficient if we don’t go running after our toddlers while cleaning the bathroom or doing the laundry. Before they rise out of bed and greet Mr. Sun or when they are in school, start sweeping the floor or de-cluttering your room. Do any light works that you can. When they take their afternoon siesta, continue ticking off things in your to-do list. You might even have time to re-charge by taking a nap before they wake up.

4. Disconnect

I am guilty of doing three things at once-cleaning our room while watching tv, and scrolling down my mobile phone. Good news, I only do 2 now. Just kidding. Go offline. Put down that gadget. Focus on your task at hand. It takes shorter time for you to finish the housework if you don’t go online for a while. There’s no rush in liking your friend’s status or “hearting” (read: pusuan) a picture on Instagram, is there?

Additional tip for working moms
– be efficient at work so you don’t need to render overtime. Coming home on time gives you additional hours to rest and play with your kids first before facing that pile of clothes and the mountain of plates in the sink.

If only we can clone ourselves to maintain our household, Im pretty sure every mom would sing Hallelujah.  Well, let’s leave that technique to Naruto. After all we don’t need to prove that we’re the best because we are Super Moms in the eyes of our loved ones.

Naruto-http://naruto.wikia.com/wiki/Shadow_Clone_Technique