CLEVELAND — “Mom! I’m hungry…”
“Moooommmm, I need a snack.”
The request for food is constant. My kitchen is the busiest room in the house with the little ones doing projects, eating, making a mess, eating, complaining through homework and then eating.
In between Zoom classroom meetings and my own work, I caught our live feed of the miles-long line of cars waiting to pick up food from the Greater Cleveland Food Bank.
It’s clear, this is just one of many hardships people are suddenly facing because of this virus and financial fallout.
“Girls! Take a look at this,” I called to them and showed them the video. “What if you asked me for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and we didn’t have any and your belly was growling?”
They both said: “That would be sad.”
So, maybe we can help.
We’ve been saving some of our allowance for donations, but we would need a lot more than $2. I knew telling them they would have to clean would go over like a lead balloon. So, I figured – what if I made it an obstacle course?
I took a sheet of paper and on one side, we wrote down the cleaning challenges worth $1 for completion.
Knowing they would need some extra incentive, I let them come up with the fun challenges on the other side of the paper. Those activities were worth $.50 for completion. If they did extra or did the best job, they could earn bonus points.
The first challenge? Jumping jacks for one minute. I purposely started with the fun one so they got into the mindset that this was a game.
Second challenge? Sweeping the floors. My 4 year old ended up doing two extra rooms with the dust-buster, earning an extra $2.
The third challenge was running up a padded wall – American Ninja Warrior style. This is when it looked like they were getting ready for Olympic trials.
Within an hour, the bathroom sinks were wiped up, Baby Shark dance complete, toys were gathered from under the bed and funny pictures were drawn of daddy.
They watched intently as I added up the “points” to see who won. My 6 year old earned $14 and my 4 year old earned $13.75. They were thrilled that the challenge came down to 75 cents.
We logged onto the Greater Cleveland Food Bank's site, and with a few clicks, donated $50. (I rounded up for them)
I hope, as this difficult time unfolds, my kids remember how fun it was to help other families in need. And I hope my bathroom sinks stay sparkling.
Here's how you can donate, too.
