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Family

A 7-year-old asked to do more chores for the most adorable and heartbreaking reason

Dad figured "he wanted more Lego or something." Dad was wrong.

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Kids will act out in interesting ways when they want more attention.

Humans rarely say exactly what they mean or feel. With kids it's even moreso. They don't have the words and wisdom and experience to express the complicated emotions they might be feeling. So they reach out, or sometimes act out, in other ways.

Getting in trouble at school, not eating enough, throwing tantrums. Those are the tried-and-true classics. But sometimes kids show other, more unusual signs that they want or need something.

That might be what happened to one dad, who said his 7-year-old son recently came to him with a strange request: He wanted to do more chores.


kids, chores, cleaning, household, hygiene, parenting, dads, fatherhoodWhat kid would sign up for more chores?!Canva Photos

Yes, that's right, more chores. What kind of kid asks for more chores? The dad took his story to social media in a post on r/Daddit:

"I work a lot, and don't see my 3 kids that much during the week. I usually take them on fun amazing adventures on weekends in order to make up for it.

"Today my son said he wanted to do [chores[ to earn some money. I figured he wanted more Lego or something. He was talking to me more and he said he wanted to give me all the money he earns so I don't have to go to work anymore.

"It's really cute and heart melting, and also makes me feel like I'm a bad dad because him and his sisters don't get to spend enough time with me. Also I'm having trouble making him realize that all the money he gets from 'chores' comes out of what I make at work, so no matter how hard he works it would just make me go back to where I was beforehand."

It's so innocent and hilarious that the kid doesn't realize when he gets paid for doing chores, it comes from his dad's wallet, thus defeating the entire purpose. But it's a beautiful sentiment and the kind of thing that wrecks parents emotionally, both positively and negatively.

Fellow dads had a mixed, but emotional, response.

parenting, dads, fatherhood, men, mens health, mental health, kidsHow it feels to be a working parentGiphy

Some urged the original poster that his son was crying out for more attention, and that he'd regret not heeding the call:

"Id rather live just getting by and spending a ton of time with my toddlers, than working 60+ hours a week and never seeing them. Time is fleeting ... Take those 10 years and work a little less, come home early a couple days a week. Use your PTO. you'll regret missing their childhood."

"Obligatory Daddit-PSA: 'The only people who will remember you worked late are your children'"

"Here’s some tough love for you ... I don’t know your financial situation or occupation or even how many hours you work. Your kiddos basically throwing out a plead to spend more time with him, and probably the other 2 as well."

"Your son misses you. Hang out with him and your other kids, even if you're all doing chores together."

Others offered a supportive pat on the back for working hard to provide:

"That’s a punch in the gut. You’re not a bad dad just because you are working. (Unless you’re not spending time with them when you’re not working). Make sure he knows you love him and be grateful for his wanting to give you a gift. Then make some special time for him and try to give him regular, predictable amounts of your time."

"OP: You’re doing great - this means your kids want to spend time with you. My oldest had a sentiment like this after my wife was forced to stop working - she wanted to help."

"Hot take - but I think you’re killing it. He’ll see this very differently when he’s older, retrospectively. You’re doing what dads gotta do sometimes and getting bread. He’ll respect you for it."

There's a running theme of frustration among modern dads. We're trying to fill multiple roles, both the classic provider/protector role that our fathers and grandfathers played, but also a more nurturing and involved role in our children's lives.


fatherhood, men, dads, parenting, parenthood, children, kids, familyUnfortunately, modern fatherhood isn't all frolicking on the beach Photo by lauren lulu taylor on Unsplash

Dads are spending more time with their kids than ever, not content to sit on the sidelines for doctor's visits and playdates and day-to-day care. They're also working more than ever. Yes, technically working hours have been on a downward trend since the industrial revolution, but the data fails to account for lengthy commutes and the "always on" nature of many modern jobs. I don't know many parents who don't frequently catch up on work at night or respond to emails during family dinner time.

You don't have to have a Phd to see that the math doesn't math — there just aren't enough hours in the day to do it all.

For what it's worth, moms are facing a similar but even more extreme struggle. It's why parents are in big trouble according to the Surgeon General. Unfortunately, there's no easy answer. Dads like the original poster of this thread need to earn money and hold onto benefits like healthcare for their families. But their kids need them, too. For now, we're all just doing our best to try to do it all.

