My Messy House Mystery

Today is Monday and my house is a mess.

My entire house was professionally cleaned last Tuesday.

I pay for this service twice each month to save my sanity and ensure the whole house gets clean and sanitized all on the same day at least every two weeks!

The kids were on Spring Break last week, so early Thursday morning, a mere day and a half after the complete cleaning, we drove out of town.

We were gone until Sunday evening at approximately bedtime.

So how is my house a mess today?

I'm not just talking bags that need to be unpacked and wash that needs to be done kind of a mess (although there's all that, too), but dirty.

Actual dirt all over the kitchen floor.  Crumbs on the table.  All the toilets obviously need a wipe-down and literally every trash can is full!

What in the world?

How does this happen?  

No really, when did the house get so dirty?

We were not even here!

I've finally figured it out folks!  

The source of so much frustration in my daily life.

My house MESSES ITSELF up!

I've always joked about wanting a self-cleaning house and instead I'm afraid I have a self-dirtying house!

Sigh.

I do realize this is a huge 1st world problem and I'm thankful for my messy house.

And the vacuum, mop, washer/dryer, trash bags, rags, and ability to clean it!

Now to make the time . . .

Load Your Own Dishes In The Dishwasher

This summer I decided to up the expectations for my kids.

For one, it is no longer acceptable to just clear your plate after lunch, leaving it by the sink as you run off to play.  Now you must also dump the contents of the plate and load it into the dishwasher!

I taught them all the proper plate positioning for our dishwasher.  My 7 year old demonstrating the technique:

I have no idea why I didn't start this sooner!

Find more Works For Me Wednesday here.

No wonder I'm so tired today!

We did, in fact, tackle cleaning out the garage over the weekend:

The children helped with the hauling-everything-out-of-the-garage step

Meanwhile, the dog did this inside the house:

Now I hesitate to show the "after" picture of the garage clean out because it doesn't really look much better but TRUST ME, it is!!  We threw away about 12 bags of trash!  And, besides the huge accomplishment of creating room to park one car in the garage, we now KNOW WHERE EVERYTHING IS in the garage!  No more going to Home Depot and buying another paintbrush forever!!  We have a gazillion new ones that were all bought because we didn't know we already had some!

After:

Then we moved on to the equally insurmountable tasks of cleaning out the kids closets and SCIENCE FAIR!  There were all manner of paper airplanes covering my house, but you will relieved to know we have put to rest a great debate in the arena of science!  A paper airplane made out of cardstock paper flies farther than one made out of printer paper or construction paper!

Now I need a weekend to recover from the weekend!

My Son Is Doing His Own Wash!

Do you know what has changed my life lately?

I taught my 11 year old son to DO HIS OWN WASH!!

I cannot even tell you how awesome this is for two reasons!

The first reason is obvious -- less wash for me!!  Before when I'd go collect the kid wash after going a few days without doing it, it would be overflowing and equal more than one washer load full.  Now, with the oldest child's dirty clothes going into HIS OWN HAMPER, when I collect the kid wash for the remaining 3 children, it now fits into one washer load!  It's not even just one less child's wash to do, but my 11 year old's clothes are the biggest.  Three pairs of his long jeans is a lot of washer space!  Also, he wears a second set of clothes on the days he goes to his swim team practice because they do dry-land workouts before they swim!

The second reason him doing his own wash is awesome is that it is a chore that has its own built in consequence!  Other chores like assigning him a bathroom to clean or picking up the dog mess in the backyard he can skip and not really feel any pain from not doing his chore unless I give him a consequence for not doing it.  But if he doesn't do his wash, he DOESN'T HAVE CLOTHES TO WEAR!  It's as simple as that!

My kids do not have a ton of chores, but I do feel it is good for them to have jobs around the house to learn responsibility and cut down on that attitude of entitlement and the idea that mom is there solely to serve them!  And besides, doing laundry is a life skill, and he might as well learn now when I'm there to coach him on fabric softener and water temperatures!

Find more Works for Me Wednesday here.

Great Motivation to Clean Out

I've found some great motivation to get rid of clutter in our home is visiting a 3rd world country.

I felt the same way when I returned from Ethiopia 2 years ago, looking around my house and wondering why exactly we have SO MUCH STUFF!  And now returning from the Dominican Republic it feels much the same.

This week it's clothes, ruthlessly gone through.  Four large garbage bags.  One trip to drop them off for donation.

Yet, we still have plenty to wear!

While in the Dominican Republic we met people with so much less than most of us in America but with more joy than most of us, too.

