Our household is a productive one. We are constantly making and doing and accumulating stuff.
Our DIY activities are made possible by family chores using a variety of talents and tolerances. Alex generally handles anything involving the prospect of danger while I cover the gentler arts. I can tolerate messy things much more than Alex while he has the advantage of brute force.
We don't limit ourselves to certain categories, but after 11 years of marriage and 10 years of home ownership, we have fallen into these chore patterns:
- Building beds and hauling dirt
- Cooking meat
- Chopping wood
- Baking sandwich bread
- Machine washing and drying laundry
- Starting Home repairs
- Night time & early morning kid and dog care
- Consuming goods
- Earning income
- Using loud tools (like the hissing, startling compressor-powered finish nailer above)
- Taking risks
- Sowing seeds and weeding
- Insisting on vegetables
- Cleaning up ashes
- All other baking
- Hanging out laundry
- Spackling, painting, and finishing home repairs
- All gross (puke, poop, etc.) kid/dog care
- Purchasing goods
- Paying bills, filing taxes, following a budget
- Taking a much longer time to use a hand tool
- Making careful plans
Well-matched skills are a hallmark of a strong marriage. But that's not to say that all chores go smoothly. Alex and I are opinionated folk and when our opinions differ (about who will do something, or how we will do it together) we can argue like champs. We eventually come to a decision and get the work done.
For the most part, Alex and I share a basic motivation - to enjoy a simple, delicious life - and split the tasks needed to reach our goals in an equitable way.
How do you share labor among the members of your family?