The Best Chore Excuse

Wanda sleeps on the floor now. I blame Marie Kondo.

I started Marie Kondo-ing the kids’ laundry a couple of weeks ago. I told them they could fold their existing clothes that way too if they wanted to be able to see them more easily in the drawer.

Wanda was excited to do this and dumped out all of her clothes immediately, folded two shirts, and got bored with it. Apparently she’s nine.

When I told her to vacuum her room last week, she needed to move all the clothes somewhere.

So, when I found her sleeping on the floor, she told me it was because there was no room for her in the bed. And we don’t have a manger. So…

For three days her only chore has been to fold the rest of the clothes. One day I forgot to check if she’d done her chore. One day she somehow convinced me to trade it for another chore. Then today, she raised procrastination and childhood chore excuses to a new level.

I needed to take Laylee to the driver’s ed school to take her written license exam. Before I left, I told Wanda she absolutely had to finish folding those clothes and putting them away. Thumbs up. She was on it.

After spending an hour reading a book on a couch in the furniture department of Fred Meyer, I brought my little driver home and found Wanda on the couch playing Mario. (not Kondo)

Me: Hey Wanda! Did you do your chores while I was gone?

Her: Yep!

Me: You folded all those clothes in your room?

Her: Yeah! But I didn’t fold ALL of them.

Me: ?

Her: The thing is, it got to be really fun for me. And I started thinking, I want to have fun tomorrow too. So I saved one stack so I could still have some of the fun tomorrow!

She grinned, totally sincere.

See, that’s why I didn’t do the dishes today, Dan. Doing them was just so much fun and it felt wrong to have all that fun at once, like eating an entire Costco cheesecake in one sitting. I wanted to savor the dishes, so I left half of them to get crusty so I could have EXTRA fun tomorrow.

Speaking of fun, Snowpocalypse 2019 has calmed. Our cul-de-sac is still a one-lane road with ice cliffs of insanity on either side and there are no longer lawns or sidewalks in our town, but we can get most anywhere we want. We hear they may even start delivering mail and picking up garbage sometime next week. It’s gonna be so modern and urban up in here.

Also, today I gave approval for the final manuscript of the ice cream book to be printed. I didn’t save any of the fun for tomorrow.

My co-author Barbara signed off too so it looks like I’m gonna be the mom to a new book, coming out in July!

It’s such a long and collaborative process and there’s something really magical about seeing your words turned into something beautiful.