One can't help but start to thinking, whose lives are really better?

They may not have electricity or water they can drink from their faucets or 2 cars per household, but I saw thankfulness and love shining bright from so many of the people we met.

Our kids from our church noticed it too, without any of us adults pointing it out.  One 15 year old American boy commented during our trip, "They have less than anybody I know back home, but they are happier than most people I know."

Getting My Kids to Declutter

Each of my 4 kids has a fabric tote/bucket on a shelf in our breakfast room (that we don't actually use for breakfast).   The buckets are to hold whatever treasures the child wants to hang on to, but I don't want to find all over the house -- think small prize trinkets, birthday party favors, crafts.  The shelf is in a prominent spot in our house and I walk by it a thousand times each day (to and from the laundry room and kitchen), so it bugs me when the kids' buckets become so full that I can see stuff coming up over the tops.  

My solution?

Cookies.

I bake some homemade chocolate chip cookies for the kids and give them each one for an after school snack.  Then I ask them if they'd like a 2nd cookie.  Their eyes get wide.  I NEVER offer a 2nd cookie!

Yes!  Yes, they DO want another cookie!

"Okay,"  I say getting each of their buckets down and putting them onto the table, "Then bring me some trash!  Cut down what is in your bucket by half (I use the term "50%" for my math-oriented kids) and I'll give you another cookie."

It worked!  No whining, no complaining, just trash bag filling!

It took my sentimental, pack-rattish child a rather long time to whittle her treasures down, but even she came through and earned that 2nd cookie!

A cookie for their trash?  Works for Me!

And don't go sending me your trash to get a cookie.  You only get a cookie for throwing away large amounts of stuff from MY house!


Find more Works for Me Wednesday here.

Easy Way to Spruce Up Your Home

When we were doing some spring cleaning over the weekend, I took down all the screens off the downstairs windows that overlook our backyard to wash the windows.  

Once the windows were all sparkly and while the screens were still drying in the yard, my husband and I started talking about how great the windows looked both from the inside and outside of our home without the screens.  We decided we so rarely open those windows that we'd like to try life without the screens, so we put them in the garage instead of back on the windows.

And I'm loving it!!  The house seems clearer, less cluttered feeling, and the views out the windows are amazing!

It was an easy, quick, totally free thing to do to spruce up our home, but for some reason we've lived here 6 years and I've never thought of it before!

Find more Works for Me Wednesday here.

Enlisting My Work Crew

I figured out the trick to catching up with Clean Mama's 31 Days to a Clean House, enlisting my work crew!

Okay, so that picture was totally posed, here's what it really looks like in action (hence the blurry):

All 4 of the kids were eager helpers (with homemade ice cream as an incentive) and knocked out the baseboard cleaning of the whole house in no time armed with just a few baby wipes!

They even moved some light furniture which I would not have done!

Shortly after bringing home our 4th child, I had a conversation with a mom of 3 children where she asked me how it was with 4 kids and I joked about the laundry being crazy and she said, "You should probably hire someone to do that."

I just responded something like, "You're probably right."  But I walked away from the conversation thinking, "I don't need to hire someone else to help with the household chores because I have four children.  I have four children to help with the household chores!"


Find more Wordful Wednesday here.

4 Weeks of Having 4 Kids

This past Saturday marked 4 weeks since we got home with our new daughter from Ethiopia.

We survived 4 weeks of having 4 kids!!!!

A couple things became very quickly apparent to us in life with 4 kids.

First thought, just a few days in:  we need color coded cups!

You know, each kid is assigned a color and that's their cup for the day.

Okay, our kids actually get 2 cups each per day, 1 for milk (that they drink at all 3 meals) and 1 for water (which also doubles as the very occasional cup of diluted juice, gets rinsed and used again as the water cup).

Why?

Because the dishes!  Oh my!  When each kid was using 4 or 5 cups per day times 4 kids -- well, you really don't have to do the math to know that = too much to deal with!

So, I bought a little set of plastic cups (Nuby BPA Free 4 Pack Fun Drinking Cups, 9 Ounce ) and now child #1 = green, child #2 = purple, child #3 = blue, and child #4 = pink.

Feel free to wager on which child looses their cup 1st.  My money's on green.

Second thought was:  we have too many toys!

Turns out, the more kids I have the less STUFF I want in my house!

The toys were overtaking the place.

And it's not that child #4 brought with her suitcases full of toys, she actually came with nothing, it's just that life with 4 kids made the excess of toys we already had too much.

