The “Wicked Stepmother” Cleaning Hack Is About To Make Us More Productive
“They think it’s f*cking hilarious.”
If Bluey — aka the greatest family show of the past 10 years, I said what I said — has taught anything over the years (and it’s taught us so, so much), it’s that play is the key to accomplishing just about anything with a child.
Want them to learn to regulate their behavior? Make it a game! Want to parent through a hangover? Make your inability to move a game! (Yes, that’s really an episode.) Now, Instagram creator @cray_gardens has come up with the perfect game for when you need to clean the house and entertain your children: Wicked Stepmother.
“I just wanted to put you onto something,” she begins. “You take an empty one of your cleaning bottles and your microfiber cloth, and you give them to your kid,s and you’re going to play Wicked Stepmother. Like Cinderella. And you yell at them to clean the windows and clean the tables and clean the floors. And they spray, and you yell, and you’re really mean to them. They think it’s f*cking hilarious.”
The best part is that you actually get to clean while they’re laughing their little heads off. And the best, best part is that, in some cases, they actually can help you. It’s the perfect blend of cleaning and quality time.
Honestly? This is genius. As a high-drama child famous for flinging herself on the couch in tears like a silent movie star and a mother whom my own children have described as “a little bit extra,” I could see this working both as a parent and as a child. I only regret that my tween and teen are probably too old for this to work on. Though I suppose you never know until you try...
Other parents in the comments attested to the efficacy of this type of method and even shared happy memories from their own childhoods.
“True story. This works,” confirms one Instagram commenter. “My kids wanted to help one day so I filled up an empty bottle with water, passed out the microfiber cloths, and put them to work. My eldest then told me to yell at them to go faster. They love it”
“I remember my mum pouring water all over the kitchen floor and my sister and I changed into our bathing suits and spent ages sliding around in the soap and skidding as far as we could on sponges and generally having a glorious time,” recalls another. “Was it efficient? No. But was it a core memory of great fun that had a side effect of a mostly clean floor? Absolutely!”
My favorite version of this game involved the inclusion of a costume...
“We put on fairy wings and were ‘cleaning fairies’ and had to clean ‘while the people were away,’” said one commenter. “Bonus points for doing it quietly while the baby was asleep.”
Look, obviously we can’t spend every moment of our children’s lives playing games. We’re not Chilli and Bandit Heeler (no matter how hard we try to be). But maybe there are more opportunities for play than we might initially think and, just maybe, we can make that work for us.
