Learning more responsibility

After my recent meltdown and realisation that I need to stop doing so much for our girls and give them more responsibility, things have been going well.

They are managing just fine organising themselves in the morning and I've stopped coming back home to pick up anything they might have forgotten.  (Although I must admit to making an exception this morning, coming home for our youngest daughter's swimming bag, but ONLY because it's her birthday!)

We've also made a list of all the jobs we do around the house and are slowly going through them checking that the girls know how to do them all so that they can step up and help.

They are helping out more with cooking dinners, general housework, cleaning the fish tank and at the weekend they both had a go at mowing the lawn.  

After falling into too much of a rut lately of who does what jobs around the house, we're all enjoying shaking things up a bit and as a result we've had more family time as we've been doing things together. Sometimes I'm now doing what were 'the girl's jobs' , which pleases them no end - but at the same time, they are helping me with 'my jobs'. 

It's so much nicer that we're all working together getting things done, than before when we each only did our 'own' jobs.

With mother's day coming up in a couple of weeks here in Australia, I'm looking forward to a day of total relaxation knowing that my girls can just step up and run the household for me that day!

I know we could and should have done a lot of this sooner, but I'm glad we're doing it now!

How much do your kids do around the house? Do they have set jobs, or is everyone just expected to step up as and when things need doing?