Room Evaluations and Apprentices

A great advantage of children growing up with room evaluations is that the evaluation becomes an objective standard you can both work to uphold. It does not matter that you were the one that set the objective standard, once it’s written down, it becomes “official.” Plus, a child only a room and maybe a bathroom to concentrate on. A playroom, or a practice room, toy sections in a basement or attic room, or sports and bike storage in a garage can also get the evaluation treatment. For you, whenever someone adopts a room, it is one less you need to worry about.

Of course, you do need to do your own form for each child’s room for yourself, because you will be responsible for it for at least a year or two–at least until the baby can walk! If you have designed a strong five minute routine, even a child of one or two can help get parts of the routine done, and they will be learning what you expect. They will also be learning that family is a co-op; everyone has to do a lot of work to keep the whole system functioning well.

Doing a joint evaluation with 3rd-5th graders gets them thinking about breaking down big jobs into smaller ones. They also learn everything that goes into a “clean” room, beyond just making a bed, putting away clothes, and throwing out old food. They can get used to jobs happening on a cycle. They can learn different ways to motivate themselves. They can get into the habit of timing themselves. Some may consider this fun.

Junior high  apprentices can do their own evaluation. You can helping them break down tasks or remind them of something they overlooked. In a perfect world, teen adults would want to do their own evaluation whenever anything major changes in their room.

Children who grow up spending ten minutes with their room each day can get a lot done. They will also NOT spend ten minutes a day, everyday keeping to their routine–probably like some of the adults who also live in the home. So in our house, when things got out of hand, the starting point was always the door, working into the room, handling each issue or problem as it presented itself. If the first thing someone fell over were books on the floor, they went back on the shelf (Note the fact that there was a shelf where the books went). Clothes on the floor went into the basket (Note again, a basket for dirty clothes was in the room). Old papers were thrown away–going as far into the room as ten minutes would get them.

Personally, I favor keeping the work module to ten minutes. First, of all, I was not likely to forget to check their work after only ten minutes. But of far greater long-term value, is facing the reality that allowing things to get out of hand, takes days to rectify.

In all areas of life, I do not like to reward “the big emergency push at the end to get something done.” Such an all-hands-on-deck approach should be saved for genuine, unavoidable emergencies, not routinely used to let someone off the responsibility skewer who did not plan, prepare, or delegate ahead of time, or simply did not do the work they should have done.

I prefer the systems manager (you) to set a goal of keeping the newly cleaned part clean and continuing the next day. Again, this method is training the need to keep up with what has been done, while continuing to make headway on what remains. Consistency. Not a major push, then back to neglect.

However, if the child decides they want to continue for a second session to try to get done, we don’t want to squelch that initiative. Set the timer and let them go at it, but never more than two ten-minute sessions in a row. Another option would be to permit an additional session later that day (immediately before or after supper if they are independent workers.)