The Youngest Person Rule

One question I'm asked ALL the time is, "How do you do it all?"

The answer is simple - I don't.

But I do get quite a bit accomplished.

One of the secrets to our success are our house rules. There are 6 that the children follow and then there are a couple that I follow. One of my most effective ones is:

The youngest person capable of doing the job does it.

All the children are encouraged to teach their younger siblings how to do things so that the older children can pass their jobs to the younger children, thereby freeing up their time so that Jim and I can pass our jobs to the older children. :)

Here's an example of this principle in action. I haven't regularly folded laundry in years.

And if you do it right, it's something they enjoy:



Of course, you do have to get over things being perfectly creased and folded.  I am a firm believer in the fact that a few wrinkles never killed anybody.  And you do have to inspect periodically. The way I handle that with laundry is to have Greyden (who is responsible for washing all the laundry) put the clean clothes in my bedroom.  Then it is really easy to tell when they're falling behind on the laundry.  LOL

Plus, this is homeschooling at it's best.  The young ones early on learn:
 - colors
 - teamwork
 - sorting
 - organization
 - how to tackle a large project one step at a time and not get overwhelmed

And the older ones learn how to teach.

Yep, I'd be getting a lot less sleep if I didn't have the youngest person rule. I definitely recommend it. :D



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