"Oh, don't be so harsh with them. They're kids, they can't help but be just a little messy" Josh pointed out as Izumi scolded the kids. "You're always such a scary mom. Gotta stop taking pointers from my own mother or you might eventually get as scream-happy as she is."

His parents had decided to take this new yacht of theirs on a test spin for a little vacation, leaving the new years cleaning that Izumi insisted on, to them and them alone. Which nobody, besides Izumi, was all that happy about. But whatever got things done, really. Josh turned to the kids. "Why don't you kids come help us with this game we're playing? It's called new years clean-up time" he brought up cheerfully. "If you kids help us play it, we'll go out for ice cream later. What do you say?"

Bribery it is. But considering this was basically a full-house cleaning and the kids would otherwise get in the way... It wasn't the worst idea.

“I hate the fact that your parents ditched cleaning on us. On us!” she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in mock celebration.

“Why did they just dip on the day that we had to get this done?! What the fresh—you know!” she ended a few moments later as the giggling and screaming came closer to where she was currently working.

Much as she wanted to bring her own mother over, she knew that she was going to be busy herself, cleaning down the restaurant with whatever staff she could wrangle. As part of New Year’s traditions, there was always the yearly ‘deep clean’, and this year was no—well this year was plenty different.

“We don’t have much time and I gotta prepare the food for later!” she grumbled as she threw a broom his way along with a rag. “Get cleaning!”

"Could be this is their way of telling us that they won't be here forever" Josh remarked with a light shrug as he quietly began to recruit their children for the job, giving them instructions on handling lighter chores. Teaching them how to do minor housework would be good for them anyway. With the bribery of ice cream, the little buggers set to work while Izumi complained about his folks dipping. It was what it was, there was no reason to cry about it. Nothing they could do.

Josh caught the broom without even looking, and didn't answer from there. She was too angry for him to really answer her. There was no point.

She wasn’t even looking when she’d thrown the broom.

Hoping that Josh had caught it, she let out a cross-sounding noise, before getting back to work. Now that Josh was here, she was hoping the cleaning would go by quicker because it was so fucking tiring having to clean up everything by herself. And that was nasty in and on itself to be honest.

Huffing, she then set to work by mopping the floors. They were going to get a deep waxing once she was done. Oh, fuck, she didn’t want to think about the waxing and how she could manage to coerce request the kids to help her buff and shine the floors once she was done!

There was one other reason why she hated cleaning: she would have to do it all by herself without anyone else helping her. Hopefully this year was going to be different.

Izumi was mad, but really Josh was just happy to get to spend some time with the family. With all this stuff going on lately in Hoenn, Josh and Izumi had been busier than they'd been in years. Could you blame him for just being happy to spend time with Izumi and the kids, even if it was a bit of a menial and tedious task like spring cleaning?

Josh ended up helping her with the waxing himself, though. Why? Because, as he explained to her, trying to show them how to do it properly would take a hell of a lot longer than it would in starting them with something simpler. "Let them start small. Let them get a feel for it. Once they know what they're doing, then in later cleaning times they can try bigger stuff" he reasoned to her. "You gotta look at it like Pokemon training. No Pokemon learns top moves right away, right? And trying to force it will just create headaches."

And also force her to end up having to do the job herself anyway because the kids wouldn't do it all that well if they weren't ready.

“I had to learn way earlier than you did, you know,” she remarked quietly as she continued to buff the floor in order to get the wax ingrained deep into the wooden floor.

“Much earlier than you, if you know what I mean.”

It sucked that she had to do everything herself early, but back then she was literally the only person her mother could rely on while growing up.

That’s what happened when one had a deadbeat for a father.

Anyway…

She wondered what the other two were up to, since the shouting and giggling seemed to have all but disappeared.

He shrugged. "I learned pretty early. You think my folks didn't find ways to keep me busy while I was incessantly nagging them over and over to let me start training Pokemon? To let me go out and go on a journey?" he brought up calmly, looking her in the eye a moment as they worked. "They tried to put me in the hard stuff fast. It didn't work well. Wouldn't recommend it. They'd pretend I did fine, but I saw them doing the job themselves when I left to nap or go play in the yard or something, once they thought I forgot about my questions. Took me until my college leave to realize I didn't know near as much about cleanup as I thought I did, since it was only ever about distraction and wearing me out, to them. Getting me off their case because they couldn't think of a better way to avoid the reality of the subject."

He sighed in turn. "So yeah. I think letting them learn gradually is the best way to go. Better to be good eventually instead of useless period."

Realizing the kids had stopped giggling, he put down the broom and eventually found them arguing over who got to carry the dustpan. He quickly set up a turn order to fix that.

“Where are they?” she called out, standing up from her position on the floor, frowning at the can of wax. How had they run out so quickly?

Had she forgotten to pick up an extra can when she’d last gone shopping? Yikes.

Looking at the work she’d done so far, she knew that this was going to be another backbreaking couple of hours; but the wax had to settle first before she could run over the surface to buff it out.

Sometimes she remembered why she hated doing the waxing, but nobody else was going to do it, so…

“What were they arguing about?” she added a few moments later. Izumi thought she heard something along the lines of ‘Gimme’, ‘No, gimme!’, and ‘I wanted that first!’ coming from their general direction…

Luckily, Josh remembered that he'd assigned Lyra to hold the dustpan first. Which meant it was now Zack's turn, and he'd set up a timer on his HoloWatch after that in order to show when it was time to switch over. The kids put up a fuss at first, but Josh made it clear that this was how it was going to be if they wanted that ice cream. A bit harsh, but it seemed that Josh indeed did know how to put his foot down, when he needed to.

Eventually the house looked spiff and good as new. It was a long day, but when their parents (did I say their? Cuz they are definitely hers now, them in-laws) arrived home, they found a clean house and a tired couple. Also the kids napping. Perhaps they'd be alright after all.