The downstairs we could keep fairly presentable, but the upstairs with the kid rooms and playroom just couldn't stay clean with 4 kids getting out our multitude of toys and scattering them around.  We would work hard to clean up and then in just minutes it would be disaster again.  

During a moment last week where I was trying to open a closet to get out clothes for a kid, while 4 kids were all simultaneously calling "Mom!" for various reasons, and there was a pile of random toys in front of the closet door keeping it from opening, I decided something had to be done.  I told my husband Friday night, we had to tackle the toy situation before the weekend was over or I was going to go crazy.

I launched a quick PR campaign with the kids to get them on board, started referring to it as "The BIG clean-out," you know to generate some buzz and excitement.  It kinda worked.

Then we got distracted Sat. morning when we decided it would be more fun to go the zoo, but we rallied Sat. afternoon after the 8 year old's basketball game and made some real progress!

We cleaned out a ton, moved some toys with a lot of little pieces up high where they can only be played with under supervised conditions rather than scattered at will, took down a train table the kids don't use much any more except to junk up, saved all the trains, track pieces, and train buildings in a 3 drawer unit, and you know what?  My 4 year old has had the best time building train tracks on the open floor the past couple of days -- no edges of the table to encumber him any longer!

And I'm loving the open, empty space!  

It allows me to breathe again.  

To be able to sit down and play with my kids without being stressed over the mess I see around me!

To have conquered some of the chaos, instead of letting it overtake us, makes me think maybe we can do this 4 kid thing.  Maybe.


We'll see what the next 4 weeks brings!

Oh how I love a good project!

Why clean baseboards when you can paint them?

We have two bathrooms lined with newspaper and blue tape.

A new coat of paint was very badly needed.

The current mess is definitely worth the likely results!!

And, I have the best arrangement worked out.

My husband tapes and I paint.

I so got the best end of that deal!

Seriously, I hate taping, hate it.

I think my husband knows I'd likely just skip that step, hence him taking it over!

One Window at a Time

How much do I love seeing my boy with some Windex and a rag?


A lot!

And I'm also loving the fact that he's wearing his Ordinary Hero "I'm Gonna Change the World" t-shirt while doing it!

Changing our world one window at a time!

Find more Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

It's empty!!

I can't wait to show you this. It is something that has not existed in our house in a long, long time!

My in-box (the one on the top) is empty!



Remember what it used to look like?


So how did I tackle it?

Well, unfortunately there was no secret trick. I had to go through each item one by one and toss it, file it, put it away where it went, act on it (as in RSVP to it, mark it on the calendar, sign and send to school, pay it, mail it, call with a question about it, schedule the appointment the reminder card was to remind me of, etc.) or in the case of a catalog, resist the urge to sit down and thumb through it!

So, it was not fun, but so worth it! And it got easier because as I got closer to the bottom of the stack, most of the papers were so old they related to an event that has long passed so they were easy to throw away. It's great to be free from the nagging feeling of that pile and worrying there was something urgent in there.

I'm hoping the pain of the cleaning out process helps motivate me to tackle this little chore daily when it's just that, a little chore!


Find more Gratituesday and Tackle it Tuesday

One Job I Won't Have to Do Again

Remember last week when I said there were mini-blinds soaking in my bathtub as part of my spring cleaning?

Well, I never hung them back up!

Actually, I hung up a couple of them, but not all, because I decided I liked how my windows looked better without them!

(And the new puppy may or may not have chewed one of the blinds a little bit while I was drying them off.)

We never closed the blinds anyway, because blocking the sun is not an issue for those windows. We just left them half-way raised.

But, I never realized how ugly they were until they were gone!

My kitchen seems more open, cleaner, less cluttered without them (it helps that I applied a new coat of white paint to the window ledges, too). I love how it looks!

And the best part?

The part that makes me want to do a happy dance every single time I look at those windows (which is a bazillion times a day considering they are right over my kitchen sink!)?

Is that I crossed an item off my to-do list FOREVER!

If I'd cleaned the mini-blinds and re-hung them, that would be a task that would need to be done again in a few months, climbing onto the counter to clean them or take them down to wash them in the bathtub. Mind you it wouldn't get done for another year or more, but the task would nag me. It would sit on the to-do list for weeks and weeks, likely months, but, not now!

Less to clean works for me!

Find more Tackle It Tuesday, Gratituesday, and Works for Me Wednesday here.

There are mini-blinds in my bathtub!

Right now there are mini-blinds soaking in my bathtub.

That can only mean a couple things:

The stomach bug that plagued my oldest child last Thursday wasn't passed on to the rest of us (praise God)!

and

The spring cleaning is ON like Donkey Kong!

