Mom Hides Cash Under Trash To See If Her Family Will Actually Pick It Up. It’s Been Two Days.

Moms know that getting family to pitch in and help around the house can feel daunting at best, and virtually impossible at worst. Though I can convince -nag- my kids into completing their chores, they seem to have each been born with a literal blind spot for anything lying on the floor, unless it holds some personal value.

Then they still won’t pick it up, but will gladly complain when anyone else attempts to.

Mom Miranda Crimberg knows this feeling all too well; her family doesn’t pick crap up, either. Sometimes people need a little incentive… although in Miranda’s case, it seems like cash incentive isn’t doing it, either!

Frustrated by her family’s lack of ambition in participating in the daily tidying-up of the house, Miranda decided to make her point very clear with an amusing experiment.

She planted a five dollar bill behind a scrap of paper. Reward money, if you will, for anyone who was willing to go to the trouble of picking up one.single.scrap off the floor.

Seems like a good idea, no? Cash for trash!

Kids love earning money, and a fiver seems like a cool deal for picking up a single piece of floor trash. But what happens if the family doesn’t KNOW that the reward for picking up that strategically placed paper is some sweet cash?

She made it easy, too; the paper was placed in their bathroom, a room that has frequent traffic. They can’t miss it… unless they choose to.

Miranda declared her experiment to be the “who will pick up the random piece of trash that they KNOW isn’t supposed to be there” challenge, and posted it on her Facebook page. 

And it’s hilarious, because if you’re a mom, you know EXACTLY how this challenge is going.

Yup… 48 hours and counting… still no winner! 

So for two days, Miranda’s entire family has repeatedly walked in & out of the bathroom, and not one of them has given a moment’s thought to the scrap that has been lying on the floor in plain sight. And please note: it’s not just the kids that are missing out on this sweet reward.

Miranda points out that every family member is seemingly oblivious to it, even her fellow parent:

Between the kids AND the husband, and MULTIPLE trips in and out of the bathroom, this little piece of heaven may just be in it for the long haul! 

It’s predictability is what makes it so damn funny, and is precisely why the post has over 261K shares already. 

Why? Because Miranda’s family is all of our families.

I know that if I tried the very same challenge in my house, the only possible winner would be our cat, because he’d at least try to bat the paper around with his paws. My daughter could identify a sliver of onion in a bowl of rice from ten feet away, but she’d deny ever laying eyes on a scrap of trash on the floor (that she stepped right over to avoid). 

While they wouldn’t do it for “free”, you can bet that my kids would be wrestling each other to the ground to snatch up that fiver if they knew it was there. Your kids probably would, too. Your spouse might just be happy to sacrifice five dollars to have someone else handle the job, so…

Let’s face it; moms are typically the default parent, which means we tackle the “invisible” work in our homes that no one in our families seems to even notice.

While we can train our family members to cooperate in this arena, it can be pretty damn frustrating to do so.

While getting the family on board to pitch in around the house can be challenging, Miranda’s “challenge” is a fantastically funny way to deal with family members who need to be taught, as Miranda puts it, to #justdotherightthing.