Around your house lurks the never-ending battle of clean up, straighten-up, throw-out, and re-organize. The longer you've been in your house, the more these battlefields exist in number and complexity. If you have kids, you are likely to try and mobilize them into taking care of these projects. Then you bug them to get it done while they try to find a way to avoid doing them. Everyone spends time getting nothing done!

If group games are popular on TV with teams attempting to overcome the odds, then why not give it a try at home. Sit down on a Friday night and identify an set of tasks or chores that need getting done, divide the family into two teams, set up the rules, and then let the best team win!

By doing this, everyone participates, parents spend time with their children, and everyone has fun in the process. How do you identify the playing field? It depends on where you are and what you have. For some families, it may take the form of garage, attic, basement, backyard, etc. For other families it might be barn, fences, log chopping or who knows what.

Try to make the game equal for everyone. You might want to have Moms and daughters teamed up for projects that work for them and Dads and sons on guy-type projects. Or for more fun, mix them up! At the end of the day, tally up the score and see who wins. Just make sure that everyone realizes that getting the job done and having fun is more important than winning or losing.

In today's busy world where families see each other for shorter periods of time during the week, chore-wars may be a good way of getting everyone together and having fun as a family. During your efforts, parents get a chance to talk to their children and also get to learn about how to organize and complete a large number of tasks.

So try Chore-wars! - email us and let us know what you think. Give us your ideas for Chore-wars and we'll post them for other families to use. If you think of other family related activities, please email us about those too.