Is that a lot of chores?
Our perspective is, in exchange for room and board, and the car we gave her, and her cell phone we pay for, and everything else we provide for her, she can do chores around the house. And we have dogs that shed so the house needs to be vacuumed more often.
It is hubby’s perspective more than mine. I just don’t know how to discuss it with him.
And we both love her very much, btw, and tell her we are proud of her. We are trying to prepare her for life.
It’s not really true that most of the chores will still need to be done. Yes, she will need to keep her apartment tidy. That will not likely require vacuuming twice a week. I fully admit to being a bit of a slob, but I have never in my life vacuumed twice a week on a regular basis.
I dare say most 20 year olds also don’t mop every week. Heck, I don’t. And I probably don’t do a “good enough” job at it all the time, either.
She will also probably have less space so things like sweeping, mopping, vacuuming will take less time.
Yes, I think it’s a very long list of chores for a kid who is going to school full time, doing well there, and working every evening. And that’s not even mentioning that she has issues with stress and anxiety. Honestly, I feel sorry for your daughter. I know people who require this level of chores for kids who have graduated from college and are home looking for a job, but for a college student? I really think it’s over the top. She is telling you she is stressed and I think you should listen. But then, I come from a perspective where we are paying for college, plus room and board for our daughter (who is not here to do chores). Asking her to take care of her room, her bathroom, and her laundry is fair, but asking your daughter to clean the house several times a week just seems a bit over the top to me.
I get wanting her to contribute something in exchange for all the money you spend but to me it is the grades. You concentrate on that full time and job one. That would be the focus. Anything else in the way of that needs to go. My main goal as a parent is to enable my child to become a productive member of society where they will be self sufficient emotionally and financially. Developing a work ethic is important and she is doing that with the job. The chores seem to by causing undue stress on her.
Was it her idea for the dog? Did she fully understand the chores associated with it? That is where the adult comes in and say no you cannot have a dog because it in too much work. If it was your husbands or your dog, then you need to clean up after it. It is not the dog’s fault.
@K8tyMom You are a family and families should work together and take everyone’s needs into account. I’d suggest that you sit down together and try to create a new schedule that works for you, your H, and your D when her other commitments are considered. I would start any conversation like this off by letting your D that you understand that she juggles different responsibilities and that you are proud of her. Perhaps some simple adjustments such as pushing her chores to the weekend (perhaps someone else can do the second vacuum during the week) could help a lot. I would also ask your D to let you know in advance when a particularly busy/stressful period at school will be coming up (ex. midterms, finals weeks) so you will understand that she is in a difficult stretch-- and maybe you can give her a “chore vacation” (or at least a “chore reduction”) during that those weeks to help minimize her anxiety.
Your D sounds like a hardworking, diligent young lady. Keep in mind that with all the problems that young adults can have (ex. drinking, drugs, not taking college seriously etc.) that not mopping well is a “good problem” to encounter.
(FWIW your D has way more chores around the house than my kids but every family is different in that respect.)
@tutumom2001 no one is suggesting this student have NO chores. No one.
She should contribute to household chores… but really…the chores listed…like mopping floors, and dusting and vacuuming…who did those when this kid was a HS student…and who will do them when she leaves?
Maybe the OP can clarify…but the way it’s written, it sounds like this student is expected to do the housekeeping chores that her parents don’t like doing…and then when she does them, they are critical, instead of lending a hand (well…the dad is).
There is a BIG difference between “let’s look at the floor. I can show you how to,get this done quickly and well. Here…watch.” And “You did a lousy job…do it again.”
Hoping that isn’t what the dad is doing…and also hoping that the dad does the household chores too. In this household, everyone who lived here contributed. And the not so fun jobs…like mopping and vacuuming…we rotated. We didn’t expect one person to do this…except when we had a HIRED housekeeper.
Some day when she is working and on her own, if she is working long hours then most likely her apartment will be fairly clean due to lack of usage, therefore she wouldn’t be vacuuming 2 times a week or mopping the floor often. I live by myself now. I am rarely in the apartment, so I only clean every other week and I do my laundry every 2 weeks too.
My daughter has one of the tidiest apartments I’ve ever seen. But it’s not because we held her hostage to chores when she lived here. She had reasonable chores we expected her to do.
Oh…we had a dog. That didn’t mean our KID vacuumed twice a week. It meant someone vacuumed.
