William has become my little entrepreneur. He went looking for his light saber the other day only to discover that I had thrown it out. But before you judge me and my throwing everything away habit, the light saber was broken. It took one too many beatings at playgroup.
So William has set out to earn the money to buy a new one. My kids don't get an allowance. I don't know if they ever will. They are expected to help around the house as being a part of the family and when they have a reasonable request, Ryan and I will help them pay for it. However, I think a replacement light saber is not a necessary item, so he's having to earn the money. Now I've been having to come up with jobs that I don't normally make him do (or I was planning on doing, but needed a little help). Here's what he's done so far:
- fold cloth diapers because I ran out of time to do it
- pull weeds from the back yard
- sweep the front porch and back patio
- vacuum the whole house and put it all back together
I feel like there's more, but I can't think of them right now. Some other possible jobs are:
- vacuum out the car
- wash the car
- sweep out the garage
- vacuum out the couch cushions (and he gets to keep any money he finds in the cushions)
Ryan told William that he would pay William a penny for every night he doesn't come in our room to sleep on the couch. It's working! If the time comes to purchase the light saber and he doesn't have enough, if I feel he's worked hard and saved, I will help make up the difference.
1 comment:
Funny, I had half of a blog-post written a couple of days ago about this very subject that I never got around to publishing: paid chores.
Since we expect our kids to do so many various chores around the house, sometimes it's hard to come up with some things they can do for some extra spending money. Malcolm has a toy he has his eye on right now (and yes, he gets allowance, and has been patiently saving, but he's hoping to get it a bit faster.)
Here's the list I posted on the fridge for him the other day:
--Clean Kitchen Mini-Blinds--$3
--Vacuum Refrigerator coils--50 cents
--Scrub Kitchen Table & Chairs (table legs; chair slats; underside; etc.)--$1
--Wipe down baseboards in the entire house--$1
--Wash Van--$3
--Vacuum Van Interior--$1
--Sweep Garage Floor--$1
On Saturday I paid him $6 to clean our living room miniblinds. It was a big job to scrub each and every slat, and ended up taking him almost 2 hours altogether. (It was grubby dirt, not just wipe-off dust.)
We've also been toying with the notion of paying him to watch Asher and keep peace in the house so that Tavis & I can take a nap on Sunday afternoons. I wouldn't pay him hourly for this... maybe $1 per Sunday nap.
Normally I'd have some chores to offer him in the outside department... weed-pulling; stick gathering; lawn-mowing; etc. but he LOVES to do those things because that means he gets to work alongside his dad. But those might be some chores I'd offer Summer to help with one of these days since it's stuff she hates to do.
He's not in the mood to do the paid chores very often. It just seems like this comes up 2 or 3 times a year when he's right on the verge of having enough money for something he's saving for. So, paying him for chores every once in awhile doesn't put us in the poorhouse, and it's not often enough that he comes to expect being paid for his regular work around the house. Because I wouldn't want to mess with the good thing I've got going on with my little slave-laborers.
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