Chores

Ok, I just stumbled on this charming little article by Ann Matturro Gault - "Chores and Fun in the Same Breath? You Bet! Here 9 ideas for getting kids to beat you at the cleaning game." While the nine tips below are probably quite helpful (in someone else's house), I've added my own commentary (in bold), if only to round things out a bit. Just to give credit where credit is due, click here for the original article.

1. Hide treats, stickers, or pennies in, on, or under knickknacks, then ask your child to dust. She gets to enjoy the rewards only when everything is dusted. Kudos to Gault for recognizing that these are tough financial times, no longer can we afford the luxuries of the bi-monthly visit from our "ladies" ("my lady" means only two things in middle class housewife speak -cleaning lady or therapist; if one goes to see "her lady," that's her therapist, if "her lady" makes house calls, she's got someone cleaning her bathroom). Now the only money we've got for cleaning services comes from the penny jar and we've got our kids on the job. That's cute and clever except for one thing, if you are going to put in the time to hide the pennies, wouldn't it be smarter just to do the dusting yourself?

2. Post individual lists of chores kids can do (one for each child in your family). Whenever your child accomplishes a task, have her mark it with a sticker. Whoever has the most stickers at the end of the week gets the Helper of the Week award. Is that like a Pulitzer?

3. Play "Go Fish" with a basket of clean socks. Divide the socks among the players, leaving a pile to draw from. Each player, in turn, holds up a sock and asks another player if he has the mate. If not, the asking player must take a sock from the top of the draw pile. When finished, the player with the most pairs wins. This is hilarious. Let's talk about logistics - do you match holes? stains? Can you make a book of socks? Do you get extra for collecting all the socks that came in the original jumbo pack? Who deals (cause if I'm gonna take the time to deal - I'm gonna go ahead and sort those socks myself)? And then there is the other thing, my kids don't like playing Go Fish - if you can come up with sock sorting Uno we might be game.

4. Turn any socks that stay single into child-friendly dust mitts. Insert child's hand into clean but dampened sock and use it to remove dust from houseplants and furniture. I don't get it, if I use all the unpaired socks as dust mits, what the hell are my kids gonna put on their feet in the morning? Plus, you're supposed to dust plants?

5. Have a scavenger hunt. Make a list of everyday items (newspapers, magazine, shoes, etc.). Set a timer for 5 minutes, then have kids collect stray items throughout the house. The winner is the child who picks up the most (and returns them to their rightful spots). Newspapers? Magazines? Shoes? Please! How about: socks and sippy cups, half eaten Go -Gurt tubes, sticks and rocks (yes inside), unused but dried up wipes, melted chapstick, mommy's jewelry, marker tops, legos, broken crayons, snow pants, a jar of dead potato bugs, oh and random pairs of underwear (boys or girls) behind the bathroom sink, or underneath the family room couch?

6. After dinner, do a "10-Minute Tidy." Set a timer and have family members scatter through the house putting away the day's clutter. Let me run through what would happen during the "10-Minute Tidy" at our house: Seven year old, picks up six pencils and then walks past four-year old brother and says - "Bunneri! Electrify!!" to which four year old is forced to respond "Pikachu! - Quick Attack," imaginary Pokemon battle ensues, which means that pencils are dropped, marbles are thrown, pillows are mysteriously, "necessarily" transported from family room to living room. Meanwhile, toddler discovers pile of dirt from freshly swept kitchen floor, plops down next to it and starts snacking on cheerios, soggy pretzels, and month old skittles, dirt pile is summarily decimated, broom is dropped and mommy goes to get a beer. And where's daddy? Upstairs in the master bath, doing requisite post-dinner, 10-Minute intestinal Tidy."

7. Appoint someone to be Inspector D. Clutter. Armed with a laundry basket and plastic police badge from the dress-up box, this person roams the house and puts stray belongings into clutter "jail" (the basket). To set an item free, its owner (Mom and Dad included!) must do a chore. Costumes, jail, handcuffs -this sounds borderline racy to me.

8. Turn a bucket into a personalized cleaning caddy. Use permanent marker to write your child's name on it and have him decorate its with other drawings. Store supplies such as sponge, dust rag and roll of paper towels, etc. Then use supplies such as sponge, dust rag, and roll of paper towels to clean up everything that kid drew on with permanent marker.

9. Show them the money? Some experts believe allowance should be reserved for teenagers. School-aged children will easily get behind the idea that chores are something you do as a member of the family — not for money." They'll be excited just to show off their skill at completing a task. " I'm not so sure about that. I mean when my kids get their weekly allowances, they look pretty excited about getting paid for their skills at completing a task. They take their money and carry it around, they count it and caress, and treat it like, well like money. What my kids "get behind" is that chores are a means to an end, and that end is whole bunch of money. So what if they're planning on using that money to build a super-powerful car that can fly and become invisible and shoot out a trailer of the back end and lasers out of the sides? As long as their rooms are clean, I'm not going to comment.