I know it

Chores are often not liked by kids, or adults for that matter. Our kids love breakfast, so BG thought it best to get them to do their chores before breakfast. I decided to give it a try. Sure enough, they made their beds in a hurry so that they could have their beloved cereal, but in the process, a funny conversation occurred. I asked SD if I could go check on her bed to which she replied no...which means she didn't make her bed all the way. I asked her to go do it again to which she stomped off mumbling and pouting. Then the following occurred:

Me: I know, I am mean, this is not a new concept, you should know this by now.
BG: I know it!
Linus: I know it!

BG and I were cracking up!

When SD was finally finished and back eating her cereal, she was all upset because I had put the Valentine's towels, that she had put as napkins, in their proper places...to which she said..."You have ruined Valentine's"

Kids say the funniest things!

Twisted Tuesday/Weird Wednesday

I have been working from home one day a week since Linus was born.  It started out as part of coming back from maternity leave and I asked for it to continue.  I think at first I was at home T/TH and then maybe switched to Wednesday.  For the last year and a half though, I have been working from home on Tuesdays.  This year SD is going to school MWF, so I have switched to Wednesday so that I am able to take her to school one day a week.  I have only been doing it for two weeks now and it is totally jacking up my schedule.  My cleaning schedule worked really nicely with being at home on Tuesdays.  I had purposefully put laundry, changing sheets and cleaning the floors on the day I worked from home.  I can change the laundry loads while working and then since I don't have to commute, I am able to clean the floors and not be up late.  So when I switched to Wednesday at home, I thought...well I will just move everything forward a day.  Problem is, it doesn't work, it throws off the whole week.  The biggest problem is that I like ironing on Wednesday when my shows are on, gives me something to do.  I have been playing around with my schedule and so far I think the following works the best:

M - kitchen and windex
T - laundry and floors
W - ironing, dusting and changing sheets
TH - bathrooms
F - laundry and floors
S - ironing if I feel like it, if not, it hangs out until W :)

So, isn't that an exciting post!

His House

This is from a devotional that I get each day! Awesome and a new way to think about cleaning!

My Home Is His, Too!

O Lord, You have searched me and known me, . . . You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

Psalm 139:2-3, NKJV

Recently as I prepared my house for a visit by my father, I began to clean and straighten my house. I even bought fresh flowers and plants to place around the rooms to make them seem more lovely. I wanted my home to look as inviting, comfortable, and pleasing to his eyes as I could make it. Then it struck me - if I felt this way about my earthly father's brief visit, how much more care I should give my home every day since my heavenly Father lives here.

I am not a good housekeeper. But motivated by the thought that my house is His home also, I try hard to keep my house clean and neat. It is not professionally decorated with all the latest gadgets, but it is as pleasing to the eyes as my time, energy, and budget will allow. I want those who walk through my door to know that the Lord God lives here. And I hope the reality of His Presence is evident to all by the beauty of the outward appearance and the quality of the inner atmosphere of warmth and love they find here.

Blessings,

Ann Graham Lotz

Great Room Deep Clean

This weekend I worked on deep cleaning our great room. This is where we spend most of our time and I let my kids eat in there when they have snack, so you can only imagine. The focus of this weekend was mainly surface level.

I cleaned the fan and then used my fan cleaner to dust down the walls. I also used it to clean some of my metal wall hangings. I have lots of iron stuff on my walls and it is very scrolly, pretty, but a haven for dust!

Then, I worked on my baseboards. I moved all of the furniture away from the walls and onto my hands and knees I went. I use pledge wipes to do my baseboards. I like them because they are not too wet where they would drip on my wood floors, but they are moist enough to really get the dust off. Once the baseboards were done, I figured I might as well clean the floors where they never get cleaned since they have furniture over them. I try to do this more than just twice a year and it never fails, I always find toys that we have been missing for quite some time.

The last things on the to-do list were the mantle and TV cabinet. I usually dust these every week, but rarely do I move all of the decorations on the mantle or dust behind the TV, moving all of the Wii games and controllers. I also dusted my recessed lights, it just amazes me how those things collect dust and cobwebs!

