THE DIVISION OF LABOUR AIN'T CALCULUS

Chores. You know, they aren't called chores because they are fun. I live in a house with 3 teenagers. Two of them are the fruit of my loins, the third is a new addition, a nephew of my wife. They are all "the kids" and all part of the household. No true differentiation between them especially when it comes to chores. Now we don't ask much of the kids. Do your own laundry, don't leave food in your room, pick up your crap, you know, simple stuff. Big chores we are willing to pay for. You mow the grass, it's worth $20 bucks. You move big trash up to the curb for Big Trash Day and it's worth a tenner. Not a bad deal. The only glitch in the system is the damn dishes. The Missus recently came to the conclusion that there was no reason the two adults in the house should cook and do the dishes. So now dishes are divided amongst the three. One unloads, one loads, one has a break in a weird rotating schedule that is flexibly adjusted depending on a multitude of factors. Here's the thing. Somehow, I have a 14 year old, and 2, count 'em TWO, 17 year olds who are incapable of loading the damn dishwasher right. It doesn't matter how many times you explain that the hole in the center of the dishwasher cannot be covered by a pot because THAT IS WHERE ALL THE WATER COMES FROM, they still throw something over it. That one pan will be clean as hell, but everything else is dry as a bone. And they will either cram everything in the dishwasher, stacking things on top of each other, cups inside of glasses, bowls inside of pans... Or more commonly they throw two bowls and a cup in the top rack and proclaim the damn thing full. This is with a sink overflowing with dinner dishes left. (This especially happens when dinner runs late and there is Buffy on Netflix to be watched.) Sometimes I swear they suck at doing this so that we will take it back just to have a clean plate to eat on. They don't know us very well. lol.