(And yes, I did learn that line at children's church!)

What does Tuesday night look like?

I've been attending a new Tuesday night Bible study. And Tuesdays were already our crazy day. I pick the 2 older kids up from school and we go straight to swimming for all three kids, then home for a quick dinner and homework before I take them with me to the church where I have the Bible study and my husband meets me there from work and we switch cars (I admit that sometimes it really feels good to hand-off that car-full of kids!). I head into my Bible study and he drives to my oldest's basketball practice.

So, after all that, what does my house look like when I get home from Bible study?
Two thoughts I had as I gazed at the reality of my kitchen:

1. I'd take His Word over a clean kitchen any day.

2. Were these children raised in a barn? The coats and shoes were thrown on the floor rather than put on the proper hooks and shelves that are two feet away!!!

What does your Tuesday night look like?

Find more Wordful Wednesday, Wordless Wednesday, & Not So Wordless Wednesday.

9 Months 2 Days Waiting, Etc., Etc.

We've now officially been on the waitlist for the child we'll adopt from Ethiopia for 9 months and 2 days!

And that's all I have to say about that.

Only not really! Depending on the day I have a lot to say. Everything from "all in God's timing" to "we should start training to be foster parents in the mean time because this wait may go on forever!!!" But if I'm really honest, as much as I hate the wait, bringing home our girl in the summer (which is how it's looking now) is probably better timing than smack dab in the middle of spring like we expected. In the summer we can really focus on bonding with our girl without all of the running around that goes on for school and extra-curricular activities of our older kids.

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In other news, it's been cold here. No snow like many of you have, but cold by our standards (it even dipped below freezing!!) and we had to dig out some real winter gear.

I have to say, again, I have no idea how you Northern moms do it!!!! The gloves, hats, coats, extra layers of clothes, etc., etc. times how ever many kids you have for months and months on end!!!! This Southern girl couldn't do it! In all likelihood, we'll be back in Crocs and flip-flops next week, which is the thought getting me through the cold spell!
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Oh, and this:

It's how we do hot chocolate around our house. Homemade using this recipe (The best! You have to try it!) with marshmallows and whipped cream, then topped with sprinkles!

Our hot chocolate season is short considering it's usually upwards of 90 degrees outside, so we do it big when we can!

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I'm really excited that my pack-rat daughter seems to have jumped on the January clean-out bandwagon. I told her to go through her cubby (the place my kids keep their random junk that is treasure to them -- think birthday party favors) because it was overflowing. A few minutes later she brought me this and said, "I'm thinking about throwing this away."

It's a used, run out of glow, glow stick bracelet left over from Halloween! Where exactly is the decision here? But to her I said, "I think that is an excellent decision!"

Baby steps, people, baby steps!

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My potty training post got many hits this week, but for those of you who are envious of our potty-trained status, I'd like to share a little glimpse into life post-diapers:

One morning this week when I walked into the bathroom to wipe the 3 year old who had gone #2 in the potty, I stepped in a puddle with my cloth-slippered foot.

I grabbed a bleach-wipe and said to my 3 year old, "Just a second, let me get this, it's a little bit wet."

Then he said, "Yeah, I peed there. . . accidentally."

It was 2 feet from the potty! I knew I'd rue the day I ever let my husband and older son teach him to go pee-pee standing up!

So, we've graduated from pee in the diapers to pee on the floor and on my slippers. The grass is not always greener, my friends!

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Have a wonderful weekend!

Find more Finer Things Friday and Friday Fragments.

Define Productive

I've found it necessary in life as a mom to redefine the idea of a productive day.

The toddler and I put this together after lunch:

while the rest of the playroom looked like this:

I got a batch of these made today much to the delight of my kids:

However, I'll go to sleep tonight and the playroom will still look like this:



Find more Wordful Wednesday, Wordless Wednesday, Not So Wordless Wednesday and Works for Me Wednesday.

Randomness on a Friday

How many times have you written 2010 on something in the last week? Be honest! I usually catch on to the year change around April.

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We got my 7 year old a magic set for Christmas and I have to say the gift has been amazing for my husband and I, too, because the really lame magic shows he kept forcing us to watch were only cute for about the first 2 times and then it got super hard to act surprised or in awe when it was so painfully obvious how he'd pulled off the "magic" trick. But now with the new magic set (link to the one we got him: Fantasma Toys Super Deluxe Legends of Magic DVD Set) his shows really are impressive! I honestly don't know the secrets behind many of the tricks!

