ACT5 - A little experiment with time

I started an experiment in my residential community, with time as currency. I really enjoyed the idea of "Time Banking" and wanted to test how it works under real life conditions.
We are using minutes as the basic currency unit. We planned to cover reciprocal services between friends which should stay unaffected by money, for example cooking, dish-washing and various helps between friends. Time passed over a service will be recorded and added to the helpers time account. So every member involved in this experiment got a time account with which you can spend or earn time. There is no upper limit but a lower limit. We set the lower limit to 5 hours for the time being, once a member is threatened to reach the lower limit he is forced to build up his personal time account, otherwise he will receive a penalty in form of buying a beer box. In order to keep the number of beer boxes under control the penalty can be changed by the wh*** team.
At the moment the experiment is running since 2 days and it seems to work well. The penalty sounds quiet mighty so nobody wanted to drop low. The most services come from the kitchen. After kicking off this project the kitchen becomes the main target and much cleaner. Maybe its just the euphoria of beginning keeping my friends and me motivated. Still, i can imagine "Time Banking" as a supporting tool in small circles.