Education

5 ways people with perpetually tidy homes think differently than the rest of us

For some people, these mindsets and habits are intuitive, but they can also be learned.

Tidy people have a different way of looking at things.

Confession: I am not a neat freak, but I've always aspired to be one. I love neat and tidy spaces and envy those who have a natural knack for keeping their homes perpetually guest-ready. Because I live in a normal-messy home, I appreciate it when people say "No one's house is tidy all the time!" but I also know it's not true. There are people with always-tidy houses. I personally know multiple people whose homes never, ever devolve into cluttered chaos, whose kitchen sinks are always free of dishes, whose tables are never cluttered with stuff and whose master bedrooms look like hotel rooms.

Knowing that it is possible, I've spent years observing my naturally neat friends and family to understand what gives them the seemingly superhuman ability to keep their homes clean 24/7. As one might assume, some of it comes down to a fastidiousness and rigid adherence to routines that some of us simply do not possess. Some of it has to do with how often people are home and how much their home actually gets used. However, those things aside, I've figured out handful of "secrets"—minor habits and mindsets—that we messier folks who yearn to be neater can glean from the naturally tidy.

Messy people think of 'cleaning up' as a separate task. Neat people see it as an inherent part of every activity.

Though it's largely unconscious, we all have ways of thinking through completing any activity, from first step to last step. Take eating, for example. For a naturally messier person, "eating" starts with preparing the food and ends with swallowing your last bite. Cleaning up is not an inherent part of the eating process—it's seen as something separate, an activity that has its own beginning and end, its own time frame, its own energy expenditure, etc.

dishes, cleaning, life hacks, how to clean, tidy, tidinessCleaning up is part of the eating process for naturally neat folks.Photo credit: Canva

For a naturally neat person, however, eating means preparing the food, eating the food, and then cleaning up whatever mess you made. That's the whole cycle of eating. When you see cleaning up as part of the eating process, eating doesn't "end" until the dishes are finished and the kitchen is clean. Without cleaning up, the eating activity is simply incomplete.

For some people, this sound like a "duh" revelation. For some of us, it's a life-changing mindset shift.

Messy folks tend to overestimate how much time cleanup takes. Neat people don't.

Struggling to accurately estimate how much time a task will take is called "time blindness," and it's a common ADHD trait. But even those of us without ADHD can misjudge how long a task will take and form habits around our erroneous assumptions or perceptions.

For instance, I used to put off unloading the dishwasher because it seemed like a huge chore. All those dishes having to go to all those different cabinets—surely that was something that took a significant chunk of time to do. My brain had it labeled as a "big task" and therefore something I needed to carve out time for.

Then I timed myself doing it one day. Not rushing at all, just casually unloading a full dishwasher. It took less than 3 minutes, which was a fraction of the amount of time my brain had assigned to the task. Did I feel silly having subconsciously made a mountain out of a molehill? Yes. Did finding out it only took 3 minutes change how I viewed that chore and make it so I didn't procrastinate it anymore? Also yes.

washing dishes, cleaning, house cleaning, life hacks, tipsUnloading the dishwasher takes less time than you might think.Photo credit: Canva

Neat people don't put off small cleaning/tidying tasks that they know only take a minute or two. Messy people can utilize timers to help them figure out what those are, because surprisingly, mosts tasks don't take as long as you think they will.

Messy people think of cleaning as all or nothing. Neat people utilize tiny time chunks for mini maintenance.

A messy person will pop something in the microwave for two minutes and then zone out or stare at it while it cooks. A neat person will pop something in the microwave and then use that two minutes to wipe down the counter, unload the dishwasher, or sweep the kitchen floor. They'll fold laundry while watching a show and go put it away during a commercial break. They utilize small snippets of time to do little cleaning tasks, which all add up to maintaining a neat and tidy space without having to take big chunks of time to organize or clean.

Messier folks tend to overlook little messes here and there, so they build up until suddenly there's an overwhelming mess to deal with. It helps to think of cleaning and tidying not as one big chore that is either done or not done, but rather as as a conglomeration of tiny tasks that can be done any time you have a minute or two. Eventually, using tiny time chunks to mini-clean becomes habitual.

Mess makers set things down. Neat people put things back.

