Chores gone awry

For some time, I have felt a strong need and a great sense of guilt that our kids do not have a regular chore schedule. Besides the discipline that it teaches them, it would be a huge help to me! I'm not saying they don't do anything - they keep their rooms semi-clean, put away most of their laundry (you can tell by their drawers!!), and pretty much do whatever I ask them to do at random. But I've always felt that they needed a consistent plan with regards to the chores and we have implemented and abandoned many variations of this with little or no success. And I'm all for paying them an allowance too. I know not everyone agrees with paying for chores, but honestly, I would like the kids to have a little of their own money to learn the finer skills of money management and have something to spend at the Upward concession stand. (I think my Mom and Dad who seem to be pretty much financing our Saturdays would appreciate this too!)

Fast forward to present . . .

We started a new chore list on Monday and so far, so good!! The list is fairly simple - everyone makes their bed every day, has one other everyday chore, and maybe a once/twice a weeker. I feel like I'll add more as we go, but maybe not.

Well, Alex usually goes to Reagan's house on Wednesdays after school/club and I had mentioned to him last night that he would need to get his chores done before school if he wanted to go to Reagan's house, since he wouldn't be home again until 8:00. So, he gets up this morning, gets dressed and makes his bed. Chore #1 taken care of!!

I'm helping Parker in the bathroom and I keep hearing loud noises coming from the kitchen. I'm thinking to myself - Good grief - why is he banging all those dished around?? Then I remember - He's emptying the dishwasher! What a good boy!! I had never been so happy to hear banging dishes at 7:00 in the morning before!! It was a proud moment, for sure!!

I finish with Parker and go to the kitchen to check on him and am about to say how proud I am that he was doing his chores without any reminders from me and he's such a great kid and that that really showed me how responsible he could be - all these amazing compliments flowing through my head.

Then, I look down into the dishwasher and see a glass lid that was used to cook a pot of spaghetti - still totally red and greasy!! I look down into the bottom of the dishwasher, and see big brown spots - who knows what really??

I calmly say - uuuummm, I don't think I ran the dishwasher last night.

To which Alex responds - Yeah, I thought it looked kind of dirty in there!!

So I explain that a dirty dishwasher usually means dirty dishes and that he was done with that chore for today!! He was thrilled that he didn't have to finish and thankfully, he had only done part of the bottom, none of the top, and none of the silverware (Luke's job).

I think I rounded up all the put-up dirty dishes - hopefully!
Anyone want to come over for dinner??