The UTBIOTAD Ruse

Written by Ruby A. Iadeluca

If you have teens, you probably already know what I'm talking about.

The UTBIOTAD ruse: Using The Bathroom In Order To Avoid Dishes.

Because really, how much bathroom time do they really need?

Apparently, a LOT!

I interviewed my 13yo on the subject and this is what she had to say:

Q: Why do you spend so much time in the bathroom?

A: Because it gets me out of doing dishes.

Q: What do you do in the bathroom?

A: I look at my hotness. (She came up with that answer pretty quick. Maybe I should be worried?)

Q: (at this point I used my hand to show her a "graph" of the time she used the bathroom plus the time she took to finish dishes, in comparison to the time she could have taken to simply do the dishes and then have free time) Why don't you just do the dishes and then have free time before bed-time to do whatever?

A: Because dishes suck!

At this point, the interview was over. She was mad because I was questioning her routine, her decision to "just use the bathroom real quick before dishes".

This is typical in our household.  Our 20yo is almost never home. She doesn't pay any rent, just her share of car insurance, so she's expected to do some chores, but she rarely does. Unless she's expecting her BF to come over, then it's a different story completely! She will clean house until she more than runs out of time and he's standing at the door while she's finishing sweeping the dirt into the dustpan! In fact, the usual custom that has developed is that she will come home late from work and then continue to stay up to (literally) all hours face-timing, face-booking, tweeting and texting. Then when morning rolls around and the rest of the family has been up and dressed, eaten breakfast and are beginning on the day, she will stroll up the stairs from her room, still in her pajamas, hair fashionably in its messy knot on the top of head, pretending to be all exhausted from her night of studying. And when we confront her with the topic of what chores she will do that day, we get a very high-pitched "But I have to go to work today! And I've got to work on my essay!" She is basically saying that she will not be participating in any household chores because by the time she fixes herself breakfast, and then showers and gets ready for work, her three free hours will be all used up. Her dad and I go down this road at least once a week.

The 17 yo, he just is waaaaay to macho to be pushing a broom or soaking his hands in dishwater. However, despite the machismo, we usually let him off from the mundane household chores, because he's the "go-to" guy when the driveway needs to be snow-blowed, or the lawn needs to be mowed, or the roof needs to be shoveled, or some other heavy-duty, heavy-lifting chore needs to be done. He's the guy.

Then, the 13yo. This is the girl I interviewed.

Over a year ago, their dad and I had much more control over the household chores than we do now. We divided the chores between the kids on a basis of time. Dishes: each kids got a week at a time. Garbage out to the curb: each kid got a month. Etc. You get the point.

The oldest three kids did the chores when they were supposed to. That was that.

So the 13yo.... We made a 'deal' with her. Since she completely sucks at doing dishes, we told her that if she could step up her game and do the dishes without the "clean" dishes being coated in grease, then we would assign the another of our children to do dishes and put her into the 3 week interval of the dish-washing schedule. I cannot remember the exact date we began the 'deal'; it's been well over a year at least, most likely close to 2 years.... And we are so (sadly) in the habit now of checking plates, silverware and glasses for film, grease and dried on tidbits from the last meal that, obviously, she is still doing dishes. Every. Single. Day.

I sometimes will help out. But that's more for the sake of actually having a clean dish to eat off of than it is for feeling sorry that she's doing dishes. Again.

So, in summary, she very willingly admitted that she spent a lot of time in the bathroom to avoid doing dishes; but what the poor child doesn't realize - or at least, what she won't admit to - is that she is only wasting her own time. I know for children, this isn't a huge deal. After all, she's only used up 13 years of her lifetime. And remember as a kid, how your days and months and years used to seem endless? This is why, as adults, we fear wasting time. We know how fast the days, months and years are really ticking by. That's not to say that I wake up at the crack of dawn every day. But for kids, sleeping until noon, or gazing at every nook and cranny of their own face in the bathroom mirror for what seems like hours on end, is okay. Because for them, they still have a lot of life left to live.

It's an age-old conundrum, one of those riddles that will never be figured out, until what goes around truly comes back around, and children become adults and they look at their watches and say, "Is it really 7:30 already? Where did the day go? Don't those kids realize that if they just did the dishes now, they would have the entire evening left over to just do what they want?"

And, of course, no parent will ever admit to their own child, how much time they used to spend in the bathroom after dinner!