JENI BONELL’S 16 children know “if you live here, you work here” but if they ever forget they just have to look at the gigantic chore roster stuck to the kitchen wall. What started off as just some scribble on paper many years ago has morphed into a formalized schedule that runs her busy household. The 50-year-old created the system when there were only seven children in the family to stay organized as the pitter patter of little feet became louder. With their dad, Ray, working full time, the 16 children aged 5 to 29 — namely Jesse, Brooke, Claire, Natalie, Karl, Samuel, Cameron, Sabrina, Tim, Brandon, Eve, Nate, Rachel, Eric, Damian and Katelyn — had to pitch in. The stay-at-home mom from Toowoomba in Queensland, Australia, gets her children involved once they turn 8 and now her 12-year-old is even cooking roast dinners. While only 13 children now live at home after some moved out or married, the family’s chore roster lives on. “We still have a lot of people in this household, so I think it’s really important to keep some order to the chaos,” Jeni said in a YouTube video on her family life. Jeni said the roster came about to ensure everyone in the family was pitching in and not leaving it to mom. “Dad was working hard trying to support us, and I was a stay-at-home mom. But I was doing all the jobs. “If mom is doing all the jobs all the time, then no one’s going to have any fun because mom’s going to be exhausted and everyone else is getting everything done for them all the time. “You have to contribute. You have to do the jobs.” (SD-Agencies) |