My 15 year old son has one job in our household.  He is responsible for the taking out the trash.

We have lived in the same house for eight years.  Our trash day has always been Friday.  Therefore, every Thursday night the trash needs to go to the curb.  Sounds simple, right?

Not so much.  Every Thursday he looks at me as if this is the first time we have been afforded the luxury of trash pickup.  I remind him that it has to be done and he informs me he will do it after he….(insert anything other than take trash out here).

On most Thursdays I remind him again around 10 p.m..  This usually involves him telling me that he is tired.  Then I tell him I am tired too, tired of telling him to take out the trash that is. This can end up being a particularly ugly conversation depending on the fatigue level of each of us. If you factor any inclement weather into the equation the intensity level can be multiplied by ten.

After some eye rolling and huffing he ends up getting the job done, most weeks that is.

Last week he forgot.  Which means our cans are overflowing this week not to mention that I asked him to take the kitchen trash out today and he sat it outside the back door.  When I ask him what our plan was for that he replied “I took it outside the house.”

“Oh really, I thought maybe you had hired someone to be the middle man and do the carrying from the back steps to the cans for you.” I say with my own eye rolling going on.

This is the point in the parenting game where you just want to say “screw it!! It would be easier to do it myself!!!!”.  But you don’t because somewhere in the back of your mind you know if you give up this fight there is a very good chance he will grow up and end up on Hoarders.  They will be interviewing him and he will trace it all back to when you didn’t make him take the trash out. Kids do that.  They find ways to blame the parents.  I know I used that parental blame thing a lot in my twenties.

So to rescue from being a Hoarders episode I will continue to “trash talk” every Thursday night until he either remembers or moves out.  Who wants to put their money on him moving out before he remembers……