Three blessing hours: a cleaning routine that bailed our big family out of excess clutter

With six kids ten-and-under, the house looks lived in every single day. My mother in law joked she could have a full-time job, like the people who sweep the grounds at the Disney parks, just sweeping our house all day long, every day.

It's true.

I seriously question how it's possible for it to look like someone took a shoe full of sand and dumped it in every room, every day. But mostly it's toast crumbs. And pencils, because the children, bless them, are prolific artists.

Following the birth of our fifth child, a girl after four brothers, I was at a loss. It seemed impossible to live the way we were, in a house that was impossible to maintain. No matter how much I decluttered and made chore schedules for myself and even included the children in the systems.

It wasn't working.

Until my husband came up with the idea to convert what we were already doing, a daily afternoon blessing hour, into a more robust system.

Up until then, we were cleaning the house every afternoon once our homeschool day was completed. I called this our blessing hour, coined from another homeschooler on the internet, and the children were at least fully on board for that.

It was enough to keep us from being completely drowned, but not enough to keep me sane.

The idea of the three blessing hours was pretty simple. Instead of once a day, I would require that we all work together three times a day. First thing in the morning, right after the homeschool was completed for the day, and after supper. My husband set three timers on our family computer that went off at the same three times every day, and it was like magic. The children understood it was futile to argue with the alarm, much as they sometimes dreaded it, and they learned it was kind of nice staying on top of the house.

Amidst grumbling, were mentions of how much easier it was to play in spaces that were tidy and reset for play each day.

Before introducing the new system we developed to replace what we were already doing, I wanted to provide some context about our starting point. Blessing hour and eventually three blessing hour established excellent foundational habits and set the expectation for a daily tidying routine. It helped the children to get into the mindset of working as a team, of the importance of their contribution in the daily running of the house.

I think this habit of the daily blessing hour is an essential element to the success of the new system I created for our new house.

As soon as I conceived of the idea for the duty rotation, (buy the template from my etsy shop) I knew it was going to surpass the three blessing hours. Much as I was grateful for how well the blessing hours had been working, there was one major problem, and it was only getting worse the older my first two kids became.

Next post for more on duty rotation!

Olivia