The last post gave three reasons to establish healthy work attitudes and routines for everyone in the family, but especially for children. Here are three more reasons to love chores.
4. Chores are mature.
Yes. They are. It’s what adults do. In doing our chores, we accept responsibility for our place in the family and in the community. In doing our chores, we acknowledge the worth of others, and we show respect for them. Little hands will grow, and they need to have skills that serve them and others in order to BE mature. Don’t accept the slipshod. Avoid the half-baked. Give children the time and respect necessary to teach making a bed, setting a table, peeling potatoes or any number of home keeping chores correctly.
5. Chores, once they become habits, can move us through time, emotions, and events.
This is true of good events and emotions, but it is even more important for the bad events and emotions. By definition, chores need to be done. They are the domestic grease for life. We don’t just do work when we “feel like it,” or when things are going well. By completing chores, the daily or weekly “nurturing routines” that by now have become habit, we have a physical outlet when grief, trouble, sadness, anger, or other overwhelming situations disrupt—because these things will come.
It is better to do the automatic tasks of “nurturing routines” through adversity than to come out on the other side of trouble and find a series of messes waiting. For those friends and neighbors going through hard times, be specific in offering to complete some recurring domestic tasks to help them get through—not “how can I help?” but “may I mow your lawn this week?” or offering a meal on a specific day. “Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief, “ says Shakespeare’s Berowne. It’s much easier to deal in specifics than in generalities.
Long ago I read a story about a family in unexpected sorrow over a deceased loved one at some geographic distance. A quiet old man from church showed up at their door, and said that he was there to clean shoes. Puzzled, they let him in, and brought him all the shoes, as he requested. He must have been there for some time, but they did not see him leave, and didn’t give it much thought. Days later, when travel plans had been arranged, and it was time for packing suitcases, there were all the shoes for the family, cleaned and ready. What a gift!
How much easier is it when packing for that unexpected journey if the house is already in
order and the clothes are clean and put away? How much better for your hands to be useful bringing or keeping order in familiar places, when the mind goes numb with some unplanned chaos of life? The discipline of routine laundry, dishes, plant watering, feeding children, and sweeping floors will make you useful to others, ease those around you, and help steady your own mind in the crises of life. Train your children to emulate Amy Dorrit, not her sister Fanny.
6. Chores allow margins for your mind to think.
A great author and philosopher once told me that he had his best ideas hanging wallpaper for his wife—he once mentally mapped an entire book that way! The ease of well-trained muscles doing familiar tasks lets the mind concentrate in unexpected ways,
perhaps making interesting connections wholly unrelated to the physical work being accomplished.
Thinking is its own kind of work, and just like a great idea comes or a problem is solved in the shower, ideas and solutions may appear while pushing a vacuum, weeding a garden, or walking a dog. Unplug from the electronics, and let the mind work! Young people need experience training their minds to think and problem solve. The quiet rhythm of a chore is an excellent place for thinking, chewing over a specific problem, or meditating on a scripture passage. Stock your mind, direct its purpose, and let it cogitate.
Love turns work into rest (St. Teresa of Avila). It should be a joy to take care of our families, nurture them and our friends, a joy to be useful in our communities, and a joy to raise children who are also useful and happy in taking care of the domesticities of life. We have the imperative to do our work “heartily, as unto the Lord” (Colossians 3:23), and we know that all who come to Christ that are weary will find rest (Matthew 11:28). God is love. God gives his weary ones rest. When chores are familiar, they too can be rest. No task is too small. Bring up your children in this NURTURE.
Lots of life happens in the margins, and good thinking happens there too. By establishing the core chores that nurture your home and community, by giving those activities proper respect, you’ll have more time for the margins, and greater joy in the projects and work , and yes, the chores that comes with each day.