I'm such a mean mom

I love that according to my middle daughter her friends think I'm mean because I make her clean all the time and she doesn't have many toys.  Well let's take a moment to examine these allegations:

1. You aren't cleaning all the time. If you would just do the couple of things that I ask you to do it would be done in 10-15 minutes, but you don't, you mess around and therefore it takes you all day and we don't get to do anything else more "fun"
2. I don't buy you toys. At one point you had so many toys that you didn't even know what you had. You didn't care about your things and left them out over and over again, I took them away and gave you an opportunity to earn them back, sometimes you succeeded and sometimes you didn't, but the things you got back just ended up not taken care of again and again, so I got rid of them because it looked to me like you didn't want them in the first place.
3. I'm mean because you have to fold and put away your own laundry, and have started to learn how to start the washer...OH my gosh...again with the teaching you some responsibility. I can't wait to see what your friends do when they move out. They aren't going to know what to do to keep a house, or do their own laundry, but you should know how because of me, your mean, mean mom.

It may not seem like fun now, but if you get into the habit of doing the things that I am trying to teach you, when you are an adult on your own in this world, you will have more time for all the "fun" because you know how to do the not so fun. I love you and I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just teaching you responsibility. I know, it's tough being a kid.