I hope your husband vacuums, mops and dusts as well. Sorry…that is my perspective. When DH and I felt we couldn’t manage all of the household chores, we hired someone every other week. We didn’t shift the chores to our kids.
And yes…we paid for cell phone, and we also paid full freight for college. When they lived here after college, we paid for utilities, the mortgage and food.
We didn’t make them work for that by doing chores WE didn’t want to do.
You’ve got years ahead of you to shower your dogs with love and vacuum and mop every day if you want to. You’ve got a limited amount of time left with your D living under your roof. You either spend that time locked in a resentful tug of war over your expectations (and frankly, I think your chores expectations of her are unrealistic and somewhat mean) or you spend the time transitioning over to a more adult relationship with her since she’s almost leaving your home.
I have adult, married children. If i criticize their housekeeping when I am in their homes I know I won’t be invited back. So I keep my mouth shut. They are generous and loving hosts to our entire family; have welcomed random cousins and family members on various occasions without asking questions; really maintain an open door policy for family.
We love that. But it comes at a price- you can’t take advantage of someone’s hospitality and then criticize the way they mop their floors.
Think about ten years from now when your D has her own place and is deciding between going to a friends for Thanksgiving or inviting you and your H to her home.
I don’t think you are undercutting your D’s ability to transition to adulthood if you sit her down and explain that her academics are the top priority right now. So anything you guys can do to alleviate some of her stress-- you’d love to consider that. And then do it- you can take over the twice weekly vacuuming, your H can take over the floor mopping, which is good practice for when your D moves out and presumably the dogs stick around to make a mess.
One of the tasks I do is create job descriptions. Or rather, take an organization’s wish list of tasks for a particular job, and decide what is realistic and doable. One company was really confused why there was such a high burn-out rate for one particular part-time position. They felt the employee had more than enough time to handle all their duties within the 20 hours they worked each week. That was true, but said staff member also had 4 hours of mandatory meetings each week as well as another 3-4 hours of emails, phone calls, and meetings with clients. So, the 20 paid hours a week for the 8 billion assigned tasks was in reality only 12 hours. No employee was ever going to be successful in that position without continuously stressing out unless the organization revised expectations, and focused on how many hours were truly available to handle the workload.
College is also a continuous life lesson in juggling expectations versus reality. With my kids, we encouraged them at the beginning of each quarter/semester to sit down and look at their schedule(s) in order to revise their expectations of what they could realistically handle each day. Our family is full of people who like to plan ahead, so at the beginning of the quarter/semester, my kids (usually) made a two-column/24-row table for every day of the week. On the left column they entered in all the hours of the day, and in the box/column next to the hour, they’d color-code the box for work, school, meetings, events, sleep, food, commute time, etc. And, then they’d step back, and look at their charts to see what time they truly had available. At first it was a huge eye-opening exercise for them. One kid realized why he was so frantic one semester because on Mondays and Tuesdays he was on campus from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and his schedule was completely filled with work, classes, and meetings. And, he wasn’t making time to eat on those days. There was seriously no time to study, and he was falling behind, so he learned to focus on studying Wednesday - Sunday, and never planned anything extra for Monday and Tuesday. Maybe your daughter can come up with a similar table, and sit down with you and your husband and you can help her analyze her schedule and/or revise it so that she feels she is in control of what is going on. It might even be a great visual cue for your husband to see how busy her schedule is. Also, by looking at that really super busy schedule, your daughter might want to consider cutting back her hours and/or eliminating many of those chores, just to give herself some breathing room each week. She is juggling a lot of responsibilities at once.
That said, my kids and their roomies all keep up their apartments/dorm rooms/etc. (even though they only had really, really basic chores when they lived at home), but each one has a different schedule for when they do things. Some might clean on a Tuesday at 11 p.m., another might do it on Sundays at 9 a.m. I don’t know if any of them have ever made their bed on a regular basis in college (that’s probably the absolute last priority on their lists), but the world keeps turning, and they get good grades, work, have lovely friends, have (mostly) clean clothes, and also seem to have food in their refrigerators, so everyone is happy. I’d rather my kids have a messy apartment than be beyond stressed over juggling all their many responsibilities.
