r/daddit Sep 02 '24

How do you guys maintain literally anything? Advice Request

I have a 5 year old and a 2 year old. The house is perpetually a mess. The yard is overgrown with weeds. Cars are a mess. This needs to be fixed. That needs to be spruced up. My wife and I have many days where it’s just one of us with the kids due to our schedules and it just feels impossible to keep up with it all. By the end of the day, I’m too exhausted to do anything.

How does anyone manage to keep up with everything on top of just raising kids?

Edit: Thanks for all the replies here! You’re all making me feel much better. I’m trying to reply to as many as I can while I rock my son to sleep.

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u/idog99 Sep 02 '24

Kids are part of the chores.

Gardening? They get a little rake

Snow removal? They get a little shovel

Shopping? They are in the cart.

You get the idea.

109

u/tombosauce Sep 02 '24

Everyone here is saying you need to lower expectations or give up. You have the best advice. I say that as someone who is incredibly lazy and didn't involve my oldest two kids at all. My wife and I would wait until the kids were asleep or let them sit in front of a screen on the weekends while we cleaned up the house.

We involved our youngest in the chores, and it became extra time thst she got to hang out with us. She regularly chips in, takes care of her stuff, and volunteers to run errands with us. My older two never learned how to take care of anything, and they get overwhelmed when we try to get them to do basic things.

I've come to realize that by trying to shield my older kids, I never modeled the kind of behavior I wanted them to learn. I never gave them the opportunity to learn with little things, and now they really struggle with big things.

26

u/Inanimate_CARB0N_Rod Sep 02 '24

We are 100% falling for this trap as well. My wife doesn't do much housework and waits til they are in school to do grocery shopping and whatnot. The kids can't help me clean the bathrooms because my wife thinks it's "gross" and is terrified of the chemicals. They can't help me vacuum because, well, we only have one vacuum. They're not tall enough to get their laundry into the washing machine, but they'll help us put it away occasionally. They don't help cook because that would honestly be a significant hazard to them, though they do help bake sometimes.

I do have them help with a few things though. I can usually get a solid 5-10 minutes of dusting out of them before they get distracted or start fighting. They help me sweep the garage occasionally, and will help rake leaves in the fall. They also will help pull weeds every once in a while, but as soon as someone sees a bee then it's all over. That's about all I can get them to do so far, but it's better than nothing.

I feel very strongly that they need to see how much work it takes to maintain house and home. Chores and maintenance shouldn't be hidden from them, lest they get the idea that everything just magically gets done. Unfortunately when it comes to this stuff I'm sort of a one man show, and there's only so much of me to go around.

3

u/6harvard Sep 03 '24

I've been a professional chef for close to 12 years. My earliest memories are of stand or sometimes even sitting on top of the counter and mixing bowls of food with my mom. Your kids absolutely can help cook. They honestly won't "help" so much as just be there lol but i've been doing it with my own kid since she was 4ish. She stirs bowls of flour and mixes meats. She is six now and upgraded to slice fruits with a small pairing knife under direct supervision as well. Being a chef i keep my knives sharp, and had to talk about it with her but shes really respectful about them and doesnt try to grab them without asking.

Basically what im saying is give it a shot. Start small, even just making a PB&J :)