Household Management
Laundry
You may find that a regular sized 5-6 kg washing machine is just not big enough to cope with the quantities of washing you have. As if the day to day washing of clothes isn’t enough add on bedding and towels plus ad hoc events such as sickness and you have a huge task on your hands. And, then there is the drying……….
Solution: Space permitting and normally if you have a utility room, purchase one of the large 8-10kg machines. Most are American machines and are now some of the top performing machines where before they were regarded as less sophisticated than the European models. Size no longer means compromising on results and efficiency. The other way would be to have two smaller machines.
Drying the washing is sometimes more of a problem than washing the washing! Where do you put it all? Do you hate having washing all over the house during the colder months?
Solution: Have more than one washing line outside for the warmer months. During the colder months be systematic with your laundry. Consider washing every other day rather than every day thus allowing days where you have a washing free day. Assemble washing lines in airing cupboards.
Tips: Do not put clean clothes in the laundry basket. For example, if the children have managed to keep their jeans free from food stains and outdoor dirt then get them to wear them again the next day! Pyjamas are the same. Most of our children wear them for an hour or so after bath time and then strip off to sleep.
Feeding Time
Another mammoth task which can be challenging is feeding your family. Not only do you have to carry out the chore itself by preparing and cooking the family meals you have to actually think about what to feed them, taking in to consideration everyone’s likes and dislikes. Then you have to shop for it, normally forgetting a number of items, pay for it and pack it all away only to repeat the task the following week or before when you run out of something!
The two key issues here are time and money.
Tips:
- Find favourite meals which the majority of your family members will enjoy and stick to them.
- Have a meal planner for each week.
- Write a basic weekly grocery list which you can use over and over again and just add the extras needed for that particular week.
- Do your grocery shopping on the internet and have it delivered. Yes you pay a delivery fee but you will spend more than that on fuel and time and impulse shopping in store.
- Bulk buy items on special offer which do not have expiry dates and store them. This saves money in the long run.
- Use a shopping comparison site when grocery shopping such as www.mysupermarket.com. This site has a very clever tool which can show you cheaper alternatives allowing you to swap your items saving you money.
- Cook in batches and freeze meals for busier days.
Cleaning & Chores
There are two types of cleaning in my book. One is “cleaning” and the other is “tidying”. How much time and effort you spend on each category is up to you but with a large family I think you have to be realistic and accept that your house is never going to be spotless!
Keeping a house clean which occupies so many children is a full time job in itself. It’s not just the general cleaning of the house i.e. the vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the bathrooms etc it’s all the additional mess that comes with having children.
Try and install tidiness and cleanliness in your children from an early age but accept that whilst they are learning which will be pretty much all their childhood you have to deal with the spillages of food and drink, the muddy feet, the paint, the pen marks, the stickers, picking up the wet towels from the floor and all the additional mess that come with children.
Solution: Make light work of your cleaning and chores by getting them all involved! Get your children to help occasionally, it won’t harm them! Polishing mirrors and cleaning windows is a favourite, kids love to spray those cleaners! Get them involved with setting the table for dinner and clearing away when the meal is over.
Tidying up after your children is a thankless task. If you have many young children then tidying is going to be your biggest battle. Ensure you have plenty of toy storage making toy tidying up time easy. Try and have dedicated areas for certain toys and arts and crafts items as well as the general toy buckets that many of the toys can be thrown into at the end of the day.
Solution: Make tidying up time a game. You could time them, make it a race. Those toys will be scooped up before you know it! Remind them to put one toy away after they have finished with it before moving on to the next thing.
Administration
With everything else to do in a busy household taking care of the administration is sometimes the last thing you get around to. Opening the mail, paying the bills, reading the numerous school letters and fulfilling their requests and many demands!
Tips: In this day and age most of us are using the internet more and more frequently so why not opt for paperless bills that are sent via the email system. Not only are you doing something for the environment you are saving yourself the task of opening the mail and then losing the paperwork until you remember it needs attending to, then filing it and then recycling the envelope it came in!
Family Planner
I would not survive without my family planner on the wall. If you have a very large family then you may need to make your own – I have yet to source a family planner calendar with more than 5 slots. Its on the wall, everyone can see what they are supposed be doing.
