16 Ways to Escape Your House Remodeling Project

With apologies to my parents, I present the ultimate list for escapists, procrastinators, and just plain slackers everywhere who are trapped in the throes of household remodeling.

16 Ways to Escape Your House Remodeling Project

1. Lock yourself in the bathroom for a YouTube break. You deserve it. Just keep an eye on those minutes. I personally recommend BuzzFeed. You can typically watch at least three BuzzFeed videos before people start to think you've drowned in there.

2. Pretend to be useful by going to the library and checking out a book (example: How to Clean Years of Unspeakable Nastiness From Your Toilet and Sink Pipes). It's got to be better than the real job. Plus, if you're lucky, someone will put you in charge of the project and you can boss other people around on how to do it.

3. Contract an illness. Seriously. 

4. Become really, really good at one job that doesn't stink. That way, you will become the house authority on said job, and that is all you will have to do for the rest of the time.

5. Make dinner. Hey, somebody's got to do it, and everyone else is too busy. Bonus points if you need to go to the store for ingredients.

6. Hide something vital to the process, such as the scissors or packing tape. Then, join enthusiastically in the family's manhunt for it while leading them wildly off track. You could either hide it somewhere completely unrealistic (like the very top of the tree in your front yard), or somewhere feasible (inside one of your dad's old running shoes) to deflect suspicion. It was just misplaced, right?

7. Promote yourself to Worker Inspection. Parade around the house with a clip board and checklist, and fire one of your brothers or sisters from the family every so often to remind everyone that you are, in fact, in charge.

8. Send your parents on vacation. Somewhere nice, like Canada. We recommend a padded hotel room, since they will do nothing but worry about you and the house the whole time they're gone. Or...

9. Send yourself on vacation. Let them work if they like it so much! And if they won't let you send yourself on vacation, then...

10. Break something only your parents are capable of fixing. Hopefully, by this point, they're getting fed up enough to send you to your grandparents or something before they actually explode.

11. Just run away. Run. Hide. It's not subtle, but it's effective.

12. Run away, and hide in your shed. Snicker quietly as the policemen bring home reports of your whereabouts. Just make sure your family isn't one of those efficient families who actually uses the shed.

13. Hire an oracle to warn your family relentlessly that the project is doomed, as evidenced by the stars. Better yet, just dress up as an oracle yourself and save on oracle-hiring costs. Just make sure they don't recognize you.

14. Learn to play the bagpipes! Your practices will soon be kicked to the garage, because before you learn to play the bagpipes you learn to play something called the chanter, which is the only instrument we have concocted yet that is more awesomely obnoxious than the bagpipes.

15. Take summer gym. Take summer math. Take summer synchronized swimming, take summer anything to get out of the house.

16. Start a blog, and then insist that you must post something, because your readers (all two or three of them) are counting on you.

I appreciate it, guys.