One of the things that Dorothy does each week is clean up the shoes in the garage. We do not wear shoes in the house, and it is really convenient for everyone to leave their shoes in the garage, since we come in through the garage (into the laundry room) and there are too many of us and too many pairs of shoes to make leaving them in the laundry room sustainable. We have 2 shelved alls in the garage on either side of the door to the house: one for kid shoes and one for grown up shoes. Plus we have a boot matt and a carpeted space on each side for boots.
The shoes get SO MESSY because if one person doesn;t put their shoes on the shelf when they take them off, then no one does.
Dorothy is supposed to clean the shoes up twice a week, once on Sunday and once on Tuesday which mirrors Cooper's take out the trash chore (he empties inside trashes on Sunday and puts the cans on the curb on Tuesday). On Tuesday this week, she tidied up the shoes before she left ofr school in the morning, but when she got home from dance that night, she kicked her Uggs off her feet, one flying under the snowblower and the other lodging itself under the stairs to the house, and pranced inside without a care in the world.
I was like why are you making a mess with the shoes when you are one who has to clean them up? And she shrugged and said what does it matter if they get messy-- I have to clean them up in a couple of days?
This is FOR SURE not my approach to chores. But you know what? It's not wrong, and offloading some tasks onto Dorothy and Cooper has given me the space to slow down and process that idea.
Now if only I cold talk her into wearing a coat.
