Whistle While You Work
Just Don’t Call It a “Project”
A “chore” by any other name is still tedious and boring.
Parents never learn. “How would you like to clean your room?” With a maid service? “Would you like to rake the leaves now?” Um, no, I’m good over here picking lint out of the carpet fuzz, thanks. “Would you like to clear the dinner dishes and load the dishwasher?” Would you like to clean behind the toilet with a toothbrush? What part of ‘no’ don’t you get, Mom? If teenage eye-rolling had audio, I’m pretty sure this is what we’d hear.
My husband knows that the fastest way to turn me into a recalcitrant teen and give me daddy issues all at once is to call any sort of household chore a “project” and present it to me as if it were a choice I’d be stupid not to make. “I have a project for you,” he says.
Call it a damned ‘chore’ or get outta mah face, I think. I don’t say it. I love the man. I just give him the Snoopy-vulture death glare. “What?” I snap. This had better be good, and it had better involve chocolate at the end.
“Chores” are responsibilities, shared by members of the family. “Chores” are not a choice; they must be done. Grumbling about them or whistling while we work is a choice. But doing them is not, and we don’t pretend that it is. That is not how we make chores fun.
I read Tom Sawyer. I will not fall into the fence-painting-is-fun trap, even if it is — in truth — fun. Don’t even try to fool me with that “project” nonsense, and don’t give me the illusion of choice by wrapping a chore up in last year’s gift wrap and a bow made out of used shoelaces and passing it off as — yay! — a “project.”
Projects are synonymous — any high schooler or corporate worker knows this — with “you do all the work and others get the credit.” I’m not falling for his “I have a project for you.”
“That’s okay — I know how you love projects,” I say. “Don’t let me rob you of the fun!” I grin like the Cheshire Cat and vanish. He really does love projects. We all do, when we dream them up, ourselves, for ourselves.
Pouncing on the zeitgeist of Summer 2020, conny manero suggests we’re all ready for a change from the serious stories of Spring — or at least a little breather while we do…the dishes?
Lord, sometimes, even doing chores sounds like a bright spot in an otherwise dreary season. The wise parent knows how to turn chores and learning into a game — make it fun, and the little ones will never want to stop. They do learn, though, and sometimes, they turn the tables on Mom and Dad.
Chloe Cuthbert explains why she doesn’t believe in paying children to do chores: “You’re part of a family, a cohesive unit, and it’s your duty as part of that unit to help it run as smoothly as possible.” This is how I was raised, and how we raised our two children.
There are things I considered “above and beyond,” and was willing to pay for — babysitting, for example. Our daughter didn’t get a “vote” in having a baby brother, when she was eight; I never felt we should expect her to watch him while we went out for “date night.” But for quick trips to the grocery store? Looking after her little brother could be considered a “chore” and not a “babysitting job.” This is part of what it means to be a family.
I’m not sure that I’ve ever experienced the Zen of doing a load of laundry for the third time, but Jaime Andrés Pérez Cadena makes a compelling case for looking at chores from a different perspective.
And this over-the-top humor (I was tempted to say, “They get me! They really get me!” but I can find my way through the house without a flamethrower!) might just be the laugh we all need to get through the decluttering:
I think I just need to tie a kerchief around my hair and an old tablecloth around my waist, and pretend to be Cinderella, like I did when I was little. I can remember a time when washing dishes — despite my mother and my grandmother always owning automatic dishwashing machines — seemed like play.
I can still make-believe. I think. Just don’t call it a “project.”
