Crap. I remember I told a recuriter he could call me this morning. I sort of hope he doesn't follow through.

Is there room in your budget to have a housecleaner come in, maybe even just once a month? That could free up some of the deep-cleaning time for you both.

Do your kids have chores? I was responsible for dusting and vacuuming on Saturday mornings by the time I was 10, maybe younger.

The kids have sporadic chores. Our daughter does her own laundry and our son will move toward that before long once he reaches the age when she started. Mowing will me moving toward them too. There is supposed to be a time on the weekends when they pitch in too, but often things will come up.

We are pretty random about division of chores here. Generally speaking the person who cooks doesn't do the dishes. Although they had better be cleaning up the prep mess as they go along. We all did our own laundry. With white tile floors, and pets, and 3 bathrooms, if I didn't have a cleaning person we would live in squalor.

DH takes care of the pool, but if I saw it getting a green tinge it would be my first instinct to pour some chlorine in there. I'd never get upset with him for neglecting it because he is as busy as I am. I generally do most of the grocery shopping, but if he finds something missing he goes and buys it. We cover for each other and just do the best we can with limited hours in a day.

I wish I could get my kids to more regularly do chores, but I find they have so much damned homework that it's really hard. Our usual routine is "Sunday morning chore time" and they rotate around a variety of tasks, but even that has fallen off lately because of homework (and soccer games.) Maybe this summer I'll regroup.

At my house, I do laundry (I love doing laundry), mr. flea takes out the trash and takes lead on everything pet related, I pay bills, mr. flea does car stuff. The place I do more than my share is the planning. I almost always make the weekly meal plan and grocery list, and, for example, I have done every single bit of the planning for 11 weeks of stuff to keep the kids cared for/active this summer.

Gud I would suggest you put up a pice of paper and for one week have everyone on the household track the household chores they do. Anything for the household and not just ones self counts (I do count ones own laundry as household because smelly kids are gross).If it is highly inequitable, you need to set up a chart and create better division of labor.

If I did not have Mac's chores written down and set as a barrier to both money and wireless access, he would never do anything. As it is what I am asking him to do takes less than 30 minutes of a to city per day and he has neither homework nor activities.

I am actually working on the summer chart now. Older = more. This year, I will be including what I do as a counterpoint.

Have I mentioned that I would love to have summer guests? Yes it is hot in Texas, but the a/c is good and I can take random days off. Bonus points if you want to help me clear out stuff, paint a garage, do yard work, or sew/knit all day.

Kid wrangling and planning is a serious time suck. Do Not Miss! I end up doing garbage stuff more often just because I am the house early bird. Sometimes I just leave it by the door for whoever goes outside first.

Doling chores out to the kids had to be balanced with their notion that a job done poorly means a job not done in the future. I did give up on dishes early on because I really don't want to have to rewash all my dishes, but their clothes, their problem.

Now that it is just Cory and I sharing my house, we are refiguring chores. Though I prefer to call them "things that need to be done to maintain a household". I know that is longer and technically what is what a chore is. I differentiate basically to help CJ realize that he is an adult and if this what his house, he would have to do all these things by himself. Not sure if that makes sense now that I write it out.

We have also had a rule of, if you are going to complain about something not being done in the house, you better make sure all of YOUR responsibilities are handled.

Hive mind question for teachers:

One of the "fun" things Mac will get to occupy his time with electronics this summer will be some workbooks. PSAT study guide will be one, but I would like to find something that teaches general study habits. Suggestions?

I am looking at How to Study by Ron Fry.