Pulling your Weight

This post is a continuing series of articles about when adult children move back with their parents. We covered a number of topics over the past two months. However, this one is about balancing the workload and pulling your weight while living at home.

Imagine if your daughter, son-in-law, and the children suddenly moved back into your house. How much extra work would there be with all of these extra people in your home? Should the parents take on the job of cleaning, laundry, cooking all the meals, and other chores as a result of the kids moving back home?

Pulling your Weight

It can easily happen, especially if the parents are retired. Or if one of the parents is staying at home while everybody else goes out to work and to daycare. Ground rules need to be established before the children move back. Ensure that the workload is spread evenly and everyone pulls their weight.

For example, laundry can be an issue for many people. It is easier for the spouse who stays home to do the laundry during the day while everybody’s at work however this means extra laundry, folding, ironing, and putting laundry away. Cooking is another example of extra work. Should the parents buy all the groceries and prepare all the meals?

Every family must work out their own personal situation. We happened to think that the children should be responsible for cleaning their own rooms and living area. We are quite comfortable, vacuuming, and cleaning the common areas of the house.

Regarding meals, one way to divide up the workload is for one person to cook, and another person to set the table, and another person to do the cleanup afterward i.e. washing the dishes and putting them away. Of course, the children need to be looked after, after the meal, bath, storytime, etc. so this is all part of the equation.

Regardless of how you work it out, setting the ground rules ahead of time and following these ground rules will make everyone’s life acceptable and avoid any increased level of frustration for the children, adults, moving back with the parents. This applies to short term as well as the long term moving arrangements.

Those are our thoughts about pulling your weight when children move back into the home with their parents. Let us know what you think.

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