Yesterday was the day I kind of lost it at the kids about clean-up. Not yelling, more crying. Kevin and I are both working more than full-time, and we just HAVE to have them pitching in more. The kids do whatever we ask, but I don’t have time or energy right now for asking.
The house is getting to the point of desperately needing deep cleaning — MUST MOP, GAH — since we’ve been paying our house cleaner not to come for the duration (Isa, we miss you!), and Kev and I can’t manage that on top of standard daily house and garden maintenance tasks.
These calendars used to be full of family activities — soccer, chess club, etc. That’s all gone for now, so I’m repurposing them for daily chore lists. Here’s Anand’s, created in consultation with him — it’ll undoubtedly evolve as time goes on, but my hope is to get him habituated to these things, and then add others.
‘Straighten up’ basically means walking through a room (or even better, an entire floor), putting cushions and blankets back on the couch, throwing away any trash (Anand has a bad habit of getting distracted and leaving yogurt containers and banana peels around), putting any dirty dishes in the dishwasher (ditto Anand with yogurt and peanut butter spoons). I just can’t cope with picking up after them all the time anymore.
Can I get this family to become a smoothly running domestic machine by the time school starts up again? That’d be very nice. They are very invested in not having Mommy start crying, so at least for now, they’re both very on board with this plan. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Kavi’s board to be developed after she wakes up. 
She’s two years older, so has a lot more standard chores like ‘do the dishes’ and ‘take out the trash / recycling’. She also has more schoolwork than him, though, so we’ll have to balance that. But she’s watched a LOT of tv in the last month, so I think there’s some room there still.
Just grateful that mine are old enough, at 10 and almost 13, to really help out. Those of you with littles at home, with all adults in household still working — salud! And hang in there.