Genius Mom Figures Out a Foolproof Plan to Get Her Kids to Clean the House

Getting kids to do their chores or clean up after themselves can be extremely difficult. OK, my kid is still too small to really do chores. She thinks chores are a fun game and wants to spend the whole day sweeping and picking up toys and putting them in boxes. I hope that sticks, but if she is anything like me it will not. I am not a cleaner. I’m more of a “throw everything over my shoulder and forget about it until the house is in squalor” type person, which used to drive my own parents nuts. They’d beg, nag, punish, yell, and hold my allowance hostage, but nothing really worked for getting me to remember to pick up my clothes and stop leaving empty glasses all over my bedroom.

I probably would have cleaned up for Reddit user AAtrox94, though, because she came up with a pretty great plan to make her kids clean things.

(Via Imgur)

Not only is the Wi-Fi password an expedient desire that will get her kids to comply quickly, she has the sense to gamify the situation, too. The words “Unlocked” and the trick about the photo needing to include a box of crackers make it seem more like a cool cell phone game challenge than just mom sending some chores. Making daily life seem like a series of small games is an effective means of getting people to do what you want. (I’m pretty sure that’s why Starbucks owns my entire retirement plan right now. Just racking up rewards points for purchases? Meh. Boring. “Get 75 bonus points if you buy a latte, a tea drink, and a Frapuccino by Friday? CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!” And I don’t even like Frapuccinos.)

 The Reddit thread is full of comments from parents who love the idea and even from kids whose parents have tried stuff like this. That’s also very useful reading as a parent, because kids are wily little foxes. Several people wrote that their parents would take essential computer cables and X-box controllers and such away so the kids couldn’t play their computer games without parental consent, but it sounds like every teenager in North America has a separate set of cables hidden in their rooms for just that sort of event. One girl even had a whole separate WiFI router hidden in her bedroom!

Man, I thought I was being pretty devious when I used to watch TV under the covers after my bedtime.

Aatrox94’s kids might find a way around this plan in the near future, but at least for now the kitchen is clean.