A House of Order
Section 3

Growing up in a house of order can make the difference between surviving or thriving, existing or engaging and absorbing or contributing. The worksheets in this section start with a simple premise that each individual must be made to understand that he has value and is necessary for the survival of those around him. The household should not be able to continue as normal if he is missing. Everyone in the household should be affected. If not, we have created an environment where he has no purpose or reason to exist. Parents “do” for their children without asking anything from them in return. What kind of impact will this have on their self worth? We try to make up for their lack of self esteem by complimenting them or giving them praise, but these rewards are very empty when they are not earned through actual accomplishment.

Today’s parent believes that it is important to keep children from “getting stressed out” with too many chores or homework or demands. This is the first generation of children who have no real demands made on them within their own household. They are allowed to sit around and watch TV or play games because there are no cows to milk, eggs to gather or gardens to weed. Keeping a child “busy” becomes a parental dilemma because they know that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” Kids that are not busy will make messes and get into trouble. The remedy for the lack of demands made on children has become the search for new and more addicting video games that will keep them sitting in one place for long periods of time. At least this way we know where they are and that they are not getting into trouble. But is this the best answer?

In section 2 we looked at this same problem from a health perspective, seeing that having everything done for us makes us lazy and weak and unproductive. We are eating foods that have been process and produced by other people instead of providing for ourselves. This generation has lost the sense of self reliance entirely, knowing that they can just “run to the store” to get anything they need, want or imagine. We saw how the Word of Wisdom taught us to eat foods that are in their natural state, but many of our children have never seen whole grain wheat that hasn’t already been bleached, ground and made into something that contributes absolutely nothing to their health and well being.

The same remedies that I proposed in section 2 will solve the parenting dilemmas of section 3. If a household begins to be more self-reliant by baking their own bread, growing their own vegetables and cooking with whole foods that are not done in an “instant” there will suddenly be much work to do around the house. There will be sprouts to rinse and wheat to grind. There will be beans to mash and tortillas to flip. There will be many, many more pots and pans to wash. There will be chores!!!! A child will now grow up knowing how to produce instead of how to sit around with no purpose or direction.

Mother is the central figure in this marvelous and exciting transition. She has to stop being the servant and start being the administrator of a house of order. She has to assign jobs to each member of the household based upon their age and ability. She has to be the one who sees to it that each job is done rather than be buried in doing everything herself. She needs to put down the sponge and mop and pick up the pencil and clip board. She might even do well to get herself a whistle! The mother who learns to delegate, demand and dictate policy will discover that she has more leadership ability than she ever realized. This is what she was born to do! Her children will learn responsibility and gain the self esteem that comes from being truly necessary to the well being of those around them while mom will feel better about her life and her position as queen of her own castle.

I pray every day for the family unit to become strong and immovable and unified. I have a testimony of the power that comes when mothers take the role upon themselves as the instigator of growth and maturity for those they are responsible for. I believe that it begins with mothers changing their households into a house of order where everyone knows their assignment and their place with their eye on the goal to be self reliant and prepared in body, mind and spirit to face the challenging times we live in.

Stewardship : “A place for everything and everything in its place.” This is a quote from Benjamin Franklin and is wise advice for us today. If we take this one idea and apply to every part of our home, most of us would find that we own more belongings than we have places for. We have more articles of clothing than we can fit in our drawers. We have more toys than can fit in our toy boxes. We have more shoes than we can fit in our shoe racks. We even have more junk than can fit in our “junk drawers.”

To establish a house of order, the first order of business is to analyze every single item we have in our home by asking three questions:

Anything beyond these parameters brings chaos to your home.

How much is too much? It all depends upon how much space you have. We are advised in our financial lives to “live within our means” which means that we are not to spend any more than we have. We can apply this to all aspects of our stewardship. Space in our homes can be budgeted just like money in our bank accounts. We have to live within the square footage that we have. Closet space, floor space, wall space, garage space—is finite and will not grow or change as long as you live at that address. Therefore, to “spend” more space than you have is to own more belongings than you can stuff in your home without producing a chaotic mess.

