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The way most of you explain it, it should be replaced with, "I already explained it." For the rest of situations, all it's going to do is either teach them to resent authoriy, or worse, to blindly obey orders without any consideration of the reasoning. xephrys' question of, "Do you know why ..." is also a much better solution. At the bare minimum, a child should know the logic behind a rule, even if they won't agree with it.
I've also tended to view "my house, my rules" as a pretty lame excuse if not backed up with reasoning, mainly due to my mother's insistence of having three-hour shouting matches with my brother (age 17) every Sunday before dragging him to church with empty threats of an even bigger set of severe consequences each week (I think the worst was the threat of being forced to sleep outside in a hammock in a rainstorm for a few days, with a bar of soap so he could bathe with the hose.*) She still barely accepts the fact that he's an atheist and didn't respond well to years of brainwashing.
* - I suggested this just to see if she would actually say it
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