I'm not going to clean that mess!!

Chores. That has been a bit of a four letter word in our house for quite a while. As in trying to get the offspring to not only do the intended task, but do it without whining. Good luck with that. As the parent of a 2 teenager household, it has become increasingly cumbersome for The Guitarman and the wife to gently nudge the aforementioned duo to get off the couch, off the Xbox, off the Wii, and complete just a few minor tasks without complaint, something that I'm sure most of you with older kids can appreciate, and those of you with younger, less opinionated children will come to learn. Like I said, good luck with that.


Oh I know there are few parents who have raised their kids the right way, watching them become perfect little ladies and gentlemen who always say please and thank you, always keep their room clean, and always do their homework first. Well, 2 out of 3 and bad, as a matter of fact, its downright awesome. But chores. Why is it that kids can't understand that we weren't put on this earth to serve them? Ok maybe we are, up until they are 8 or 10 years old. But at some point, becoming self sufficient is imperative, as we don't want to see our 28 year old kid on the living room couch, with Xbox controller in one hand while giving us the bird with the other. So how do we get our kids to do some bloody work around the house?


Threats don't work, generally, in our house because a) I don't have the balls to follow up on most of them and b) its actually a bonus to go to your room for a while. We tried allowances. Paid weekly if we decided they lived up to their end of the bargain. For a couple of weeks, things got done, and slowly but surely, they stopped altogether. So, I figured that I would just not mention the word allowance for a while and it would sink in. Months passed, and they seemed to relish the trade off. No allowance? Cool! That means no more litter box! Yeahh!! But we finally found a system that works, much to the amazement of both of us. Its what I like to call, Pay-per-chore. $2 to empty the dishwasher or clean the kitchen, $3 to clean the bathroom or litter box, etc. The grosser the chore, the higher the bribe. At the end of the week, we tally it up and pay it out. I know its sounds crazy, but it works. Sometimes they actually argue as to who gets to do the chore.


Now what works for me might not wok for you, especially if you have neat, uncluttered house, with a spouse who loves to clean, or better yet, a housekeeper. But who needs a housekeeper when you have kids, right?