Keeping track of household chores a point of contention with you and your love(s)?
Are you even slightly a geek?
Do you have a sense of humor?
Have I got something fun for you!
Chore Wars. It’s a very customizable program by which you and your household can have a D&D style adventure revolving around… housework!
It’s very simple. You just set up an adventure party, and create adventures (chores) for members to claim. You get to choose how many XP (experience points, for you non-gamers) each chore will receive. The recommendation is that the XP should be roughly equivalent to the minutes it takes to complete a chore. You also set up other factors involved in the chore. Ferinstance, stacking wood would be something requiring a lot of strength and endurance, but negotiating a car loan would require a lot of intelligence, wisdom and charisma. As you gain experience points, your character grows and changes according to what adventures you complete and what characteristics these adventure requires.
Each adventure is quite scaleable. Let’s say you give the vacuuming, which has a full XP score of 10, a lick and a promise. You can claim half that. You also have the option of outlining exactly what’s require to claim the full XP on a certain chore. (My household doesn’t bother).
Completely geektastic.
My own household does use this system and we enjoy it a great deal. While there never were fights about housework, it’s a gentle motivation to keep on top of chores in a fun way. Chorewars did not exist during OLQ’s heyday, but if it did, we would have used it. In fact, the chore chart we did use was a gentle way to show who was doing what over a period of time and did tend to keep people motivated to pull their own weight. But I think, being gamers, we would have enjoyed Chore Wars a lot more!