I have been telling my kids from the time they were toddlers, “Family means everybody helps.” Back then, they loved turning on the Roomba and waiting for it to get stuck under the couch, so they could slide the couch over to rescue “Epsy Hammer,” the name they had given it (based on their mispronunciation of M.C. Hammer, which, apparently, is a good name for a robot vacuum).

Ashley used to love to clean the windows. She would take the Windex bottle and spray about ⅔ of its contents onto a single window and then wipe it with a rag from the middle of the window (as high as she could reach) and down. Which, if you think about it, is sort of helpful. I was about to explain why, but… I can’t.

Now she will sit on the floor of her room “putting away clothes” for hours on end. With an open laptop next to her. And headphones.

Samantha once dared to protest the overwhelming burden of chores.  She did not think it was “fair” that she had to put away the clean dishes.  I told her I would trade her any one of my chores for her job of putting away dishes.  For some reason, she decided that putting away the dishes was a good deal after all.

But the best “helper” is my husband. He walks in the house, kicks off his shoes, and tosses his wallet and a handful of pens on the table.

He does like to “clean” and “organize” the insides of things. He will take every single thing out of his desk and pile it onto the bed. Then he will spend three days “going through” the contents. This means he finds the “perfect place” in the desk for about 1/12 of the items in the pile. Now his desk is “clean and organized.” Yep. And there is a pile of 11/12 of the desk stuff. On the bed. For days and days and days until I toss it into a box and put it in the garage so that I can sleep in peace.

He recently cleaned out the cabinet under the kitchen sink. So every time I need the Soft Scrub or a trash bag, I have to go out to the garage with my pick and shovel, like an archeologist searching for lost treasure.

I am not sure how this strategy makes any sense. But it must because he tells our children that they need to clean their rooms, like he is overwhelmed and flabbergasted by the amount of mess they make.

Um….?

And then he will take my water glass–that I have had out for less than one day and that I am currently drinking out of–and empty it into the sink and put it in the dishwasher. When he does this, I glance around the kitchen at all of his dirty dishes and jars of seeds he is collecting and all of the useless appliances that don’t fit in a cabinet and the crumbs from the sandwich he made and the stack of empty grocery bags hanging from the door knob… and I think, “Seriously? You looked in this room and the one thing you decided to pick up is the water glass that you JUST saw me drinking out of?”

So, yeah, in our family everyone “helps.”