"Clean up as you go" is a mantra to internalize if you aspire to have a perpetually neat home. If a neat person is baking, they will take out an ingredient, measure what they need, then put that ingredient back where they got it. They do this every time, so when the baked good gets put in the oven, all that's left to do is clean the dishes they used in prep (which is, of course, seen as an inherent part of the baking task). And this isn't just in the kitchen. They do the same thing with their toiletries in the bathroom, their clothes when choosing an outfit, etc. Everything gets put back rather than put down, preventing a mess from the get go.

cleaning, house cleaning, life hacks, tips, cleaning adviceNeat people put things away instead of putting them down.Photo credit: Canva

If a messy person is baking, they'll take out an ingredient, measure what they need, and then set the ingredient down on the counter. Once the baked good gets put in the oven, there's then a whole counter full of ingredients and dish mess to clean up. And because "cleaning up" is seen as a separate task, there's a gearing up of energy that's required as well as a separate time commitment, which makes procrastination more likely.

The key here is to recognize that putting things back where you got them really doesn't take any more time than setting them down but saves tons of time and work later.

Messy people have more things than places. Neat people have more places than things.

"A place for everything and everything in its place" is a mantra that neat people live by religiously and messy folks may not even realize is possible. If a neat person doesn't have a place for something, they find one or make one by getting rid of something else. If a messy person doesn't have a place for something, it sits on a table or countertop or entryway or some other placeholder for an indeterminate amount of time, often moving from surface to surface before eventually being shoved in a drawer or closet to be dealt with later.

Part of living like a neat person is being honest with yourself about the space you have and embracing inflow and outflow of things that enables you to live comfortably in that space. Messy people almost always have too much stuff for their space and therefore not enough places to put things. (This is true no matter how large or small your home is, sorry to say.) Neat people keep things pared down so that everything can have its own place. Regular purging of excess stuff and not holding onto things "just in case" is a huge key to staying neat and tidy.

I can't say that I perfectly implement all of these things all the time, but I can say that being aware of these mindsets and habits and attempting to live more like my "neat freak" loved ones has made a big difference in my home and how I feel about living in it.

This article originally appeared last year.

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How often do you change your sheets?

If you were to ask a random group of people, "How often do you wash your sheets?" you'd likely get drastically different answers. There are the "Every single Sunday without fail" folks, the "Who on Earth washes their sheets weekly?!?" people and everyone in between.

According to a survey of 1,000 Americans conducted by Mattress Advisor, the average time between sheet changings or washings in the U.S. is 24 days—or every 3 1/2 weeks, approximately. The same survey revealed that 35 days is the average interval at which unwashed sheets are "gross."

Some of you are cringing at those stats while others are thinking, "That sounds about right." But how often should you wash your sheets, according to experts?

Hint: It's a lot more frequent than 24 days.

While there is no definitive number of days or weeks, most experts recommend swapping out used sheets for clean ones every week or two.

Dermatologist Alok Vij, MD told Cleveland Clinic that people should wash their sheets at least every two weeks, but probably more often if you have pets, live in a hot climate, sweat a lot, are recovering from illness, have allergies or asthma or if you sleep naked.

We shed dead skin all the time, and friction helps those dead skin cells slough off, so imagine what's happening every time you roll over and your skin rubs on the sheets. It's normal to sweat in your sleep, too, so that's also getting on your sheets. And then there's dander and dust mites and dirt that we carry around on us just from living in the world, all combining to make for pretty dirty sheets in a fairly short period of time, even if they look "clean."

Maybe if you shower before bed and always wear clean pajamas you could get by with a two-week sheet swap cycle, but weekly sheet cleaning seems to be the general consensus among the experts. The New York Times consulted five books about laundry and cleaning habits, and once a week was what they all recommend.

Sorry, once-a-monthers. You may want to step up your sheet game a bit.

What about the rest of your bedding? Blankets and comforters and whatnot?

Sleep.com recommends washing your duvet cover once a week, but this depends on whether you use a top sheet. Somewhere between the Gen X and Millennial eras, young folks stopped being about the top sheet life, just using their duvet with no top sheet. If that's you, wash that baby once a week. If you do use a top sheet, you can go a couple weeks longer on the duvet cover.

For blankets and comforters and duvet inserts, Sleep.com says every 3 months. And for decorative blankets and quilts that you don't really use, once a year washing will suffice.

What about pillows? Pillowcases should go in with the weekly sheet washing, but pillows themselves should be washed every 3 to 6 months. Washing pillows can be a pain, and if you don't do it right, you can end up with a lumpy pillow, but it's a good idea because between your sweat, saliva and skin cells, pillows can start harboring bacteria.

