Prepping the kitchen cabinets for a fresh coat of paint. (Provided photo — Diane Chase)

Recently, my daughter made an offer to repaint the kitchen cabinets. It was a generous offer, to say the least. She then one-upped the notion by painting the picture of a friendly mother-daughter bonding experience where we could accomplish more than just the cabinets. (It’s not a large room, but whoever built the house decided all the wood trim would reside in the kitchen.) She suggests listening to an audiobook. We could chit chat while we sealed holes and prevented drafts. She drew me in slowly.

Construction is the standard of living in an old house. We also need to live in our home while doing any repairs. Getting a freshly painted kitchen seemed doable, during the holidays. I don’t know what I was thinking. It may be the smell of new paint. I sanded and prepped the bottom drawers, and she slapped paint over any previous owners’ layers of paint. Now my kitchen is in shambles while my child visits friends, works or recovers from a cold. I feel like she “Tom Sawyered” me.

I know she didn’t deliberately set out to pass the job off to me, but as I paint doors, and replace knobs and hinges, I admire how smoothly I transitioned into completing the work.

The Sawyer Effect in psychology mirrors the scene in Mark Twain’s book, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” in which Tom’s chore is to paint a fence. He convinces his friends that he isn’t working but having fun. The final result is Tom being relieved of his duty while his friends complete his task.

The Sawyer Effect has been applied in psychology, banking and even study habits. The goal is to turn a negative into a positive by involving the concept of play. If students think learning is work, the task becomes drudgery, but if they learn to focus on fun aspects of learning, homework or school becomes a more positive experience. The opposite is also true. The desire to succeed is no longer there when activities or sports become work.

Of course, Tom Sawyer’s character agenda was different. He didn’t want to do the work, so he influenced his friends to complete his chores for him.

In banking, The Sawyer Effect refers to the idea that a recommendation, how information is presented, or an opinion can change how someone views what something is worth. Those opinions can alter how someone values things and manages their money. People’s judgment often changes by views from social media influences or friends. We’ve all heard of those deals that are “too good to be true.”

I’m completing this column in a kitchen where half the cabinets remain unpainted, and the others no longer have doors. I know it’s a first-world problem. A part of me is concerned that I am so easily swayed. The other part of me is enjoying the freshly painted doors, even if I did end up painting them myself. In my daughter’s defense, she said she would help once she felt better.