Reflections on having 19 children and the efficacy of Chore Charts

Been pontificating today on Duggar family and their announcement today that the mother is expecting her 20th child and how delighted they are to be so blessed by G-d.  Yes, TWENTIETH child, that is NOT a typo, but a frightening (to me) reality.

The hounds destroying Christmas Dinner, right off the table.

How can they do it?  I can barely manage a family of 4 - or 6 if you count my lunatic dogs who take more after the famed baying, thieving and generally misbehaving Bumpus hounds from the movie A Christmas Story.

How does this woman manage to run a household of 19 kids without losing her mind?  Now, I don't watch this show, so I cannot say for sure, but from what I have read, it might have something to do with the fact that is seems the elderly female children of the household are basically programmed like a combination FLDS true believers and Stepford wives - where the woman's place is in the home taking care of the chilluns, until she can bust out, get married and start popping out chilluns of her own.  A form of indentured servitude, it would seem to some.

Since I haven't popped out a cadre of servants to help care for my remaining brood and my home, I figure that I may be at a slight disadvantage regarding supply of available labor.  BUT - I also don't have to make over 400 meals a week and do the laundry equivalent of the 101st airborne division.  SO perhaps that point of availability of labor is a wash.

Then I realized one MAJOR difference.  Her kids are all home schooled.   She doesn't have to fight for 30 minutes each and EVERY DAY before departing the house to ensure that everyone has socks on, brushed hair and teeth, and underwear on their person.  (Clean or not, for goodness sake, please let them be wearing underwear.)  She doesn't have to root through cluttered backpacks for forgotten homework, make sure all the various paperwork for all the different kids is signed off on.  There are no forms to return asking for registration to Jazzersize class, no checks to write for Spanish class, no fixing snack for the whole class on the third Wed. of the month, no remembering the bookfair/bake sale/Halloween Fun Night/ Clean Kitchen Club/wrapping paper sale paperwork for the various PTA fundraiser, no volunteering as Girl Scout leaders or Soccer Coaches, not to mention all the crazy and varied paperwork required from Fairfax county about our racial background and if we are employed by, or working on Federal Property.  *shew*  I am exhausted just thinking about it and wondering how I get any actual work done at my office with my grey matter preoccupied with all of the above minutia of my domesticity.

When Ms. Fertile-Myrtle's kids go to school, they leave the breakfast table (with or without brushed hair and underwear on), go straight to their assigned chores, and when finished, sit down right at class.  Mom is helped out by her cadre of minions that she has bred and trained as assistant mommies, armed with a rigid chore chart and with pre-packed home schooling lesson plans.  Then everyone gets down to work asap.

No commuting time, no fighting over outfits, no waiting in the kiss and ride line, burning fossil fuel like crazy, with the other 99%-ers dropping off their precious cargo.  The particularly gifted and talented cherubs we trip over in this 'hood (since no one here is ordinary), all headed off for a day of learning (and accumulating more paperwork) at our fine neighborhood school.  For her, it is straight down to business.  I must say - 19 kids and counting aside,  I still envy her the commute and lack of paperwork.  How efficient is that?

But, as usual, I digress far from my original point.  How does she do it?  I will tell you.  She is organized like Patton.  That is how she does it.  The family all follows the lists and chore charts that the girl tasked with secretarial duty (no joke) types out and posts, like words sent down from Heaven - which is also no joke for this devoutly religious family.  The lists are posted for all the troops to follow. And follow, they do.

So how can I transfer even a smidge of that level of organization to my humble and chaotic abode?  I make the chore charts, and they sit posted on the 'fridge.  Sometimes, on a good day, we can get about 50% of the tasks done, but usually these charts are all but ignored unless I turn to them again in desperation while shuffling through the debris of my home, my husband and children cowering in fear that I will finally blow my top and lose my mind.   No wonder my dogs act like the Bumpus hounds - it is a wonder they get fed in all the flood of paperwork and general post-school chaos.

So, I look wistfully at my chore chart on the fridge and wonder.  Am I alone in my struggle?  Anyone else have such a problem?  Surely I cannot be the only one who fights this fight.  Or has anyone else actually figured a way to make it all work, short of breeding an army of minions (whom I would have to raise first) to assist me in conquering my own personal daily chore chart?

Help me out interwebbers - if you have any solutions.  I'd love to hear them!  For now, the Bumpus hounds continue to reign in the house of Otto.