Having too many belongings is a problem that is unique to the affluent society that we live in. There are many people in the world who feel rich if they own a pair of shoes. We on the other hand, will never feel rich, because there is no end to the things we believe we need to have to make life worthwhile. Life would be much simpler if the only thing we had to own is a pair of shoes to feel like we had “enough.” But Americans never feel they have enough.

The idea of finding more and more spaces to put more and more belongings is the lifestyle of the rich and greedy. We all fall into this trap from time to time. Do we feel like we don’t appreciate the things we have if we give them to the needy before they are old and warn out? Does this mean we only give the needy our trash? We have to change our thinking to be one of generosity. We can give away our belonging when we know we have more than enough. Because our lifestyle is one of “acquiring” we have to be able to give it away at the same rate or we will have an obvious problem with space.

QUESTION: How do we know when we have more than enough?

ANSWER: When we have more belongings than will fit in the finite spaces in our homes.

In summary, the first steps toward establishing a house of order is choosing which belongings are absolutely necessary to our survival, which belongings make our lives worthwhile and which belongings bring chaos and confusion to our homes.

We can apply this concept to the stewardship of our time as well. Time is a finite gift from God. There are only 24 hours in each day and only seven days in each week. What you do with your time and what you allow your children to do with their time will establish a house of order or a house of chaos. The same three questions apply when choosing the activities that fill the day: 1) Do they need it to survive? (Does this activity provide basic needs to eat, drink, rest or exercise?) 2) Will it make their lives more worthwhile? (Is it something that they are compelled to do in the deepest part of their individuality?) 3) Do they have room for it? (Can it fit in their schedule without sacrificing anything else from question 1 or 2?) Anything beyond this will bring chaos to his life.

Accountability : Everyone needs to have a place where they belong where they can be useful and needed and be missed when they are gone. Self esteem is strengthened when an individual knows that what he does within his home and family is important and that if he didn’t do his part, it would affect everyone in the household. At a very young age a little person must know that he is an integral part of maintaining a house of order.

As a child grows we find that each year he is capable of more. His chore assignments should be a way of celebrating that he is getting stronger and taller and can take on more responsibility. Chores are a reward system that shows the amount of trust they have earned. For instance, as he is getting taller, he can now have the privilege of putting the silverware away because he can reach. Therefore putting the silverware away is a celebration that he is getting older. Another example is when a child has shown that he is careful and trusted enough to use a sharp knifes. Now he can be trusted enough to have the chore of cutting up the vegetables for dinner. In this light, chores are their own reward and should be assigned with great enthusiasm and honor to the child.

Offering a child a reward in order to “get” them to do a chore is bribing and will establish the “what’s in it for me?” mentality instead of developing the sense of accomplishment that comes with a job well done. Rewards must be established at the time the chore is assigned and must remain the same every time just as pay will be in the “real world” when they work at a “real job.”

Chore Assignments : The worksheets in this section will help to establish accountability for the chore assignments and daily structure for each person in the family. They will each carry a part of the load of maintaining a house of order. They will learn to value life, money, belongings and learn to love to work hard. They will learn to relate to the real world and understand how to earn a living and provide for their own needs. When you have a guest living in your home for more than 3 days, he too must be given special assignments. In a house of order everyone must contribute and carry his own weight.

To develop various kinds of responsibility and accountability in each person in the household, we assign some chores for a short amount of time and others for longer. The longer periods, such as a year, gives the sense of ownership of the home and the responsibilities that go with it. The shorter term assignments that change monthly develop the ability to take orders, follow instructions and to be flexible. When assignments are given for just one time and rotated between siblings, no one ever gains the sense of ownership of that particular chore and never gains the sense of accomplishment when that chore is consistently done well. This is when we often hear comments like, “I did it last time.” Or “It’s not my turn to do it.”