The only problem with all this cleaning and dust removal...my already agitated allergies were not happy! Oh well, I am glad that I have gotten it out of my house so the air is a little cleaner!

November Cleaning

The focus this month are the main areas. This mainly consists of our great room and study. We spend a lot of time in these rooms, so the get dirty pretty quickly. Here is the schedule for November:

1st Weekend - Great Room focus: dust down walls, baseboards, TV Cabinet and mantle
2nd Weekend - Study: dust down walls, baseboards, pocket doors, organize closet
3rd Weekend - Great Room: vacuum furniture (sofa, etc) and wipe down furniture (tables, lamps, etc.)
4th Weekend - Study: English Oil and Reorganize Shelves, organize files

I will try to give hints as I do each deep clean and hopefully you can do it along with me!

Just tackle one room at a time and before you know it, the whole house will be clean!

Clean Floors

So Linus is crawling all over the place these days, the only problem is that his knees and feet are always dirty, like caked on nasty black dirty that takes more than one wipee to get off dirty! I don't understand! You see, I clean my floors twice a week, (Tuesday & Saturday if you care) so I can't imagine that there is that much dirt on my floors. I was talking to my mother in law over the weekend (more on why we were at their house later) and she asked if my mop water was dirty when I finished mopping. I guess you are supposed to mop until the water isn't dirty anymore. But, I can't base it on that, because I dry mop, or I guess damp mop. I have hard wood floors, and I use a spray bottle with Murphy's Oil diluted in water and a dust mop. So then she asked me if my mop was dirty when I was done. Well, of course it is, I just mopped the floors. So we started talking about how their must be a film on there or something. See, I used to mop with vineagar and water, because that is how I thougth you took care of wood floors. I got really unhappy with the ways my floors were looking, it seemed like they had a hazy film on them. So I tured to my good friend, the internet, and did some searching. I read that cleaning with vinegar and water did just that, leave a film on your floors. They said the best way to clean your wood floors was Murphy's soap diluted with water. I have been doing that for a while now, but have decided that my floors must have layers of something on them that keeps Linus' feet dirty. So this week, I have resolved to clean my floors every night to see if I can get to the bottom of it! So last night, was night two, we will see if they are any better next week and poor little Linus can hopefully have clean feet!

June Cleaning

So, the focus for June is the playroom/scrapbook area! I have been doing pretty well at keeping up with my nightly cleaning, which makes me really happy. This has allowed me to do the deep cleaning on the weekends, and actually not spend much time away from my kids or husband to clean. Good thing too, because since Summer has begun, the weekends have gotten busier! So, here is the schedule for June:

1st Weekend - Toys: clean out, organize and wipe down (Done!!)
2nd Weekend - Nothing, this is SD's birthday weekend, so we will have a lot to do!
3rd Weekend - Clean the baseboards, blinds and windows
4th Weekend - Organize and clean out scrapbook stuff (hopefully my paper filing system will be here by then!)

So, are you with me?

Playroom Overhaul

Our playroom is tiled, which I love because it is easy to clean and it is not carpet! The only problem is that the tile was not sealed when it was put is. I would mop, and mop, and mop and still, the grout was dirty. So, when my mom was here for Linus' birthday, she helped me clear out the playroom completely. Then while she organized and wiped down the toys, I got on my hands and knees and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. I went through 5 or so grout brushes and finally got some clean floors. Then I mopped them a couple of times and sealed it, so hopefully they will stay clean.

The nasty dirty tile. The grout is supposed to be white.

All cleaned out except for the big stuff.

Once it was dry, Mom and I put everything back in it, all re-organized. I love the way it looks now and the kids do too. I also think it is a much better use of space, before, everything was pretty much pushed to the edge. There is now a boy section and a girl section, of course neither kids respects those boundaries, but that is totally fine with me! Here are some before and after pics.

Linus' side, closest to the Den so that you can still watch him.

The middle section with toys for both of them and their cute little table. This is right across from the bookshelf as well.

SD's side, complete with her kitchen and baby stuff. We have since moved the easel and that is now where her dollhouse (or doghouse as she calls it) is, which is great because before it was in our front room!

