Inspection Does Not Meet Expectations

For chores, the girls are each assigned to one "zone" of the house for a period of months: kitchen, living room/girls' bathroom, and laundry room. Each girl is expected to do the chores for that area after lunch every weekday. I give them a list of things to do based on age and ability (and height, lol). We pay commissions dependent on diligence, thoroughness, cheerfulness and initiative. (I am really strict about this, and only award the full amount when I feel the full amount has been earned.)

(For those of you who are wondering how in the world I keep track of this system, I use the Homeschool Tracker and call the assignments Life Skills. :O) It isn't so difficult because they each keep the same job for months-- I just have to click that they did it and award points for how well they did it. It might not work for everyone, but for us, at this time in our lives, it works surprisingly well.)

Anyway--

This system is not without its faults. We don't do much laundry on weekends. On Sunday morning I noticed I was down to my last pair of undies. So on Sunday evening I did a load of whites. When they were finished, I pulled them out of the dryer and left them sitting in the laundry basket (it was pretty late and I was tired). The next day, one of the girls (who shall remain nameless) took one look at the load of whites and cringed. (I am assuming she cringed, but I wasn't there.)

This child is required to fold and put away one clean load of laundry per weekday, and to run another load through the washer and dryer. Now, anyone who has done any amount of laundry will know that the load of whites, with its undies and socks, is the least desirable load of laundry to fold.

Ever the thoughtful child, she figured a way out of her distasteful situation. She took the load of clean whites (all my clean undies, you realize) and dumped them back into the 'dirty whites' bag in our laundry. She then ran a load of towels (which, as everyone knows, is the easiest load to fold and put away) and folded and put them away and counted herself done. When I found out, she told me the beautiful, clean load of whites had been 'stinky'.

(It is really funny now, but at the time I was chagrined.)

We are having a mini-laundry boot camp at our house this week.