WHEN WE THINK back on our childhood years we don’t always have good memories.
Sometimes our parents made us do all kinds of annoying manual labour that was really just a childhood buzzwreck.
1. Emptying the dishwasher
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The humble dishwasher seems like a great time saver on paper especially when you’re a kid and you think that dishwashing is out of your life forever.
But wait, what’s that your parent is asking you to do?
Empty the dishwasher? Load out a week’s worth of plates?
This is not what we signed up for.
Mind you, if you empty it your cat would have a ball:
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2. Raking leaves
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When you’re a kid the autumn leaves provide hours of entertainment and seem to represent the joys of childhood.
Until you’re asked to rake all the leaves in the garden, forcing you to rue the day Autumn ever decided to just leave all those leaves lying around the place.
3. Tidying your room
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Your room is your sanctuary as a child and so it’s highly irritating when your parents demand it be cleaned.
Particularly when one parent will insist you keep the room tidy in case “we have visitors”.
If we have people over, why would they want to hang out in our childhood bedroom?
Don’t use that line on us.
4. Drying dishes
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If you weren't in a dishwasher house or if your parents had gotten out the good crockery, chances were you'd be put on dish drying duty.
Here's the thing, when you're very young drying dishes is really stressful.
What if you don't get the dish dry enough?
What if you drop said dish will trying to dry it thoroughly?
Why do all the towels leave weird fluff all over our otherwise clean dishes?
5. Cleaning the family car
This is one of those jobs you'd probably do for extra pocket money and then regret forever.
First there's the pain of trying to get the hoover to stretch all the way out to the family car.
Then there's the matter of cleaning the mats for people's feet and waiting for them to dry.
And also the random bits of food you'd find all over the car, making you think twice about that Supermacs meal you insisted on scoffing in the back.
6. Recycling
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We're aware now that recycling is something that helps the environment and saves us money on our bin charges.
But as a child all we saw was having to spend ages making sure the cardboard goes in the right bin, making sure ever jar was saved for the bottle bank and then the time it took to get everything sorted out at the recycling centre.
Honestly, all we wanted to do was lob it in the bin and watch The Simpsons.
7. Looking after pets
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Oh yes, having a pet was definitely a chance to be endlessly amused and build up a bond with some kind of furry animal.
But the minute your parents had you on pet clean up duty, you really started to resent that critter.
There was the whole "The dog has done a pee in the kitchen you have to clean it up" thing or even "can you please make sure the pet is fed".
We still think it's a shame you can't have a pet that feeds and cleans itself.
That would definitely have improved our early days.
