Sometimes, when our family spends part of a school day catching up housework rather than hitting the books, we jokingly say that we’re doing “life skills” class. Even though we’re kidding, there is a kernel of truth — and even more validity — to the statement. The skills my kids are learning when we clean house, do laundry, or cook meals together are important skills for life that are often overlooked.
- cooking
- planning a menu
- making a grocery list
- frugal shopping skills
- basic housekeeping skills such as cleaning and laundry
- balancing a checkbook
- creating and implementing a family budget
- simple household repairs
- time management
- record-keeping (knowing what to keep, how long to keep it, how to file it so that it can be found — things like receipts, tax records, etc.)
What are some skills that you would include on a household management list? Are there skills that you wish you’d learned before you left home that you may not necessarily need, but would be nice to know?
For me, those would include things like: operating a sewing machine, gardening, and canning.
Kris is the sweet tea drinking, classically eclectic, slightly Charlotte Mason, homeschooling mom to three Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
photo by emrank
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I totally agree — life skills are so important. This is coming from a girl that got married pretty early in life (just after my first year of college — I was 19), and I didn’t know how to cook or do laundry or iron or any number of household tasks. And, you can totally forget about any financial tips at all. I *think* somebody must have showed me how to use a checkbook, because I already had a checkbook at that point. But, I think any discussion was probably less than five minutes.
About a week before I got married, my Mom had to give me a crash course in doing laundry.
I am guilty of not having my kids do enough, but especially as they get older, we’ll do more, particularly because we have the freedom of homeschooling to give us more time to work on that.
Yeah, I considered it kind of curse at the time, but I guess it really was a blessing that I was the childcare provider for my little sister for most of the evening from the time I was 14. I learned lots of house keeping skills during that time, cooking being at the top of the list.
Just wanted to let you know you won Alasandra’s Homeschool Blog Awards. Come by to pick up the badge.