Large families need plenty of room to navigate peacefully. It’s tricky to keep your household at peace when you all live together all the time. But you can help through conscious decisions.
For instance, consciously putting an end to bickering as soon as it starts will prevent many conflicts. Bickering is bound to happen from time to time. We all get tired and stressed out, so of course, we show displeasure when it happens. However, for large families, dividing tasks between everyone can prevent frictions because both the kids and the parents are busy!
Additionally, focusing on healthy choices, such as snacks or home cooking, will help with mood regulation. Indeed, junk food is typically a factor of stress, which can lead to more conflicts in the long term!
But there’s more you can do to keep your large family at peace! Avoiding everyday frustration is not easy. But you can introduce some tailored approaches to tackle some of the most common issues in the household.
Organize all closets and laundry baskets
It’s easy to keep an overview of what’s in your closet in a small family. But when you have three or more children, clothes accumulate in the most surprising locations, such as behind the sofa when people remove warm layers in front of the tv or forgotten at the back of a drawer. And that’s when people start getting frustrating and accusing each other of stealing clothes! So, if you don’t want a row about where your husband’s favorite Simply Southern shirts have gone, you need to introduce smart rules:
- Each family member has a laundry basket in their bedroom
- Each closet is organized, so you know what you’ve got and IF it’s missing
- Each family member is responsible for folding and putting away their washed clothes
- Have a “put your clothes back into your room” rule, so nothing is left lying around in the house
This will help in many ways. First, everybody will know where each item of clothing is at any given time. Secondly, even little ones can build a sense of responsibility toward their favorite clothes!
Have a special day for each of them
We all know how tricky family meals can be. For parents, it can be tough to satisfy everyone around the table every single time. Your little one isn’t a fan of peas, but everybody else enjoys them, and it’s an inexpensive pantry ingredient. So, you may be tempted to ignore their tastes for now and carry on with the traditional meal plan. Except that your younger one feels betrayed every single time; the meal with peas is a punishment for them! So, if there are some ingredients you simply can’t remove from your cooking list, introduce a day once a week where the person who’s got to put up with something they don’t like can choose the meal.
Contrary to common belief, most kids can enjoy complex flavors too. They are also eager to try new things, so it’s worth encouraging them to research a recipe for one family meal.
Keeping peace inside the household is no easy task, and conflicts will always arise when people are having a bad day. But with these smart tips, you can make sure that your home life is organized to tackle issues effectively.
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