family ties

The blasted terrain is familiar: a dirty house, balky children, and frazzled, frustrated parents. How to negotiate a peace on the itchy issue of children and chores?

Try these strategies to calm the conflict and gain the goal:

The Buck(et) Stops Here
We have met the enemy, and it is us! Lingering ambivalence about our family's life and our own choices can keep us from successfully gaining kid cooperation where household chores are concerned.

Perhaps we grew up in a home heavy with sex-role stereotypes but have chosen a different viewpoint. Maybe we work, and feel a lingering guilt. Some of us may still harbor childish resentment against our own parents, and feel uneasy about "making" children do household chores.

Whatever the reason, an ambivalent mindset can sabotage attempts to enlist children in the fight. Too often, we announce a new regime of household chores in a moment of anger and frustration. Elaborate chore charts are made and ignored after the third day. Family meetings are held which settle nothing more than another layer of dust on the television.

Morning Madness! Only the pre-dinner "Arsenic Hour" comes close in the "Calgon, take me away!" category. Bathroom fights, soggy cereal, and the ever-present, "Mommy! I can't find my . . . !"

Getting the family out the door in the morning can make any parent want to pull the bedclothes up and hide. One small concept can go a long way to taming the morning beast: the family Launch Pad. Just as a spaceship must have a dedicated structure to support liftoff, so family members need a Launch Pad to stabilize them as they blast out the door.

What is a Launch Pad? It's a dedicated space for each family member:

A single location to contain all the "out-the-door" essentials of life. Setting up a Launch Pad can be as simple as clearing a shelf in a bookcase and designating the area the family's Launch Pad.

For the short stuff, the Launch Pad is home to permission slips, lunch boxes, homework, library books and science fair projects. For the household's "big kids", the Launch Pad holds handbags, car keys, return videos, dry cleaning and the day's ration of Slim-Fast. One place. One special place to corral items every family member must have to leave the house each morning.

Enhance the chaos-calming potential of the Launch Pad by observing these organizing guidelines:

Ah, summer! Baseball and sunshine, lemonade stands ... and back to school?

Yep. Summer or not, it's time to think about ways to save money shopping for back-to-school clothing and school supplies.

Hang onto your wallets! With the rise of "back to school" as a two-month marketing exercise for retailers, coupled with cash-strapped school districts which have pushed more of the supply burden onto students' families, it can be a tough job to get the kids outfitted without breaking the bank.

Try these school shopping tips to save money, time and your sanity when shopping for back to school:

Get in the know before you go.

Before checking so much as a single back-to-school sales flyer, you need to know two things: what you need, and what you already have on hand.

Autumn days are long and lazy? Not for today's busy families. Between work, children's activities, and vacation plans, even breezy fall days don't seem long enough to get everything done at home.

There's a solution for busy times. Just as your body needs a "minimum daily allowance" of vitamins and minerals, an organized home needs a minimum of maintenance and attention to keep running smoothly.

Think of this as a Magic Minimum: a short list of essential household tasks. It's a bottom-line list of chores and activities necessary to keep things running at a basic level.

With a working Magic Minimum plan, the household stays afloat, even when time is short.

Spring cleaning is on the horizon, and you could use some help. How do you get the kids to pitch in when it's time to spring-clean the house?

Try these five tips to involve children with housecleaning chores:

• Think teamwork. It's downright lonely to be sentenced to clean a bathroom on your own, but paired with a parent, even a 5-year-old can work safely and happily. While Dad wields the bowl cleaner and the tile brush, his helper can scrub the sink, polish the fixtures, empty the trash and trundle towels and rugs to the laundry room.