Rules of the house

I thought I would post some of the rules of our house. That's sure to make you grateful that you don't live here!
I thought of this because yesterday son #3 called to see if I could bring something up to the school which he had forgotten. My rule on this is: 'I will bring you a forgotten item one time per semester'. After that you're on your own. So when one of the children calls home for something I always ask the following question: "Do you want to use this as your one pass this semester?" Then it's up to them to weigh the worth of the item. Many times they have passed so that they can use it on something more important later (like an essay, or take home test). However, one child would just use it up on lunch. We all have our priorities.
Another rule we've had is one of the most important: 'You get what you get'.
You know how most kids will say, "I want the blue cup!" or "I want the yellow plate, not the red one!" (which may lead many parents to purchase white cups and plates)? Well, 6 kids is about 4 too many for this nonsense. So if one would come out with an "I want" I would follow it up with, "You get what you get". It wasn't long before I just had to ask, "What's the rule?" and 5 voices would say in unison, "You get what you get", angelically-- just to rub it in the face of the one who dared to whine about the color they received.
Which leads to another rule: 'No whining'. I absolutely cannot stand whining children. It makes my palms itch. Really. When I fill out forms that ask for known allergies I have to add "whining children". Just so everyone knows why I go into a fit around a whining child and forget it's not mine. Besides, in our home Mom is the only one allowed to wine ...... ummm, I mean "whine". ;)
Another rule has been used for many years and at my whim ---- errrr, discretion. And that is this: 'I will ask you 2 times if your room is clean and then I will go up with a trash bag'. The 2nd time I ask I remind the kids that I will be going up and are they sure it's clean? This usually leads to, "Ummmmm, let me check" and they run quickly up the stairs to "check". When I go up with a bag everything that's not where it belongs goes in the bag. Over the years the fate of the bags' contents has varied. Sometimes the kids were allowed to earn back items. Sometimes, when I was low on cash, they were allowed to buy back items (oh good grief, don't have a cow --- I'm just kidding! or am I?). Sometimes the items were given to charity. It would just mainly depend on Mom's mood at the time. :)
Another rule is: 'You do the dishes for a week'. Everyone got a week of KP, which meant, back in the good ol' days, they only had to do it once every six weeks. Now that the girls have flown the coop the boys have it once every 3 weeks. Next year it will be every other week. Which means that when son #2 goes off to college (please, God) we'll hire a full-time, live-in maid, because we don't want our little baby to have to always have KP! He'll have dishpan hands and we can't have that. That's what we tell the other 5 anyway. :)
Back to KP -- we found that one week was a good fit. We originally had days but that didn't work if the child who had KP wasn't home that night. Then who had to do this dishes the next day? So we finally settled on a week. And here's the kicker: if you fail to do them, or if you don't do a good job, you get a strike. Three strikes equals another week. The longest anyone has had to do KP is 3 weeks. (I told you I was mean)
Bedtime and getting up have their own rules, too. Bedtime was always treated as just a fact of life from infancy. We never had a crying, fit-throwing child who didn't want to go to bed. I'm not sure why, but they just always went to bed when they were told. And, at a certain age, usually middle schoolish, they are responsible for getting up in the morning. When the girls were in elementary school and masters at dawdling in the morning I came up with the idea of pouring milk into their cereal at a certain time each morning. If they came down on time they got crunchy cereal. If they didn't -- it was mush. They knew what that time was and so the choice was theirs. If they are late to school then they suffer the school's consequences. If they miss a bus, they ride a bike or walk (Daughter #1 knows ALL about that). If there seems to be a problem with getting up then obviously they need to go to bed earlier. One night of that usually solves the getting-up problem. Once they get into high school there is no set bedtime -- but they still have to get up in time, so it's up to them if they want enough rest or not.
OK, that's it for now. Not that we don't have more rules, but it sounds boring. And this isn't to tell anyone what rules to have in their own home. Over the years we've had many people ask us how we run the house with so many kids, so I thought I'd share some of the things we did.
I'm sure that if the kids read this they'll have a multitude of rules to add --- many of which were quite unfair and archaic. Or they may just want to save them --- for their books.