May Cleaning

So, since I am back on my cleaning kick, I thought I would start sharing with you what I do each month! Like I said, I have broken our house into 6 areas and I focus on one of them each month and then repeat! Nice how that works out, isn't it!! Here is my area focus:

Jan/Jul - Formal Rooms (living and dining room)
Feb/Aug - Kitchen
Mar/Sept - Bedrooms
Apr/Oct - Bathrooms
May/Nov - Main Areas
Jun/Dec - Playroom

So, May is the Main Areas in our house, which consist of the front hall, family room and the study. Although there are 5 weekends in May, one is out of commission because it is Linus' birthday party. Here is what I have for the month of May:

2nd - Family Room - baseboards, dust walls, TV Cabinet and Fireplace Mantle
9th - Study - Baseboards, pocket doors, dust walls and organize the closet
23rd - wipe down and vacuum all furniture
30th - English Oil and Re-organize Study Shelves/Desk

Last weekend I actually did do all that stuff, and it was nice to get that extra layer of dust off. This weekend will be focused on the study. The hardest part is going to be the closet for a couple of reasons. First, we just don't have a good system of organization in there. BG works from home a lot of the time and he keeps all of his files, etc at home. The closet has a lot of it and he has a lot of stuff. We have a built in closet unit in there, but it is mainly shelves. I don't know, it is going to be rough. I think I need to get some storage units and get it a little more hidden in there. I have a feeling that my label maker is going to be in full swing today!! I will take before and after shots if I remember!

Have a great day!

Cleaning Again

I was looking through my prayer journal and noticed my New Year's Resolutions/Hopes for 2009. One of my goals was to stay on my cleaning schedule. I am HORRIBLE with follow through, and this has been no exception! I have done pretty well with the beginning of the week, but by Thursday, aka bathroom day, I fall off the wagon. And as for my monthly deep cleaning, I have done okay on it, but not stellar.

I really felt like it was time for a re commitment to this particular goal. This is a great time to renew my dedication to cleaning, because I am on a 6 month rotating schedule, so I am about to be on round 2 of the plan. I think that women are called to be happy at home. I don't think that this necessarily means that you have to be a stay at home mom or wife, but I do think that it means that your primary focus (on Earth) should be your family and your home. I think these days we are so busy outside of the home, that we do not focus on our biggest investment. You spend lots of money paying for your house, why not keep it nice and why not spend your time there instead of spending money spending time elsewhere! So, off my soapbox and back to cleaning....

I clean a little every night and try to stay on top of it. It is so much easier for me to do a little every night than to waste an entire Saturday cleaning instead of spending time with my family. I think it is also good to get your kids involved. SD helps me almost every time I clean, if she is awake. Most of the time, I do my cleaning after the kids go to bed, usually from about 8-9 and then that gives me time to relax before I go to bed, whether it is watching TV/cuddling with BG, reading, or scrapbooking. Some days it doesn't get done, but I am trying to get better about just picking it up the next day, instead of letting it throw my whole routine off!

I read in my Bible Study recently that it is a good idea to have a cleaning caddy with the proper supplies in each room. I think I am going to modify this to be by day. See, I do all one cleaning action in a day, I don't do it by room. I think this is more effective, because I don't have to drag out all of my supplies each time and my house is only about 2,000 sq ft, so there is not THAT much ground to cover. I think if we had a two story house, it would be a little different, but since our house is one story, this works. The only problem with getting more cleaning caddies, is I just don't know where they would fit in my organized laundry room!

Have fun cleaning!

Cleaning Plan

As I talked about here, I made an entire plan for cleaning this year. Here is how I did it...

For starters, I wrote down every major area in my house that needed to be cleaned. Turns out, I have 6 major areas, a perfect number to spread over a year. They are: bedrooms, bonus room (playroom in our case), bathrooms, major living areas (family room & study), kitchen and formal rooms. Before I started the planning, I printed out a years calendar and made sure to put important weekend events on it, times when I knew we would be out of town, etc. I also tried to keep in mind which Saturdays were my longer runs and schedule the less physically demanding chores on those days. Then I let the planning begin.

