Here’s what I cleaned out today:

Moldy cream cheese, soured creme fraiche, half a lime (squeezed the juice in with the ground beef I was frying up to put in a curry), leftover peas and carrots from lunch (also into curry), leftover fried potatoes (yep, they’re curried now), yogurt-cream sauce (into fruit smoothies), fruit cobbler (Mr. Handsome and I ate it for supper), leftover cooked oatmeal (The Baby Nickel and Miss Becca Boo ate it for their supper), leftover baked oatmeal (supper for Sweetsie and Yo-Yo Boy), two partly-used onions (curry), a giant bag of moldy lettuce (chickens).

Now my fridge feels spacious, big enough to easily hold the giant crock pot filled with the Beef Curry With Garden Vegetables that I’ll be taking to the church potluck tomorrow.

This, the fussing, is a perpetual problem. At least in my house.

I usually tell the kids that if they complain when I ask them to do a chore, then they will have to do another chore—they obviously need more practice having a positive attitude. But I don’t always stick to this rule, so they sometimes can get away with a bit of fussing, which means that then they almost always fuss and they only get another chore if I’m in a bad mood, or if they fuss too much, which is a pretty ambiguous thing.

Ideally, this is how our conversation would go:

Me: Child, it’s time for you to do the dishes.
Child: Okay, Mama. I’ll be right there. Would you like me to do all of them?
Me: Yes, please.
Child: Okay.

What really happens:

Me: Child, it’s time for you to do the dishes.
Child: I did the breakfast dishes yesterday! I don’t want to do the breakfast dishes! I want to do the lunch dishes instead! Why do I have to do the dishes? You make us do all the work! Why don’t you do the dishes yourself?
Me: No, The Other Child did the breakfast dishes yesterday. If you would like to save them and do the lunch dishes also, you may. There are not many there right now, and the longer you wait, the more dishes there will be, so that’s your choice. I can use all the help I can get.

Last night, in an effort to nip this bad habit in the bud, once and for all (don’t fall out of your seat laughing—it’s quite unbecoming of you), Mr. Handsome and I called a family meeting. We laid out some rules:

1. When asked to do a job, The Child must say yes, within five seconds.

2. If they have questions or rebuttals, they may politely request to speak, but at that point they also need to say that they will do whatever we say.

3. If there is fussing, a refusal to say okay, whatever, Mr. Handsome and I will do nothing at the moment, but the transgression will be noted on paper along with the consequence (another job—we’re big on practice), which will be meted out after everyone has had time to cool off.

We role played. The kids cried that we were being too mean. We talked about how we are a family, nobody is a king or queen or prince or princess around here (sound familiar, Mom?). We talked about how there are a lot of people in this family and we all need to work together. We talked about how jobs get done so much faster when we have a good attitude. We talked about how we are all so much happier when we have good attitudes and get along, and how we want our children to be happy. We reviewed the consequences, again.

This morning we put the plan into action and … it worked!

I wasn’t born yesterday, and I realize that this was just the first day, but even so, it’s nice to get off to a good start. When things deteriorate, which they will, at least I’ll know what the children are capable of.

It takes forever, F. O. R. E. V. E. R., for my kids to get their work done, especially Yo-Yo Boy.

For example, Mr. Handsome told him to mow the front yard. Yo-Yo Boy was happy to do it. He mowed for awhile before coming in to complain that he was tired. We checked his work. He had spent the time mowing shapes into the grass. (Another time when he was asked to mow the back yard, he spent his energy mowing the hay field, instead.)

I told Yo-Yo Boy to clean his room. While he was cleaning, or waiting for me to come check, he shredded a Styrofoam peanut, letting the pieces fall into the Lego box, onto the carpet, into the cracks between the wooden floor. So then he had to vacuum, too.

Washing the dishes is just one more opportunity to play. He stacks up cups and spoons and straws in such a fashion that, when he turns the spigot on, the stream of water gets diverted through various channels, creating waterfalls and the like.

So I called up my wise and brilliant girlfriend Shannon, and after much discussion, she came up with this solution: when I make up the kids’ chore lists each morning, I add an extra chore to the bottom of the list, one that doesn’t have to get done that day. I give them a deadline, and if they finish their jobs by the predetermined time, they can cross the last chore off the list.

For example:

Yo-Yo Boy’s To Do List
1. morning dishes
2. empty the compost
3. dust the living room
4. hang up laundry
5. wash down the kitchen cupboard doors

He has an hour and a half to do the first four items, and if he gets them done in time, he doesn’t have to do the last item on the list.

It works, folks! It really works! My girlfriend Shannon is simply amazing.