Finally, how about the mattress itself? Home influencers on TikTok can often be seen stripping their beds, sprinkling their mattress with baking soda, brushing it into the mattress fibers and then vacuuming it all out. Architectural Digest says the longer you leave baking soda on the mattress, the better—at least a few hours, but preferably overnight. Some people add a few drops of essential oil to the baking soda for some extra yummy smell.

If that all sounds like way too much work, maybe just start with the sheets. Pick a day of the week and make it your sheet washing day. You might find that climbing into a clean, fresh set of sheets more often is a nice way to feel pampered without a whole lot of effort.


This article originally appeared last year.

Modern Families

Mom lives the dream: quietly quitting household chores to see if her family notices

"This is a lesson in wanting to be heard and respected and not having to repeat yourself when things slip."

Practically every mom I know occasionally daydreams about quitting-doing-all-the-things. Sometimes the impulse is born of exhaustion. Sometimes it's the relentless daily tedium of cleaning, cooking, reminding, over and over and over without end. And sometimes it's the desire for someone else to notice that these things actually need to be done and someone has to actually do it.

Even moms who share chores with spouses and kids often find themselves carrying the mental load of figuring out what needs to be done, monitoring whether it's getting done, and organizing who's doing what, and reminding/nagging/harassing her family members until it gets done. Sometimes moms just want to let all of that go and see what happens.

That's what a mom who goes by Miss Potkin on Twitter did this week. Channeling the fed-upness of mothers everywhere, she just up and stopped doing household chores to see what would happen. Two days later, she began sharing the saga in a Twitter thread that's as entertaining as it is satisfying.

Letting go and letting your family sit in their own filth until they can't take it anymore takes patience and discipline. There's a reason moms generally do-all-the-things regardless of how cooperative the family is. We don't want to live in a mess. But she stuck to her guns.

For a minute, things were looking promising with the garbage being taken out.

However, the dishes still remained mysteriously undone. As did the laundry.

"There is a pan on the cooker with a single sausage in it," she wrote. "It's been there for two days. I can't look at it because it's turned the colour of the man that washes up in Cast Away."

Oh, and the downstairs bathroom is out of toilet paper.

Those who might feel judgy at this point likely live with people who are naturally neat, or just can't fathom themselves how someone could let a sausage sit for two days. But take it from a mom who let go of policing her kids' bedrooms to see how long it would take them to decide to clean on their own—some human beings are willing to overlook all manner of mess and filth before it becomes too much.

And sometimes they have to learn firsthand the amount of extra work such obliviousness leads to.

Hilariously, even though the dishwasher finally did get loaded, that's basically all that happened. Miss Potkin shared a video tour of the kitchen with the extraneous things that didn't get done or got half-done.

Of course, the negative Nancies showed up to voice their judgmental opinions about her experiment, her home, her family, her choice of husband, and everything else because moms literally can't catch a break. It's a silly, fun exercise to make a point that millions of moms can relate to. If it doesn't apply to you, move along, Nance.

"We do not 'live like this,'" she wrote. "This is a lesson in wanting to be heard and respected and not having to repeat yourself when things slip. We're navigating the day-to-day in extraordinary times and for me, the past two days have been funnier than anything else. I think we're all entitled to run our own experiments, be amused, push a situation to its limit if we so choose. No one needs to be lectured by those that have failed to see the silly joy in what's happening here."

And the experiment slowly started paying off as someone replaced the toilet paper.

But the dishwasher...

"We keep our homes tidy because love," Miss Potkin wrote. "We cook food and set tables and fill the air with scents of roses and fresh laundry because love. Love is patient but love is also fucking tired because she works 14 hour days."

"I know we are ALL tired," she added, "but I am most tired. Me. I AM ALL THE TIRED."

All the moms are all the tired.

Miraculously, it only took three days of being completely hands-off for her family to take note and clean the house.

Lesson learned. Mission accomplished. Let's hope it sticks.

Moms are not always the ones who pick up most of the slack in a household, but they usually are. And when that work is taken for granted, it sucks. When everyone in the house pays more attention and takes the initiative to tidy, neaten, clean, replace, launder, put away, etc., moms are less stressed and tired and everyone benefits. If it take up and quitting for a while to help the family see it, so be it.


This article originally appeared three years ago.