On Family Dinners, Clean-up, and Giving Thanks

Having family dinners is so important. But lets face it, most of us have crazy schedules (hello softball season!) and sometimes it is hard to get everyone around the table each night for a meal. Nevertheless I think it is such a worthwhile thing to work towards. If you haven't been doing this regularly because you are in a particularly busy season of life, here are two tips to making it happen:

1. Make a goal to have at least a certain number of meals together each week and let everyone in the family know what days those are.
2. Start with a simple list of family favorites to serve so you can focus on the moment and not so much on the menu (stay-tuned for our family favorite meals that get everyone excited about dinner).

Currently we are done with baseball and softball and my husband has an easier work schedule. So family dinners are now much easier to make happen. Still, however, I have found myself struggling with the clean-up. There is nothing worse than having a beautiful meal together only to have all helpers disappear. The battle to call everyone back and get them all helping can be stressful and does not make for a nice finish.

My solution is to make clean-up part of giving thanks. By explaining to the children that the meal is not over until the kitchen is cleaned up, and that by cleaning up afterwards we say "thank you" to the one who prepared it, and to God for providing it, I hope to make cleaning up a little smoother and part of the family bonding experience.

Here is a printable I made up so that I can assign the clean-up tasks we need to do every evening after dinner. It is handy to have a written list that we need to follow. I want to remove the need to nag. We have this laminated and stuck to the fridge where everyone can see it. The plan is to rotate tasks weekly.

Feel free to print and use for yourself if you like. I hope you are having plenty of family dinners at your house!