To give the OP a bit of a break, I do know a lot of high school students who had this list of chores and many more. Some people really like a clean house and some people who have pets need to vacuum and mop more. We vacuumed every day (main rooms) because of the pets, but that was a family choice, and everyone above the age of 8 was expected to do it occasionally (except my father, who did nothing). We sort of fell into a habit of doing the chores we liked. One brother liked to cut the grass so he did that. Another brother like to do the bathrooms. Honestly, my mother did most of the chores no one liked.
OP might be talking 15 minutes a day for either vacuuming or mopping. Now, can she do this any time she wants? Is it okay to vacuum at 8 pm when the family is trying to watch TV because that fits into D’s schedule? The family might have to compromise.
I agree with the sitting down as a family to map out a schedule. The schedule will have to be loose because she might not make it home on a Tues until 2 and then have to go off to work shortly. No time for vacuuming on Tues. Can you have a list of chores that anyone can do, and have her pick the ones she has time for from the list, with the understanding that she’ll do an hour per week on family chores like mopping and vacuuming, and of course do her own room and bathroom as needed. No white glove inspections, no pressure, just making sure the area is presentable.
@blossom LOL about kid’s housekeeping. Last year for my S’s birthday gift I offered to pay for a cleaning woman to come to his apartment once a month. Best gift I ever game him (and us) and I renewed the gift for this year!
Two- this isn’t a HS student. This is a college student with a history of anxiety. Who seems to be exhibiting signs that the current balance of her life isn’t working.
Should she cut back her academic performance for the sake of the pet hair in the living room? This seems counterproductive to me.
@thumper1 I never said, or even suggested, that the daughter should do ALL of the family chores. Even without a part-time job, that is just unfair. I said she should take of her own personal needs and that household chores in common family areas should be divided among the family members. I agree that children are NOT their parents’ personal maids. I also see absolutely no reason for the daughter to ever be responsible for parents’ or siblings’ rooms, even to “pay” for her room and board.
While, true, you could ask the question of who will be doing these chores when she leaves the house, also ask who will be doing her chores in her dorm room or apartment when she leaves for college. College floors still will need to be cleaned (either vacuumed or mopped), desks and other furniture dusted, clothes washed, dishes cleaned (if in an apartment), bathrooms scrubbed (if not communal), etc.
One hour of chores every week or two on a Saturday or Sunday will fit into anyone’s schedule. Or, take a chore or two every day for a few minutes. Again, have her clean up her room, put her own dishes away, and do her own laundry. She should clean up the kitchen and family room once a week. If she has her own bathroom, she’s responsible. If she shares, she divides the cleaning duties.
Since the dog can’t be expected to clean up after himself, Mom and Dad should be responsible for him, including any “extra” cleaning that goes along with his upkeep. The dog stays with Mom and Dad, so he’s basically theirs.
My kids mopped their floors zero times while they were in college and grad school. I just asked them and got back a range of hilarious responses.
Vacuum- yes. Dry swiffer- once a semester. Wet mop- never. Dusting- never.
That seems like a lot of chores. I have a college student and an almost college student living at home, plus younger kids. The two older ones will also be leaving for school this summer. They have chores, but they are paid a set amount of allowance to do them. Taking care of their own rooms, dishes, etc… is just expected of everyone. My kids chores lists are nowhere near that extensive and they are paid. What you are giving her sounds like a housewife’s to do list.
Has there ever been a college kid who dusted, vacuumed, or mopped anything except when (1) parents were about to visit or (2) it was the end of the year and the place had to be clean so they could get their deposit back?
I know she’s in college, but some on this thread are reacting like children never do heavy chores like mopping or vacuuming. I did it from age 8 or 9 (but no criticism on the quality of the job). My kids emptied the dishwasher and trash, but if they were busy I did it.
I think the parents should expect less, but it is their home and it seems they believe the daughter has to earn her keep. Many on CC don’t think so. I’m sort of between in believing that everyone in a household needs to contribute, but that each person gets to decide when and to what quality the chores are performed.
If one of our kids was a full time student holding down a job, my wife and I wouldn’t require any chores at all.
I asked my kids too. Dusting…never. Floor mopping maybe once a month with a swiffer. Vacuuming…about the same (but no dogs in the college housing).
I agree…many hands make light work. If BOTH parents are sharing these chores, then that would help.
I think the mom (OP) feels the standards shpuld be relaxed… but the dad is more strict.
That being the case, I agree about a family meeting with ALL the stakeholders…mom, dad and all kids living at home should have shared responsibilities.