Having been born and raised in Nigeria, my mother raised my sister and I in a very austere manner. Chores took precedence over everything but school. My mother would lay down what each of us had to do daily and weekly and made it very clear when it was to be done. Whenever we reached a certain age where we've shown we are capable of that, she'd change what we had to do to something more apt. She taught us how to sweep, wash clothes and dishes with our hands, cook, and most importantly, the fact that we represented her outside of the house. She had a low tolerance for disobedience and taught us that the key to a good life is education and respect for our elders.

Many of us do household chores and have responsibilities, some more fun than others. In many families, the problems that arise from doing chores — be it deciding whose to do what or when it is to be done — comes from a generation gap. Children of modern days are often lazy and disrespectful to their parents. With the laws set in place in this country, they are very careful as to how they handle many situations. This affects the upbringing of the child greatly. In most of these cases, children consider that their parents have these old-fashioned ideas about making beds in the morning, washing dishes after every meal, etc. They think that new generation shouldn't care about things like that. (I'd say this is thanks to new technologies being created daily — amirite?!)

"She cooks meals, goes shopping, keeps the house a clean and approachable one"

On this grounds, many conflicts develop. The sad part is that to avoid conflicts, many of these families engage a domestic servant. She cooks meals, goes shopping, keeps the house a clean and approachable one. To make matters worse, these servants are usually underpaid. With that, this is degrading and affects progress. I believe that housework is always manageable — even if you are busy. Hiring a servant is not a way out of this situation.

I'm happy that the problem of doing chores has never affected my family. Of course, sometimes my sister and I quarreled as we got older, but then we decided to make a schedule and take turns doing certain chores like cooking, sweeping and washing dishes. Now, as we all are busy people, my mom works multiple jobs to sustain our living conditions, while my sisters and I spend most of the time in our educational establishments, each of us cleaning up the house when he or she has some spare time. On Saturdays, we usually have a big clean, as in a cleaning of every corner of the entire house. I know, what a fun way to spend Saturdays! We try to follow the rule of subdivision of the housework.

Everyone has his own area to clean. I typically clean and mop the bathroom, my room, my mom's room, the living room and lastly, the basement. I get out the vacuum cleaner (for the carpets and rugs), broom (for the wooden floors), and then I do the usual. After that, I take a wet cloth and wipe the dust off of every surface in the room. In the bathroom, I usually scrub the sink, toilet and shower area with a washing powder and brush. Then I mop the floor. I'm only telling you all this to just give you an idea of what I go through each day at home with chores. I now have two younger sisters and the responsibility of looking after them and assisting in training them has fallen upon me as the head of the household (symbolically speaking of course). Being the first male in my family to go off to college is huge, I feel prepared and excited knowing that I have people so close to me that are looking up to me to set an example for them and others to come.