If you are a family of more than two children, it is important to stay consistent in assignments for each age. For instance if your first child was doing dishes at 4 years old, then your second and subsequent children should be expected to do the same at 4 years old. The first born of the family is statistically given more training time and more responsibility at a younger age than the children that follow, at times causing younger siblings to be less responsible. If you keep a family tradition of chores at each age, the responsibilities of the household chores will fall upon each child in a consistent way.

Then you will be able to talk about it long before the time the responsibility is given to each child. For instance saying something like, “Caleb will be starting school in three weeks. That means that his chores will pass to Gabriel. You both are getting so big.” When chores are assigned with this kind of enthusiasm, they will feel great about the chore and great about themselves and understand that as they grow, their responsibilities will grow with them.

Rewards : If chore assignments are presented in a way that celebrates the growth, maturity, abilities and trust that a child has developed, do they need much more reward than this? Rewards such as toys, gum, allowance, entertainment or privileges must be dolled out in a way that reflects the quality and the quantity of the work that has been done and must be withheld when a job has not been done well or not been done at all. When rewards are out of balance with the job that has been done, the child will have difficulty understanding the world around him.

When you lavish rewards on a child just because they beg for it, they will not understand the concept of working to provide for their own needs. When they have more than they can possibly “pay for” with their own efforts around the house, they will be unrealistic when they move into providing for their own needs as an adult and will imagine they should have much more than they could ever pay for by their own efforts. This sets them up to be very vulnerable to the trap of credit card debt and living beyond their own means. It is much kinder to a child, to give them an assignment to do in order to earn every privilege and reward. On two special occasions we can give a gift that isn’t earned: on their birthday and at Christmas. And even then, as a parent, we have to put it through the three questions we started with: Do they need it to survive? Will it make their lives more worthwhile? Do they have room for it? Anything beyond this will bring chaos to his life.

Allowance : Giving money as payment for the responsibilities that a child takes on is an appropriate way to teach about life and earning a living. Giving an allowance without having chores assignments attached to it makes no sense in any way. If a child doesn’t do his chores, he doesn’t get his allowance. It is simple. Then he will understand that if he doesn’t work as an adult, he doesn’t get paid.

A toddler learning to pick up his toys will not understand about getting a reward later for a job well done now. He will not put the two together that he is being rewarded at the end of the week for the job he did yesterday and today. Rewards for a toddler have to be immediate by saying something like, “After you pick up your toys, we can play a game.” You are teaching them that they must do something before they can have that special privilege that they love to do.

Candy, desserts or any other food as a reward may set up problems with obesity and other health related problems. Giving and taking away candy, desserts of food as reward and punishment may set up inappropriate feelings toward food. For small children, a piece of sugarless gum might work well for doing specific chores, but beyond this works against the child’s health and well being instead of for him.

Money begins to have value to a child around the age of five. They begin to understand buying and paying for the things they want. Allowance can begin with just pennies at first and will still be enough to motivate a young child.

Tithing : To teach tithing and other important budgeting concepts, we give allowance in tens. We start with 10 pennies at five years old. They can easily be taught about tithing and savings of 10% each. At six we change to dimes. At eight we change to quarters. At ten we change to dollars. We have four jars for each child. We write their initials on the bottom with a magic marker and write “tithing” “savings” “spending” and “expenses” on the front. As we hand out their allowance of 10 pennies, dimes, quarters or dollars, they drop one in tithing, one in savings, one in spending and seven in expenses. Isn’t that true to life? Should a child be given money and then allowed to go spend it at the dollar store on “stuff” that doesn’t pass the test of stewardship that we started with? As they spend their money, they should understand that their expenditures must go through the questions: 1) Do I need it to survive? This counts as an “expense.” 2) Do I need it to make life worthwhile? This warrants using their “Spending” money. 3) Do I have room for it? This eliminates many items or causes them to give up something they already have to make room for the new item. Finally, anything beyond these parameters brings chaos to their lives.

While there may be many more aspects of establishing a house of order, we are addressing stewardship, accountability and allowance in Section 3. I hope you can utilize one or all of the ideas in this section to bring order to your home.

Teré Foster

Founder of 3DHealth.net