tell me about your large family!

It's just the four children now but they are pretty well scheduled. I have to add in chores; right now my six year old empties the bathroom garbage cans and my five year old clears the table. My four year old is in charge of making sure all the dirty clothes make it down the laundry chute and the baby is learning how to put dirty dishes in the sink. That's about as deep as it gets in the chore department. :arrow: They are on a regular schedule for meals, quiet time, baths/showers, and bedtime. Everything in-between is kiddie chaos. :hypno:Edited to add how we save money:We cut costs by buying in bulk. We only shop once a week for perishables at the local grocery store but we do our major shopping once per month. We buy our gas at BJs, which saves us a couple of cents per gallon off standalone gas stations in the area, and we limit trips to the children's museum/chuck e. cheese's/library/etc. to twice per week instead of every other day like we used to do. Right now we are down a vehicle and we are shopping for gas friendly vehicles for our summer purchase. We went from cable to Directv to save about $50 per month. We run our washer and dryer just once per day now. We cut down eating out and I have started making our own bread and I invested in a pressure cooker to aid in fast cooking with minimal effort.

We buy wholesale through a co-op. (We don't have a 'large' family, but we live an hour away from the grocery store, so I keep most everything always on hand.) We also shop at a discount canned foods warehouse. There are also some restaurant food supply chains that will sell to the public. They have large pack items, like gallons of ketchup, or mayo, and number 10 cans of fruits/veggies and are often competitive with places like CostCo and Sam's Club. I make my own mixes for bread, corn bread, biscuits, cakes, cookies, meats (for spaghetti, tacos, etc.) and also sauces. I also make my almost everything from scratch and my own hamburger helper-ish kinds of things. You can also mix up cookie dough and freeze it in balls, then pull it out and have cookies in a short time. This does take time and planning, but it can be incorporated into the routine a little here and a little there. I have two large freezers, two refrigerators, and a large pantry area. This helps tremendously!We have assigned each child a set of towels, and they each have a bowl and a cup for meals. In theory they are in charge of washing their own bowl after every meal. Dh or I supervise and each child steps up on the step stool and washes their bowl and their own cup and utensils. This cuts down on time and also lowers the use of the dishwasher, thus saving electricity, water, and dishwasher soap. All of the kids are able to do this, even the 2 yo with only minimal help. Each child has two drawers for their clothes. I bought plastic 'sports equipment' drawers that would, I suppose, typically be in one's garage. The drawers are roughly 18" deep and about 24" long. Each kid has 5 pr. pants/shorts, 6 or 7 shirts, a couple of sweat shirts, 7 pr. socks/underwear, 4 pr. pajamas, 2 winter coats, 2 nice dressy outfits for church, etc. Each has one pair rubber boots, one pr tennis shoes, one pr sandals, one pr church shoes, and one pr snow boots. If we lived in a different climate they wouldn't have that many shoes, but we live in a snow zone and also on a farm, so.... This drastically reduced on the laundry. I also only keep out one season of clothing at a time and store all off-season clothes. I keep track of who needs which items of clothing and shop consignment and thrift stores. for everything except underwear. (I'm picky about undies.) These clothing drawers are NOT in the kids' rooms as I kept finding clothing everywhere, so now all clothes are in a common area of the house until I can get the laundry room finished. (OH, we're also remodeling.) Once the laundry room is done all clothing will be in there so that when the launder-er get things out of the dryer and fold them and then immediately put them away without fuss. More time efficient for whomever is doing laundry.Each bed has two sets of sheets and the sheets are kept in a drawer in each room.We live by routine, and the kids (under the age of 12) go to bed at 7 p.m. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and everything else is pretty much on the same routine each day, too. Most of my kids have special needs, as well, so Routine is our friend. :D Each child has chores (again, in theory! :rolleyes:) We have outside chores for the older and more responsible kids, and the younger kids have indoor chores. The little kids (ages 2 and 3) empty the dishwasher and are able to put away all the dishes except for a few that are in cupboards above the counter. The 6 yo is in charge of emptying trash cans into the big trash cans for dad, and for feeding the indoor animals. The two older kids do the outside chores and sweep/maintain the floors and bathroom. When everyone does their chores life goes relatively smooth.We don't have high speed internet, but plain old dial up (due to where we live) and we don't have cable (again, due to our location) or satellite tv. We do belong to a DVD club and are able to get movies that we approve for viewing. (TV scares me! Have you seen what's on there?!) We limit our technology so I suppose are still doing lots of things 'the old fashioned way', but it also happens to be 'the old CHEAPER way', too, much of the time. :evilgrin: We do have a large capacity front loading washer. This has been wonderful. I can safely wash and air dry all those stuffed animals without shredding them. :cheer: Let's see...we also only drive anywhere as a whole family only when we have to. Church, some appointments, etc. Otherwise we use the 'little' car instead of the van. I don't take all of my kids shopping, and usually it is either Dh or I who go, not both.We also homeschool, and this has been ... interesting ... during the last two years. We had two adoptive children arrive 9 months apart and this has really upset my schedule! LOL I was also very ill for the first 6 months after the arrival of our last child, so this further threw off all routines. BUT we are bouncing back now and things are starting to (FINALLY!) shape up again.

Barksum- I have a question about your laundry area. So do your kids get their outfits out for the next day before they go to bed at night, or are you the one that hands out the clothes in the morning- how does that work? I've seen that idea on a TV special about the Duggars (the family with 17 kids). just wondering how it would work- in theory it sounds good- but our laundry area is on the first floor,and the bathroom/bedrooms are on the 2nd. How big is your laundry area? I'm not sure if our laundry room would be large enough, but maybe if dh added extra shelves. hmmmm....

The ideal would be, of course, that the kids get their own clothes in the evening and have them ready to put on in the a.m. I don't have the same floor plan as you, so the bath and the laundry are on the same floor. Usually the kids get their when they get up in the a.m. here, but in your case it would be easier to have the clothes out in the p.m. I'd still supervise the clothes getting; "Ok kids, it's 7 p.m., time to go get your clothes ready for tomorrow." Or something like that.As to size of the laundry room let me run and measure the area where it will be. (Right now the clothes drawers are in my living room.... :rolleyes:) The room is approx. 5' x 10' or 12'. I have a stackable washer/dryer . Each set of 2 drawers is 26" high x 18" wide x 18.5" deep. If you don't have drawers then shelving with bins works well, too. The thing is that you have to weed through the clothes and only keep what is actually needed and used, not all the things that are cool, pretty, might be used sometime, etc. Oh, and all church clothes are in my closet. In this way there are always clean, white undershirts for the boys, tights that are clean without holes for the girls, and the dressy dresses aren't worn for a play date in the sand box, etc.