Yahoo Lifestyle Could Bidding On Chores Equal Domestic Bliss?
Six!” I bellow, whipping six fingers from behind my back. Eight!” yells my husband simultaneously, flourishing eight digits. Damn. He’s won again. Between us, a bag full of garbage is spilling its malodorous contents all over the kitchen floor.
“Yes!” shouts my husband, punching the air. “I win!” You would be forgiven for wondering what on earth we’re doing. Are we really bidding over a pile of rubbish?
Well, yes, we pretty much are. Specifically, however, we’re bidding on how much money we’re willing to pay the other to deal with this particularly icky situation. Having nominated the lower figure, I’m stuck with bin duty, but he’ll have to pay me six bucks for my troubles.
So, how did we end up in the kitchen, yelling out dollar figures? In our relationship, the division of chores has always been a contentious issue. We’ve never thrashed out who should be doing what, but the way it’s ended up is that I – like countless other women – do the lion’s share. He’s been known to take out the recycling bins – but only on a good day, with the wind behind him. He has never, to my knowledge, operated the washing machine and I don’t think he could tell you whether we own an iron, let alone use one.
Am I complaining? Now that you mention it, I am. Not so much because I mind the chores themselves, but more because I get the strong impression that he frequently forgets I’m doing them. Who restocked the fridge yesterday and threw away the out-of-date stuff? That would be the grocery fairy. Who picked up the socks off the bedroom floor and put them in the washing machine? The laundry pixies. Obviously.
Yes, there’s a definite air of domestic dissatisfaction in the Pursglove household, which I hope might be dispelled by a more equitable system. It might sound petty, but the domestic bidding system we’re trialling is the brainchild of two very smart people. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, Daniel Reeves, 39, and Bethany Soule, 33, each hold an advanced degree in computer science. Whether it’s $24 to look after their kids or $4 to pick up the takeaway, when a job comes up around the house, they essentially pay the other to do it.
It’s not just the dull day-to-day chores they fork out for: Daniel actually paid Bethany $30,000 to have the couple’s two children, Faire, now seven, and five-year-old Cantor.
It’s all part of the “quantified self” movement. In essence, quantified selfers like Daniel and Bethany firmly believe you live a better life when you measure and record it (with “it” being everything from your heart rate to how many emails you’ve read). It made sense to them to apply that same level of computation on the home front. (They’re so committed to the movement, they’re the creators of quantified self app Beeminder, beeminder.com.)
It’s an idea likely to find fertile ground among Australian women. Here, we hold the dubious honour of spending some of the longest hours in the world on unpaid work such as housework,
shopping and child care.
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