Sunday 15 January 2012

Make housework from a chore to a game!

I'm Sandy Andrews, (real name Douglas Alexander Andrews (Sandy is Scottish for Alexander in case anybody asks)) I'm a 37 year old single man who lives alone in a small place fit for one person, a bachelorette house.

I usually don't like to clean my house. Why? It's a chore! I don't like chores! I'm sure that all the men across Canada and America feels the same way. I don't like doing house work but I don't like keeping my house dirty. So I resolved that problem by coming up with a cool game called Super Clean Up.

This is how the game works:

Get a piece of paper and a pen, write down the word 'Task' at the very top of the page. Draw a verticle line down the center of the page and write down 'Bid' beside the line. Draw another verticle line to the right of the word 'Bid' and write the word 'Time', and another verticle line beside 'Time' and write the word 'Score'.

Your score sheet should look like this:


The next thing to do is choose a task and a room where you will perform that task. Let's say for example you need to vacuum your bedroom floor.  So write down on your score sheet 'Vacuum bedroom floor' under 'Task'.

After you write down your task, you will make a bid on how many minutes you think it'll take you to complete the task. You only have only 10 minutes in maximum time. So for example, if you think you can vacuum your bedroom floor in 6 minutes, you can write down 6/10. That is 6 minutes in bidding out of 10 minutes of maximum time.

Next you will need to get a stop watch. If you have an android phone, you can use a stop watch on your android phone or download it if you don't have one on your phone. You can also use a stop watch on your wrist watch. If you don't have a stop watch on your watch, you can keep track of time using a clock or your watch with a second hand. But it's always best to use a stop watch.

When you're ready to clean, start the timer with 5 seconds of grace time. Hide the timer so you're not looking at the time and start cleaning. As you're cleaning, take your time. Do not rush. Also do not look at the time as you're cleaning and be sure that every detail is completed. This is not a race. This is to determine how fast you can go within your own pace. When you're finished, stop the timer immediately and write down the time you actually spent vacuuming your bedroom floor under 'Time' excluding the 5 second grace time. Do not continue your task after you stop the timer. Otherwise, it's a one minute penalty.

Your score is calculated according to the formula below:

(b*60)-(t*60+s)+(m-b)100

b = the amount of minutes you bid
t  = the amount of minutes you've spent
s  = the amount of seconds you've spent
m = the amount of maximum time, which is 10 minute maximum

So here's the example:

I chose to vacuum my bedroom floor. I bid 6 minutes out of the 10 minutes max, that is how many minutes I think it would take me to vacuum my bedroom floor. Then it took me 4 minutes and 21 seconds to complete. Now this is how I figured the score out:

(6*60)-(4*60+21)+(10-6)100
= 360 - 261 + (4)100
= 360 - 261 + 400
= 99 + 400
= 499


Therefore, 499 points is my score.

The reason I suggest 10 minutes in maximum time is to give you more points depending on how fast you go. For example, when I sweep under my rug, I bid 1 minute over 10 minutes and finished in 30 seconds. Therefore I scored 930. See the difference?



Now if I spent more time than I bid I lose points.

For example I choose to pick up items off my floors and wrote 1/10 in bidding time. So I picked up some items off my floors and put them all away. It took me 3 minutes and 14 seconds so it was longer than I expected. This is the formula for my loss.

-((t*60+s)+(m-b)100)

again...

b = the amount of minutes you bid
t  = the amount of minutes you've spent
s  = the amount of seconds you've spent
m = the amount of maximum time, which is 10 minute maximum

-((3*60+14)+(10-1)100)
= -((180+14)+(9)100)
= -(194+900)
= -1094

Once you've finished your task and calculated your score, you're prepared to do another task. Everytime you do a task and take score, you should calculate the total score of each task done. Once you've done all your house work, the game is over.

You want to bid as small as you can so that way you can score more points. However, you also want to bid more so that way you won't lose points. You don't really need to be hard on yourself about doing the whole entire house hold with only one sitting. You can break it down a little bit at a time. That's why, when I did my cleaning, I write down one small task at a time. For example, when I did my kitchen, I have a huge rug that takes over almost the whole entire kitchen floor. On my score sheet, I wrote down under task...

- Sweep around the rug
- Swiffer around the rug
- Mop around the rug
- Sweep under rug
- Swiffer under rug
- Mop under rug

This is a great way to make house cleaning fun for those who find that house cleaning is boring and overwhelming. You can try this game with some of your roommates if you have roommates or you can try teaching your kids this game to encourage them to clean up after themselves or perhaps get them to do their daily chores. Have fun!