The New Deal

Doing chores.

Yay.

But since I don’t live with my parents anymore, it’s kind of essential that we actually do stuff around the house. I guess we could hire a maid, but why pay for one when I married one? HAYOOOOO! OMG JUST KIDDING.

I don’t really know how long it took, but Amanda and I eventually just came to an agreement on some things:

• If you prepare dinner, you don’t do the dishes.
  • If both of us prepare dinner, we both do the dishes.
• Amanda will fold the laundry if Charlie washes it.
• Flip-flop letting the dog out.
  • Charlie is a heavy sleeper. Amanda lets him out at night if he’s whining.
• Flip-flop cleaning the bathroom as needed.
• Flip-flop vacuuming as needed.
• Trash goes out with the next person to leave if it’s full.
• We don’t dust.

Well, Charlie wanted a new deal. Amanda does everything. OMG JUST KIDDING.

I requested some amendments to the agreement. After a bit of negotiating, the agreement was amended as:

• Amanda does all the laundry.
• Charlie keeps the entire kitchen clean.
• Charlie vacuums as needed.

The key to negotiating is ranking your assets/items. A 1 is something that is not important to you. A 10 is something that is very important to you.

To me, not doing laundry is a 10. I’m pretty willing to do most other things in order to get that.

Keeping the kitchen clean is a 3-4. I don’t dislike doing dishes. Taking out the trash isn’t a big deal. It’s a little more time consuming than washing clothes, but my personality just prefers this over laundry.

And vacuuming is a 1. I do it already. And I’m pretty savvy at it. (HAHA GET IT?!?) Plus we have the Dyson Ball DC24. It’s so money and you don’t even know it.

When I initially asked Amanda about the laundry-dishes trade off, it only included laundry and dishes. A 3-4 for a 10 in my book. I’m already coming out ahead. When she came back with adding vacuuming, it was over.

FDR would be proud.