Though we now know that chores aren’t meant to be done by women only, it still seems as if, most of the time, wives have to take on the bulk of the housework while their spouses rest at home.
To address this dilemma, one woman came up with a brilliant plan: A point system to encourage her husband to do chores. She described this idea as a way to keep him, an essential worker who works long hours on the weekdays, sane and busy because he tends to get “pretty depressed” by having to stay inside on the weekends.
Her plan included lists of activities he has to do to gain points and rewards that he can redeem using the points he obtained. “The things to earn points consisted of a blend of fun things like ‘Invent a new dish using items we have in the pantry,’ ‘Walk the dog’ and ‘find your new favorite TV show’,” she explained. “These were combined with more practical things like ‘Do a batch of laundry’ or ‘Clean out your dresser’.”
Meanwhile, the rewards included “I’ll watch a movie of your choosing” and “I’ll cook any dish you’d like.” She assigned “arbitrary point values” to each chore and “slightly higher arbitrary prices” to each of the rewards.
However, she soon realized a dilemma. “The problem is there’s only so much I could put on there that would be a reward for him that also allowed us to stay in the house and I needed more items. So, last minute, and this is where I effed up, I decided that one of the rewards is that he could have me do anything on the activities list if he redeemed double the points value.”
ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOWAfter creating this system, she gave the list to her husband, who quickly started doing the fun tasks. He went over the list again after completing the activities. “By the end of the day the dog has had five walks, and I’ve eaten four small gourmet meals, and everything easy or fun is checked off once or more,” she wrote. “He’s earned enough ‘points’ to redeem everything on the rewards list and hasn’t used anything. I’m thinking I’m pretty smart and that this was hugely successful.”
Little did she know the tables would turn almost immediately. When she woke up the next day, her husband started using the points he’d gained to make her do all the hard tasks! “It’s been six hours and I’ve already cleaned out his dresser, done all the laundry, and walked the dog in the rain… twice. I’ve just now taken a break to write this. He still hasn’t used all his points.”
This woman’s story, which she shared on Reddit, garnered plenty of attention and thousands of comments. One user wrote, “That is amazing. He played the system,” while another said, “Lol good job keeping up with your end of the deal!”
Others shared different ways the woman can fix her point system. “Should have made it a ‘daily quest’ system, where you can only earn points for the specific activity once per day,” one user wrote.
Another shared, “Just have to make a new list every week/day and reassign point values. Will help learn which chores he really despises and ones where you might not mind as much. Also, need to set a limit for how many times an activity can be done or have a diminishing return for each successive time. For example, if the dog walk is assigned a point value of 3, the second would be 2 and the third 1. Any after that would be 0.”
CONTINUE READING BELOWwatch nowWe don’t know whether she took on the advice of the commenters, but a point system to encourage your husband (or kids) to do chores still seems like a clever idea! Is this something you would try at home? Share your answers in the comments below.
What other parents are reading
