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We have four bio kids (one with serious disabilities), and are licensed for four more kids (although we had 10 kids total for a short period when a sibling group of five joined a single), so we anticipate going to 7-10 kids any time now. I would love to hear what your best strategies for staying organized, keeping up with laundry, dishes and meal preparation and keeping everything running smoothly are! What's the best big family advice you ever got?
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We have 17 kids, with 11 still at home. As to laundry we do 2 loads every day. Without fail or we get behind. Dishes are rotated thru the bigger kids with little ones helping. Ex.: Megan age 15 does breakfast dishes with Sam age 5 helping. With dinner dishes the older kids work together, girls one night boys the next night. I make a Meal schedule for one month, breakfast, lunch and dinner for each day. This works good for us, everyone knows what is to eat for each meal. We shop at Sams Club each month and local grocery stores for specials. I also make double meals often and freeze one for later. Hope this helps!
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I only have 6 at the moment.....but I agree with the laundry thing. Mine is in the basement and a couple of the older kids have bedrooms down there, so when I go down to wake them for school I throw in laundry. If I get it started at 6am before the little ones are up I can do a couple loads a day! All kids have chores they do to, we have "chore charts" on clip boards on the wall, each kid has their own clip board to take down and check off tasks, it's all geared towards their age level and the older kids had some say in it. As far as meals, it's best to plan ahead, sit down one night a week and figure out the next week or 2 for dinners, get input from the kids. It saves so much money and stress to plan ahead!