My mother had few unusual ideologies. One of it was never to ask us, her children to do chores. She felt since we are girls, it was inevitable that we will be doing all the house work when we are married. So she wanted to spare us from doing chores while we lived with her.
It was a policy we loved absolutely. Never having to do anything called house work/chores at home.
It was also easy on Amma’s part, cause we always had a maid.
This lasted till we stopped having a maid. By then I must have been about 13 and I did try to help her by sweeping the house and the courtyard each morning before going to school and stopped doing it (gladly) when she told Mrs Akashavani that I don’t do a thing to help Amma and that I am lazy.
I also helped doing the dishes once in a while.
But she did almost everything else.
She did the laundry, folded the clothes, put them away. She did the grocery shopping. she did the cooking.
I can honestly say that I remember bringing my dirty clothes from the hostel and going back on monday morning with all my clothes washed, ironed and folded neatly in my bag and my job involved only in the transportation of items from hostel to the house and back. Amma did the rest.

My daughter’s best friend in Canada had to cook dinner for her entire family every Thursday since she was 5. she had to plan what was going to cook, take the meat out to defrost before going to school etc. By the way, she is an incredibly good cook. Meanwhile, my child’s future plan involved living next to her mother’s house or having a house with a granny flat and make her mother live with her. ( so I won’t have to starve, so she said each time I asked her if I could teach her to cook)

I am extremely organized when it comes to housework and up until now never had to ask the kids to help me. I had a perfectly working system and I preferred doing things my way.
Now that I work and only have two days to do all the chores, I have no choice but to get the kids to help me.
They do help me,
My son did the dusting and vacuuming yesterday.
Yaya folded all the clothes ( Actually baby folded some of the clothes and I noticed that Yaya re did them..exactly the way I do, cause she is as pedantic as I am when it comes to folding clothes properly)
Kids take turns to do the dishes
and I feel guilty..for making them do chores when I myself never did anything while i lived with my mother.