Food wasters face a new rule in my house
The problem:
The weather is in the triple digits, and milk left out for half an hour goes bad. Salad wilts in 20 minutes. Bread left open is stale in the blink of an eye.
My kids waste food, and it's happening more and more quickly as the temperatures heat up here in south Texas. We needed to find a solution fast!
The solution:
I now charge 50 cents every time a child leaves food out or fails to properly store it. There are always ways to earn a quarter or two in our home, so if a child doesn't have 50 cents she must drop what she's doing and earn it.
The fines they pay for wasting food are ostensibly to replace the food they waste, but in reality the change just goes toward the next little job so they'll have money the next time. That's ok; it's not about the money. It's about teaching them to be good stewards, and I have high hopes that they will soon remember to put the lid back on the peanut butter.
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4 Responses to “Food wasters face a new rule in my house”
June 27th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Wonderful idea. I think I am going to start doing this too. In our house it is the open doors and lights left on. I too am in south/central Texas. It was 106 here today.
June 28th, 2009 at 7:18 am
I used to charge my children a quarter when I found a light or radio left on in their empty room. Again, it was the principle of teaching them about not wasting electricity. It worked! Now they are both married and have their own households and do NOT waste electricity!
June 29th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Hey thats a great idea, for younger children! We had a problem with teenagers or adult children putting food on their plate, dousing it with ketchup or whatever and then deciding they couldn’t eat it. My rule was you can go back as many times as you need to if you are going to eat it, but if you put it on your plate, you will eat it.
The adult child moved out!
June 30th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Works great on soft drinks and bottled water, too. My kids had a bad habit of taking one or two sips out of a newly opened drink, not finishing it, only to have to pour it out at the end of the day. I started charging 50 cents for each non-finished drink. They started getting finished really quick!
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