The Value of Work

February 15, 2011,

Whenever Trevor or I see that the girls: left the lights on downstairs, or the heater on, or left food wrappers laying around, or food, or crap they were suppose to put away - we collect $1 from them.  I put the money in an envelope labeled with their name and write down the date, the amount collected, and why we collected it.  Over the past seven months we have collect quite a bit of money, around $20 from each of them.

The other day I collected $7 from Ariana and she was mad because I was taking her last $7.  I told her she could earn back the money by doing extra jobs around the house.  "Like what," she asked.  I told her she could vacuum, clean up the living room extra nice, fold clothes that weren't hers, stuff like that.

Today after I picked her up from dance she told me she did some extra stuff around the house.  She took all the dirty clothes downstairs.  "That was a hard job," she said,  " because Julia's laundry basket was so full it was over flowing."  And she let me know she put some of Julia's clothes away and saw that Julia had a couple sweaters on the ground in her closet.  She said she wasn't trying to get Julia in trouble but thought I should know.  I said that maybe the sweaters fell.  Ariana didn't think so because they weren't where the other sweaters were but decided maybe that could be the case.  She also told me that she cleaned up the living a little bit and did all of her normal jobs.  I told her I would talk to dad and see what we were going to give her.

After talking to Trevor we decided to give her $0.50.  She spent about 5 minutes doing the extra work and felt that amount was fair.  I went into her room and told her I had money for her.  She sat up in bed and held out her hand.  I gave her two quarter and she just looked at them.  She asked it that was all she was getting and I said yes.  Then she said she didn't do the extra work for the money.  She did it because she wanted to.  I didn't buy that that.  Then she got up to put her money away.  She took a tiny decorative round box the size of a quarter off her dresser.  She started to put the money in it and I asked her what she was doing.  She said she was going to keep all the money she earned in this box.  I told it wasn't very big.  She said, "Well, I don't expect to make very much if I'm only going to get 50 cents."

I started laughing so hard I had to leave the room.  I went into my bedroom to tell Trevor what she said.  We were both laughing and then Ariana and Julia came in and we were all laughing.  All Ariana could say was, "Well It's true!"