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The doll we got my daughter is still a hit, although, it has raised an interesting issue. My daughter likes taking the doll with her places, but sometimes (like at church), it's really not best to bring her in, I mean she may get lost, the other children in Sunday School may destroy her, etc., so I've told my daughter to leave her in the car. Well, last Sunday she left the doll (that is the size and look of a real baby) sitting up in her own car seat after she'd gotten up. When we got back to the car I pointed it out to my husband and laughed wondering if somebody had suspected it was a real baby locked in the car and he was like, "Don't do that again, somebody may break the window to rescue the baby left alone in the car!" Hmm, hadn't thought of that before! She does look pretty real! I do know the doll is going to kindergarten show-and-tell tomorrow so if you see what appears to be a 3 month old baby zipped into a kindergarten backpack, nobody call CPS! It's just a doll!

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My 3 year old asked me today if people wear clothes in heaven. Huh? I have no idea. I know we get resurrection bodies, but clothes? Can't remember anything about that. Except maybe I do. Rev. 1:13, "I saw one like a son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet. . ." So, robes? Should I go with the answer that people will wear robes in heaven? Because my little guy didn't really seem satisfied with my pat answer of, "We don't know all the answers about heaven, the Bible just gives us a little bit of information, but we do know it is more wonderful than we can ever imagine."

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Right now I'm really glad I haven't made any resolutions yet, because I'm pretty sure I would have broken them this week, just dressing everybody in something other than jammies has taken nearly all my energy this week! Although I have to brag that my Christmas stuff is packed away! And I've pondered a few positive changes for myself, I even printed off this January cleaning schedule although now I'm already 5 days behind, so there really is no hope for catching up, but hey I could probably join up mid-month and my house would still thank me. Next week is window treatments -- talk about something to look forward to all weekend! For those of you who just can't wait, no fair doing it early!

Find more Finer Things Friday and Friday Fragments.

Taking vacuuming to a new level

I've come to the conclusion that with 3 young kids and a dog, the floor needs to be vacuumed pretty much every day.

And the bathrooms? With 2 boys ages 3 and 7 years using them in addition to the rest of us? Need to be wiped down every day. Okay, in reality it needs to be wiped down after each time my 3 year old uses it (I've been begging my husband to work with him on aim!), but I'll settle for once a day.

And we gotta eat. So there's dinner to be cooked and dishes to be done every day.

For 2011, we have decided to enlist more help from the little people who live in this house to tackle the daily chores needed around here.

Because they are not so very little anymore at ages 7, 5, and 3, and having all three of them combine efforts to set the table every night just is not quite enough chore responsibility anymore.

So, we divided things up, even let them choose which chores they wanted.

It's only week one, so we'll see how the year pans out.

I can report that first couple days were glorious -- no complaints, the kids were excited and enthusiastic about their new chores, but about day 3 the moaning began. But, that's okay because learning to do chores joyfully is a life skill worth tackling, too.

And occasionally they surprise me by doing things even better than I would have. Like today, when I found my daughter literally vacuuming under the dining room table!

She definitely didn't learn that from me, but I'm thankful for her attention to detail and determination to get all the crumbs!

Find more Thankful Thursday here.

Boys Vs. Girls - Proud to be on the Pink & Purple Team

Last week my oldest son requested a Saturday breakfast date out with dad, then somewhere along the way he decided it would be a "Boys Breakfast" and so his little brother could come, too. That was fine with my daughter and me. We decided we'd just eat cereal at home and go on a date later to a cupcake place.

So, we sent the boys off, ate our cereal in peace, painted our toe nails. She chose a 3 different color combination/pattern of pink, light purple, and sparkly purple.

Then we baked some bread.

When the boys got home my husband was ready to take all of the kids to the Home Depot Kids Clinic which they offer on the 1st Saturday of every month. Usually all the kids go and I get an hour to tackle a household task.

But, my daughter didn't want to go, said she'd rather stay home and do chores with Mommy.
So we cleaned out the pantry.

I stood on a chair and handed things down to her to clear the top shelf.

And without any prompting or suggesting from me, look what she did with the things I handed her:

I have no idea where she got those organizational skills!!

I would not have lined them up in neat rows, but just scooted everything off to the side.

At one point I picked up a canister to wipe off the top of it and she fussed at me that I didn't put it back in the right spot!

By lunchtime the boys were back and after the entire morning with them my husband was begging me to trade and let him take our daughter to the cupcake place and then I'd take the boys for their haircuts.

No way!

At least my husband did make it home to watch his favorite football team (with the boys having a pretend gun battle around, under, over, and on top of him on the couch)!