The latter request left me speechless. I don’t recall Big *ever* asking to hoover. She does sometimes ask to wash the windows, but that’s because we pay her, and there are times she needs the cold hard cash.
It’s all down to Chorewars. Seriously. A friend (hiya! thank you!) mentioned it this morning and several other friends liked the look of it for their kids, so I thought I’d have an explore. Set up a couple of extra adventures, then invited the kids to it.
First of all, they were hugely unimpressed. Especially by the extra adventure I’d set up of 15 minutes death defying clearing beyond the bedroom door. But then they realised that if they made their beds they could get points, and suddenly we had beds made for the first time in months…
We *might* set up a real world conversion chart, so that gold pieces can be converted into real world coins. I haven’t worked out the finer details of that yet. And I’m very afraid that I’m going to be spending an awful lot of time setting up adventures – I have recruited a henchling in the form of dp to assist. He’ll get lots of XP tonight having spend ages washing up, cleaning the hob and the oven after tea. I get loads for having done the shopping and the cooking too.
And that, I think, is where the value of this may lie for us. Not so much in getting the kids to help around the house, although that would be nice, but certainly in getting them to notice that cupboards are not magically self filling, food does not prepare itself, and stuff does not leap into boxes, bins, drawers and so on of its own accord. When it gets there, it’s usually because I’ve put it there, while I am a fraction of the force that leaves it lying around the house in the first place.
Oh and the troll wrangling? Well, they need lots of exercise you know, route marching a variety of places to learn trollish stuff. I must get XP for that, surely?
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