Chores are undeniably one of the obligations that children seem to hate the most. Excuses pile up in children's minds as to why certain tasks should not be their responsibility. I've used quite a few: "The other children never do anything." » “I did it last time!” “I didn’t dirty it!” The list is long. Housework, however, is a real necessity, even if most children don't realize it. I've experienced what happens to a family when lazy little kids decide to officially give up their household chores. Starting around March 2006, my mother started having work-related issues and our cable, internet and phone services were shut down. disabled. Outraged, I convinced my brother and sisters to join me in protesting this injustice. We decided to stop cleaning the house. Dishes would stay stacked for days, maybe up to a week if Mom had a busy schedule. The bathrooms would start to smell and the carpets would be littered with crushed bits of food. When Mom found time, she would scold us and the house would be cleaned…for about a day. But with five children and little parental supervision, the house became fetid relatively quickly. When our electricity went out, we stopped doing everything. Mom got tired of having to work all day just to come home to a bunch of wayward kids and a huge mess, so in May we started staying at friends' houses at night and maybe going home for a bit. home during the day just to have time with each other. It seemed the simplest thing to do, given the circumstances. Little did we know that abandoning the house would be our real loss. On the morning of May 26, my brother and I left our night supervisors' house early. It was unbearably hot in the house and we had to wait for my mother's sentence to be decided before we could reunite with my family. Ultimately, the court decided to give my mother a sentence of 120 hours of community service and numerous fines as punishment for her crimes. My siblings and I were allowed to return to her house, after she found a home and a stable job, of course. It was a reunion full of tears of joy and lots of affection. Since then, I have realized that household chores are more than a responsibility to the house; they are my responsibility to my mother and my family as a whole. I always do the tasks assigned to me and often help the younger children keep up with theirs as well. I'm afraid of losing my mother again; I'm afraid that my laziness will destroy those close to me. I will never again let something as small or insignificant as washing dishes break up my family. Chores are a chore, but they are a necessity.