How to Do a Big Project in a Big Family Part 4 - Bathing the littles

(See the introduction and other posts first if you haven’t!)

Like with House Bingo, if you do it right, jobs being uneven can be an advantage. But with simpler things, if people all want the same job, there will be a lot of quarreling. Sometimes it seems like taking the hardest job is all you can do. But it is not.

You can divide work well.

Twice a week (or more) the time comes when all four little ones who don’t bathe themselves need a bath. The other six bigger kids need to bathe them. Sometimes the bathroom can get really full and noisy. And wet. People all want to bathe the easiest to bathe kid (the biggest of the littles) and get out of the rest.

I spotted the problem and decided we needed an assembly line. I made a list of the jobs:

• finding clothing for afterwards
• getting kids into the bath and washing their hair
• bathing their bodies and getting them out
• drying them off plus odd jobs
• lotioning them
• clothing them

I added “odd jobs” to the drying job to even it up a bit, but everyone still wanted it. How would I decide to whom to give it? How could I do it in a way people wouldn’t argue? And how to make sure the younger big kids don’t get overly difficult jobs?

I distributed the jobs from youngest to oldest (to the big kids). Nobody argued because I was the oldest and the younger ones should get simpler jobs. Well, a few kids still wanted the drying job but I told them they were too big for it.

And this strategy can be applied to plenty of other things!

Like making breakfast burritos. Nobody wants to make the bacon. Everyone wants to cook the tortillas. I take the bacon-making to get rid of that quarrel. Then I tell them if they cook the tortillas, they also have to put together the breakfast burritos, serve them and clean up. That leaves one person who still wants to make them and the others are content with other jobs.

Now it is time to think about how you can encourage your family to cooperate and avoid social loafing. Let me know if this helps!

How to Do a Big Project in a Big Family Part 3 - The Shovel & Dark Vader of the Kitchen

See the introduction and other posts if you haven’t!)

People need motivation. And if you are one of those people who offer your kids/siblings candy (or money) every time they do something, no offense, but eventually you’ll run out of candy and your kids/siblings’ll have cavities.

My solution is to instead offer them power. Sugar-free.

When all the kids go outside to battle the weeds, they tend to get lazy. Fast. The sun beating down. The lack of prospect of victory against everlasting weeds. You get the idea.

I noticed this problem and another as well. I saw that it was very inefficient for everyone to have to get up regularly to put their weeds in the green waste. So I appointed someone (the first to come outside for weeding) to carry a shovel around and collect people’s weeds for them. A very easy job. Consequently, everyone wanted it.

So the shovel got passed to someone new every five minutes. But not just anyone. The person who — in the shovel carrier’s opinion — weeded the hardest or the most. Now, not only were they weeding to get the easy job, but also for the power of choosing the next person.

This solution:

- encourages people to come outside for weeding fast, because the first to come out got the first turn with the shovel

- added a helpful position where somebody collects what has been weeded

- compelled people to weed more

The kids wanted the shovel both:

- to have an easy job

- and for the power to choose the next shovel person

I use the same strategy when we clean the kitchen and pick up after dinner.

If a few siblings choose to join something called the “Darth Vader system,” they will take turns being “Darth Vader” each evening. “Darth Vader” gets to choose who in the “Darth Vader system” gets what job.

People join the system for the power of being Vader every once and a while and then put themselves subject to the other Vaders’ authority. Since Darth Vader’s job is to make sure the people of the system work efficiently, this strategy works pretty well.

The Darth Vader is in charge of dividing the work, and, especially with complicated tasks, “divide and conquer” is a big deal. More on dividing work next time.

How to Do a Big Project in a Big Family Part 2 - House Bingo

(See the introduction and first post if you haven’t!)

Competition is social loafing’s worst enemy. Social loafing is when everyone tries to the least possible, while competition is when everyone tries to do the most. If everyone keeps a competitive spirit, I can guarantee you won’t have social loafing.

So make it competitive.

Instead of the normal house-cleaning checklist, one day I made a chart. Columns for jobs — picking up, sweeping, mopping, etc. — and rows for rooms — living room, kitchen, hallway, etc.

Once I had came up with many rows and columns, I had many unique boxes. “Mop kitchen,” “Sweep hallway,” “Pick up in living room.” Each box you sign is a point, and each completed row or column you help with is three points.

The ingenuity of this was that not all tasks were equal. This created a race to do the easy things. Even the most slothful kids wanted to get the easy tasks, so they finished each one quickly to go to the next one. Thus, they weren’t slothful anymore!

When I saw which few bigger tasks people shied away from, I wrote a generous amount of points the doer of this chore would get. And hence, workers raced for the hard jobs!

At the same time they raced to complete rows of chores (e.g. sweeping every room) and with all the racing, everything got done! It was super competitive and efficient, and everyone was proud of the checked boxes at the end. Even the younger kids worked hard to get more points than each other. It was beautiful.

Applying competition to weeding also produces much efficiency, as you will see in an example next time.

How to Do a Big Project in a Big Family Part 1 - The Checklist

(See the introduction first if you haven’t!)

If you can say, “Let’s clean the house,” and your siblings will drop what they are doing, pick jobs, and just start working as hard as they can at cleaning that house, with absolutely no quarrels or fusses, then you have a pretty perfect family. You might not even need to read all this!

But normal families need a plan. They need to strategize in order to get those imperfect workers to clean that house. This is the most important way to prevent social loafing. Planning the task is the foundation of the art of warding social loafing.

So plan it out.

For example, whenever we need to scrub our house from top to bottom, typically I get the whiteboard. The whiteboard can be a weapon. Use it wisely. 

I need to know exactly what we have to do, and how we’re going to do it. These are important fundamentals in any plan.

So I make a checklist. And whenever a sib gets a job done, and I look and see it did get done, I let them check the box and sign it off. If you do this, just be careful not to overuse the checklist or it will lose its charm.

But once I took it a step further and made cleaning the house into a bingo game. More on that next time.

How to Do a Big Project in a Big Family Introduction - What is Social Loafing?

There was a time when I didn’t have many siblings. I was very little back then and don’t remember much of it, but that’s why I have parents to quote my younger self. :) According to my parents, I wanted to have more siblings back then because I would have people to help me clean up my stuffed animals and things. More siblings make it make chores easier, right?

Boy, was I wrong! Not only do they add on to the mess, but more times than not, they don’t do their part! From my experience, when it comes to siblings, typically many hands do not make light work.

This is because of a gruesome phenomenon called “social loafing.” Here is how it works:

Imagine there’s a big project with a lot of workers. Say ten people. If everything goes right the job should be done in a tenth the time it takes one person.

Then one of the worker sees the other nine workers around him and thinks to himself, “Even if I put in the minimum effort the job still will be done quickly. There are all these other people working so I don’t need to.”

But what if instead of one working taking this approach, all of them did? Everything would go super slowly. Instead of taking a tenth the time it takes one person, they may take double! Instead of being quicker than one person doing it himself, they are slower!

This is a problem my family faces on a regular basis. The good news is it can be prevented. I am making you a blogging series with a few things you can do to ward social loafing in your family. 

Next time you’ll get the first of my four tips.

1. Plan it out ~ the Checklist
2. Make it competitive ~ House Bingo
3. Give people power ~ The Shovel & Dark Vader of the Kitchen
4. Divide work well ~ Bathing the littles