Swiss Family Gallagher
I made an executive decision today. If children are well enough to make messes then they are well enough to clean them up. After our crazy week there was a lot to do around here today. The kids and I spent a few hours catching up but there will be more to do tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day.
Many things became crystallized in my mind from reading Swiss Family Robinson last week. One of them was why our lives are filled with activities such as cooking and cleaning and laundry. Why? It all seems so tedious and it never ends. Don’t you just want to shout to the Heavens, WHY????
Let me see if I can explain the obvious.
Life would be pointless without these mundane activities. Why do we or our husbands go to work every day? To make money to buy food to cook and eat, to buy clothes to wear and wash to pay for a house to live in and clean. Food, clothing and shelter. That’s life. After that it’s icing but you’ve still got to have the cake. Sugar free of course.
I am ashamed of how how lazy we are. I know SFR is a fictional story but that’s what stories are for. They inspire us to do better. To be better. There are people and cultures on this earth that work from morning till night just to survive and we whine if we have to spend a couple hours cooking, doing laundry and cleaning the house? It’s disgusting.
As soon as the Swiss family reached the island they began looking for food and building shelter. Once they had all these needs taken care of did they stop? No. They hunted for better food, built better shelters and made better clothing. For ten years they worked and their work was their passion. They weren’t searching for the meaning of life. Work was the meaning of life.
When the rainy season came they still worked as much as they could but then they had time for leisure. What did they do with their leisure time? Watch TV? Leisure was education. In our society we have it all wrong. Education is work and leisure is entertainment. We want to be stranded on a desert island so we can relax on the beach all day but we wouldn’t survive long and we aren’t going to survive much longer in this thoughtless society.
“The common answer is that the great books are too difficult for the modern pupil. All I can say is that it is amazing how the number of too difficult books has increased in recent years. The books that are now too difficult for candidates for the doctorate were the regular fare of grammar-school boys in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.” Robert Maynard Hutchins, Education For Freedom, 1943
If that was the case 66 years ago I hate to imagine what Hutchins would think about education today. All I have to do is look in a mirror to see the flaws in it. No wonder we are losing our freedoms. No uneducated people can remain free and we are getting more and more uneducated by the minute.
And more and more lazy. If good books are too hard for us to read and laundry is too much work then what hope is there for us?
We have to rise above this. We have to educate ourselves and we have to learn to work. People seem to be amazed/appalled by the work that my children do but I say it’s not enough. The work I do is not enough. If there is time for us to whine and complain and argue and bicker then we are not working hard enough. If we think sitting down and reading Shakespeare is too difficult or boring then we aren’t working hard enough.
I think we are on the right path but we have a long way to go and it’s time to step it up. I have a plan. You knew I would didn’t you?
The plan is this. From dawn till noon every day we will work as a family. We will not read email or books. We will not practice the piano or the unicycle. We will not whine and complain and argue and bicker. We will work. And when the laundry is done and the house is clean we will find more work. We will make it our passion and our life.
Till noon. (That’s a good start I say.) And then we will relax our bodies but not our minds. We will practice the piano and learn languages and read great books. We will train our animals and sew quilts.
“These, and such like employments, afforded us the rest and recreation we required while engaged in the laborious task of staircase building.” Swiss Family Robinson
Some people work from dawn till dusk just to survive. I think we can survive working till noon. I hear a lot of homeschooling moms say that their kids have to get their studies done in the morning while their minds are fresh. I don’t think it has anything to do with the kids. At least in my case it doesn’t. We have done our schoolwork in the morning because that’s when I had the most energy. I was too tired in the afternoon to be educationally inspiring but with the new plan they will be begging to sit down and memorize Shakespeare. Now that’s inspiring!
Work First Play Later
7:00 Breakfast and the work begins
11:30 Family fun time (this is something I want to start doing every day but I just haven’t yet)
12:00 Lunch
1:00-3:00 Free time (piano, unicycle, reading, horses and other approved hobbies and studies)
If there are any problems during work time they will forfeit their free time and do guess what? More work!
3:00-5:00 Kid school (this is where I chose what they learn)
5:30 Dinner (this should be easy because we will prepare it in the morning)
6:30 Showers and baths
7:00 Kids in bed for read-aloud
7:30 Personal reading till lights out, Free time for Mom
I have already explained to the children that Persistence will usually be in charge of the little girls when I need help with them and Muscles will be in charge of helping me with the heavy labor (although it could go either way). I don’t call him Muscles for nothing.
I am keeping a list of jobs that need to be done as I think of them. I’ll have the kids sign up for the ones they want to do or help with every morning. Some day I might get really organized and make cards but for now I’ll just keep the list.
I’m hoping that once we get the house in order we will be able to start working on the extras like staining the doors and the sunroom, finishing the girl’s closet and my studio, building bookshelves and (don’t hold your breath) putting in a yard.
Day One
Muscles was not at all excited about our new plan but Persistence was. This was very strange because usually it’s the other way around. Maybe it was because he was tired and got stuck with a lot of dishes to wash. Poor kid.
I even got Sailor on board with this new plan. He spent the morning working in the garage, cleaning, fixing bikes and the snow plow. He also de-waspified the sunroom and fixed the vacuum hose. It seems like he accomplished a lot more than I did but I would have to argue that what I did was harder.
I did laundry and supervised the kids doing their jobs while wearing a sick baby. We were actually fighting over that part. Who got to hold the sad, sweet, sick baby. She had another bad day and slept for most of it but perked up once again before bed time.
The children did their usual jobs of tidying the house and washing the dishes but they also cleaned their rooms top to bottom and helped me cut up pears to go in the dehydrator. How does so much junk get shoved under their beds? If we ever lose anything we know to look under Muscles bed for it.
Zero Tolerance
Not only do I have a new plan but I also have a new policy. Zero Tolerance. I let my kids get away with much too much. Like shoving junk under their beds and not cleaning out the van when we get home. I tell them to clean out the van and they actually pretend they are doing it but then the van is always a mess. Funny how that works.
Every day my kids clean their rooms before they go to bed and every day they are a disaster. No matter what I say they all throw their clothes and books all over the floor. NO MORE!!! Picking things up once or twice a day is not enough. Any time I see anything on the floor of their rooms, day or night, I pick it up and they have to buy it back from me. After they go to bed I clean out the van too. It’s amazing how after just a couple days of this you would never know they weren’t little neat freaks. At least for a few days until they get lazy but the next box of confiscated items sets them right again.
Apparently I am just going to keep going on and on so I will force myself to stop there. This has gotten so long that I don’t even want to proof read it. I think I should blog more often so I don’t have to tell you my entire life story in one post. And now I’m off to bed just in case I decide to actually follow The Plan for two whole days in a row. Good night!
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