Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 4, 1993 TAG: 9302030161
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. LENGTH: Medium
GAME EVENS OUT CHORES FOR COUPLES
In the world of the HoneyDo couple, if a man wants to collect on his "whoopie" reward card, he must first clean the ashes from the fireplace, iron his shirt, mow the lawn and bathe the dog.If his HoneyDo partner wants her reward - "afternoon delight" - she must clean the bathroom, mend the clothes and water the houseplants.
HoneyDo is a game, and - says its inventor, Rick Naylor of Denver, - a new system of checks and balances that can help make a marriage a little more fair, and a lot more fun. "Yes, it's wonderful, it's fun and it really works," he says.
Naylor, a former sales and marketing executive, and his wife, Peggy, designed the game as a way of distributing household chores more evenly between husband and wife.
"Doing chores is a problematic thing with couples. We assume the spouse is going to do specific chores, and that usually comes out uneven. One person does more than the other."
Here's how HoneyDo works: A couple reviews the game's list of "projects" or "HoneyDo's," and selects some they'd like their spouse to do. They list those on a score card, along with the number of points assigned each one. (For example, bathing the dog is 2 points for men, 3 for women.)
For each completed project, a "lips of approval" mark is stamped on the player's score card. When the card is completed, the player selects a reward card based on total points.
The more disgusting or difficult the project, the more the points. The more the points, the better the reward.
Naylor says more than 4,000 HoneyDo games have been sold since December, and he expects sales to stay strong through Valentine's Day. "About 95 percent of our customers are women. We have seen that there are many women who don't know how to ask their significant other to help share with chores.
"It's amazing but true, that when people buy a game and open the box, they follow the rules. Often the barriers they created in their lives are lifted."
Naylor heralds his game as a way to "encourage communication and teach couples to have more fun. They can acknowledge each other for mundane chores and reward each other with dates. What a concept!"