Growing up we did all our laundry starting in 5th or 6th grade and we were on our own for dinner Sunday night starting about that same time. We swapped the following chores each week:

Set 1: vacuum living room, hall , and den. Dust living room and den. Set 2: clean our bathroom and wash towels and sheets.

We had to fold laundry, iron my dad's clothes, wash dishes, wash cars, clean our rooms, take out trash, burn the trash, water and weed the garden, water trees down our country driveway (think 4-5 houses linked together) as told.

Feeding the animals switched off daily or weekly. When we had chickens we both had to feed and clean the chicken house daily.

My brother mowed which was completely unfair as he had allergies.

Starting in first or second grade, I starting taking my turn along with my sibs at setting and clearing the table. I remember folding clothes as being more fun than chore because "Oooh, warm laundry!" However, putting my own pile of folded clothes away seemed like torture to me. Starting in fifth grade, I learned to use the washer and was responsible for my own laundry. That summer or the next, I learned how to operate the lawn mower and took turns with one brother mowing ours and the next door neighbor's lawn; no more allowance after that, neighbor paid us $4-5 for the job. When my sister got married and had my oldest nephew, for a while she brought her laundry to the house and paid me to wash it for her. Privileges such as staying up late to watch a tv show could be earned by vacuuming the living room, although at a certain point around sixth grade my mom decided that since I was waking her and my older brother up and making their lunches along with my own, I could more or less set my own bedtime.

Let's see...there were three of us also. For a while, mom tried to enforce a whole thing with dusting/vacuuming/cleaning the bathroom once a week? I don't remember that happening all the time though. We did have a nightly one person cleared the table, one wiped it down, one swept the kitchen. And my job starting in 8th grade or so was to do the dishes (we had a dishwasher, but I had to do the pots and pans). I got extra allowance for that. My sister took it over when I went to college (she was entering 9th grade) but not sure how they did with my brother--it was pretty gendered so he might've gotten to take the trash out instead. We also had to mow the lawn, but got paid extra based on whether we did the side yard (small), front yard (medium) or back yard (big). None of us wanted to do it though, even for extra cash. And we did our own laundry--I think I started sometime in middle school. But we were awful about our rooms being clean--occasionally mom would get fed up and insist, for my sister she even said "if you don't clean it I will, and I"ll charge you by the hour" (and did! and put the stuff in trash bags and either got rid of it, or charged my sister to get it back!)

From first grade through leaving home, each weekend I vacuumed the house and my brother cleaned the bathrooms to earn our lunch money. We also had to keep our rooms clean and had turns at setting/clearing the table, washing dishes, bathing the dog, washing cars and ironing. In our teen years we did some occasional cooking.

What is the name of the serpent that eats its own tail?

I think that was Bannon.

snerk

I was visiting with family last week into the weekend, so instead of watching congress Thursday night, we were having a random and strangely in-depth conversation about schwa. At the end of the conversation I invoked #schwa and my nephew said that the # should be replaced by Ç.

Other weekend conversations involved tetrachromacy and synesthesia.

Those sound like fun conversations, aurelia.

When I was a kid I was responsible for keeping my own room clean, loading the dishwasher after dinner, and putting clean dishes away. I also did some of the overall house cleaning, especially after Mom's back got bad. Dad did the mowing and snow removal, the latter of which was significant before we moved to NC. He also handled car stuff, garage stuff, and we all shared garden chores. I learned to do laundry in my teens and sometimes put a load in, but Mom was serious about all permanent press/no special treatments when it came to clothes. So it was very much a case of moving an armful of clothes from one machine to the next. I also made one dinner a week after age 14 or so.

My older sister managed to get through high school and college without learning to cook, and she spent the first year of her marriage calling home and asking Mom to walk her through some recipes. I figured it would be useful to get that stuff down before moving a couple of hundred miles away from home, so I asked Mom to teach me the basics of spaghetti, baked chicken, pot roast, and chili. It was helpful, and I think I'm a more confident cook than my sister because I had Mom right there saying, "Eh, close enough" on some measurement or other and having the results taste pretty good.

My nephew who will be 9 in a few weeks does his own laundry from start to finish (gets it together, washes it, dries, folds, put away), packs his own suitcase for vacation, clears the table , cleans his room, can feed the dogs, cats and reptile but doesn't always do that. Can make his own lunch but doesn't always.

I think he's going to be given more responsibility this year. I think dishes is next thing for him to learn.

Oh he makes his bed, carries out the recycling (sometimes), and does do some sweeping.

The noise of kitchen cleaning often bothers me. It bothers me less if I do it...i can control the noise...but if I'm not cleaning and it bothers me I distract myself from it.

Oh, cooking! I forgot about that. To some extent that did not feel like a chore to me. I like cooking and often hung out in the kitchen, helping peel potatoes and carrots and learning other basic skills from about second or third grade on. When I was in fifth grade my mom had a job whe would not get home from until after 6 pm, so she would call home in the afternoon and talk me through starting supper. Otherwise it would be wayyyy late. By the time I was in high school I could plan and cook an entire balanced meal. Mom still planned most of the meals, but there were certain ones that I would take over simply because she tended to burn things. And by the time I was in 12 th grade any time my parents invited guests for dinner I planned and made the meal.

I liked cooking too, and my grandma was terrible at it, although she taught me the basics! I liked ironing, too, because we did it in front of the tv. In fun reasponsibilities, I planned and hosted family Christmas Eve! I decorated, planned and cooked the meal, invited people, cleaned the house etc. it was funny, because I am by far the youngest person in the family. I also did the Christmas cards. This is possibly because no one else in my family cared about Christmas. This was 6th grade through high school, I think.

I think some of the reason I didn't mind chores doesn't exist today. I was bored. You couldn't always be on the phone with friends, which was the only way to communicate. There were only so many books available, and lots of time the tv was boring. I just used to pretend that I was a maid, or in Little House, or All of a Kind family or something.