Life is full of small surprises...

... when you have older teenagers.  These surprises come in all shapes and forms; like finding the toilet (and half of the bathroom) sprayed with sick after they've been out the night before, going to the bread bin which had half a loaf in it when you went to bed and finding it empty, opening the microwave to find the interior completely (and I mean completely) caked in dried baked beans, walking into the sitting room on a Sunday morning in your pjs and finding a strange young person alseep on the couch dribbling on your silk cushions, pulling out a box of paracetemol from the medicine box and finding it empty or hunting for days for the location of a terrible, unaccountable smell, only to find the source is a long forgotten take-away carton lurking in a bedroom with coating of mould on it worthy of a great scientific experiment.

In our house, we run a rewards system.  We've been doing it for about ten years now, so its not a new thing.  The way it works is that the children have chores to do and they are rewarded with pocket money.  Pocket money is not, and never has been dished out willy-nilly.  When the oldest three were in high school we had a complicated rota of chores which included hoovering, setting and clearing the table, loading the dishwasher and sorting out dirty washing.  Nothing too labour intensive and pocket money was calculated directly from the jobs done (and ticked off) on the rota.  I must admit, it was still a mission to get everyone to do their chores every day and pocket money was frequently short at the end of the month as a result.  There are, after all, only so many times you can ask for the table to be set before you just do it yourself! 

When we moved oop North, the oldest (and most helpful) child stayed behind in Essex and as a result, the rota was simplified to include loading the dishwasher, setting and clearing the table and putting the washing machine on.  After several disasterous washing incidents, it was simplified further to alternately loading the dishwasher and setting/clearing the table.  Only fair, as they never cook.  However, just getting these simple things done became such a batteground of arguments and sulking ("I'm not cleaning THAT, its from yesterday!") that this too was abandoned and pocket money stopped.  Bear in mind that these children are 17 and 19, one is at college 2.5 days a week and one sleeps all day and works part time in a pub a couple of evenings a week - so they are hardly overworked.

After a couple of months without income it was agreed that the kitchen rota would recommence on an 'every-other-day' basis.  To avoid any confusion, a laminated sheet was placed on the wall, detailing exactly what 'doing the kitchen' entailed, including loading/unloading the dishwasher, emptying the bin, wiping down the sides and so on.  Extra money could be earned as required by doing additional chores such as cleaning the car, mucking out the hens etc.  So far it is working reasonably well, although it broke down completely over Christmas as neither of them were here most of the time, so we're just getting back into routine now that everyone is back at school/college/work.

After consulting the rota, the nocturnal child was reminded three times last night (before I went to bed) to clean over the top of the hob and do the dishes. She then proceeded to keep us awake all night, traipsing up and down stairs, washing and ironing, using her sewing machine and from what I can gather, finishing a project that she could have completed over the 3 week Christmas break, had she bothered to haul herself out of bed once or twice.  This morning, I was expecting a man to arrive at 9am to service the boiler. The landlord also arrived unexpectedly with a big smile and a lovely bottle of wine.  But the real surprise was both of them turning up at half past 8 and walking into a kitchen that would not have looked out of place in a feature length episode of 'How Clean is Your House'.  I sat in the lounge and sobbed into a chai tea latte.