Every year I’m determined to get the boys to do chores without me constantly hounding them.  Every year I fail.

Today’s struggles reminded me of a text conversation last year (since it was a pre-iPhone text, I don’t have a pretty little screen shot)…

2:16pm Me: You still need to change the litter pans and mow.

<no response>

2:28pm Me: We are out of litter so Dad is bringing some on his way home from work.  Go ahead and start mowing to get that off your list.

<no response>

2:46pm Me: Do you want Chipotle?

2:46pm Jimmy:  Yes.

2:47pm Me: Oh, well we aren’t going to Chipotle.  I just wanted to make sure you were receiving the other texts from me.

Jimmy didn’t find that trick as funny as I did.  Weird.

Over the years I’ve made about 547 chore charts.  Ones with cute little photos when they were too young to read.  Ones with bright, cheery fonts.  Ones with blatant bribes.  Ones so detailed and well thought out that Super Nanny would hug me and exclaim “You don’t need me!”

But none of them worked. 

This year they got illegible scribbling on a plain piece of paper.  (Eric accused me of spelling laundry wrong, but I assured him my spelling is fine…it is just my penmanship that is not.)

Some of the elaborate charts of years past took hours to create.  This one took seconds.

This one is just as effective ineffective as the others.

They obviously didn’t see the “Without NAGGING!” part.

Jimmy won’t fall for the Chipotle trickery any more (I’ve tried), so after a day of frustration I resorted to outright annoyance.

It finally worked.  Anyone know how to set up texts to automatically send in a continuous loop daily??

Oh, I will save you the time of trying to find the camp I mentioned in the title…

There really should be a Chore Boot Camp.  Someone’s missing out on a goldmine idea I tell ya’.

I did get an idea from Google though.  This one just may work.

—

P.S. You may have noticed my text is sent to “Dragon.”  About a year ago, I kept accidentally sending Jim’s texts to Jimmy and vice versa.  I told Jimmy I needed to change his name in my contacts so their names weren’t so similar.  He said change it to Dragon.  I don’t even find it odd anymore…until I see it in a post…