"And SNAP, the jobs a game!"

I remember when I was a kid and it was time to clean up our room, the three of us would spend HOURS arguing about who's fault the mess was and who should have to clean up what. We would be "grounded" to our room until the room was "Nana clean". Which meant that under beds, closets, and corners would be checked to ensure there were no "hidden" messes. She never did check our drawers though. Something I know to do now. ;-)

I swear, we were in our rooms all day. Arguing, playing, laughing, fighting, doing just about everything and anything EXCEPT cleaning.

When we would finally decide that enough was enough, we usually would make the cleaning into a game. I have vivid memories of us snapping our fingers, tossing items and toys in the air and quickly putting it away; acting as if it magically put itself away like in Mary Poppins.

Fast forward 20 something years and I do the same silly things with my kids. They seem to think that snapping your fingers and throwing stuff in the air is pretty nonproductive, and they are right, so we have made our own games.

We are all pretty competitive by nature so racing was an excellent game for us. Each would be assigned a chore and we would race to see who finished first.

This was fun, but it could easily go south when someone would purposely clean their area by putting it in someone elses, thus fighting would break out.

So now we like to race against the clock! This is MUCH more effective.
A) Everyone has to work together to accomplish the overall goal and
B) When one "chore" is finished, that person moves to the next, helping someone else. So there is "wasted" time.

We will be sitting there, lazily enjoying our relax time when suddenly, I will pop up and ask the question.. "How long do you think it will us to clean the house?"

The response I usually get is a series of questions.

"The WHOLE house?"
"Including the kitchen?"
"What about the dishes?"
"Will YOU do the dishes?"
"Is the dishwasher clean or dirty"
"Do we have to do the basement?"
"Does it have to be 'mama clean'?" (Yep, it's now turned into mama clean.)

Depending on the answers to said questions, we come up with an amount of time, usually between 5 and 10 minutes. We set the timer and we GO!

Tonight we accomplished the entire upstairs (not including bedrooms but did include putting away laundry and cleaning the bathroom) in 7 mins. Our goal was 5 but I added an extra two because the dishwasher needed to be unloaded. :-)

I think we are pretty awesome and I like that we can have fun together even when we are doing chores.