Next, I gave each month a focus area, for December it is the playroom. For each weekend in that month, I wrote down a task that was above and beyond my regular cleaning. For example, this past weekend, my task was to go through the toys and throw away or donate toys that the kids didn't play with or were broken, etc.

The great thing is, after I did this for the first half of the year, I could just copy it for the second half. This was the first weekend that I started my new schedule and I really like it. If you would like a copy of my totally OCD schedule, let me know, I have scanned it to a PDF and can email it to you!

I really did my best to keep up with my daily cleaning schedule that I created for during the week and although I was staying up until 11 or so most nights last week, I really reaped the benefits of it this weekend. Not only did it seem like less since I did a little each night, but I was able to do my "deep cleaning" chore with no worry about what else I needed to get done. I was also able to spend lots of time with my kids and last week, I was so tired when I crawled into bed that I slept like a rock!

For those who would like my daily tasks, here they are:

Monday - windex, kitchen

Tuesday - laundry, sheets, floors

Wednesday - iron, dust

Thursday - bathrooms

Friday - laundry, playroom

Saturday - iron, floors

The more I do, the more I want!

This phrase could be talking about a lot of things! What I mean though is cleaning. I finally did a really good cleaning of my house this weekend. I worked my fanny off! But the cleanliness of my house made me feel sooooo good! I just love a clean house. The funny thing is, the cleaner my house is, the more I am inclined to clean. It seems so backwards to me, I mean, it is already clean. Maybe it is because the messier the house gets, the more daunting of a task it seems like. So, after cleaning up the house, I went about setting up my schedule for the next year for cleaning. I did my weekly schedule, so that I am stay on top of the cleaning and the task does not get overwhelming and I did the monthly cleaning, the big stuff, deep cleaning and organizing. I am really trying to do most of my cleaning during the week so that I can do one big thing on the weekend while the kids are napping and then spend the rest of the time hanging out with them and/or BG if he isn't working or hunting! I spent most of my Sunday afternoon planning out my schedule, and I will say I am rather pleased. I will see how it works in 2009 and adapt as necessary. All of this ties into this, which is why I felt like my Sabbath was very well spent planning (not doing) it!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Works for Me Wednesday - Ironing

Since I am totally in to cleaning, I thought I would post about it once a week, you know, give little tips, etc. So my friend Erin told me I should do the Works for Me Wednesday thing, so here it goes!

One thing that really helps me with my ironing, is to sort it before I do it. Let me explain. As I get clothes out of the dryer, I sort them, on my hanging rack, first between whose they are. Mine, my husband's, my kids, etc. Then within each large category, I sort them by clothing item. So, in my husband's group, there are pants, short sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts, etc.

This makes it nice for a couple of reasons. First, it gives me little goals to accomplish, i.e. I finished all of his pants! This breaks up the big job of ironing into little attainable chunks so I don't get overwhelmed. The other reason I do this, is because it makes it so much easier to put them away. I have all of the pants together and I can hang them all at once instead of hanging each piece of clothing in the closet. This really helps because while our closet is a good size, we have a fair number of clothes to put away, so there is always smooshing involved to fit the clean clothes. After typing this, I realized that this only really matters if your closet is organized. Mine of course is, Type A - I can't help it, even down to the hangers, only white tubular and I have different kinds for different types of clothes. I know, I know, I need help!

The other thing I do with ironing, is I do all of the clothes before I hang them in the closet. This way, there is not a rush to do it before someone needs to wear it. I also try and do it right after I wash the clothes so that it doesn't become too daunting of a task!

Cleaning Schedule

Monday - Front Rooms (Formal LR & DR), Floors (sweep & mop), Study

Tuesday - Laundry, Iron, Kids Rooms, Vacuum (the day I work from home)

Wednesday - Bathrooms

Thursday - Playroom

Friday - Kitchen, Laundry

Saturday - Floors, Iron, Windex, and Dust



The night before the day I worked from home I did bigger stuff since I didn't have to get dressed the next morning, I could wake up a little later. Also, the day I work from home, I can multi task, like do laundry while I work, so I usually do!



When I do a room, like the front rooms for example, I pick up, dust and windex if need be. When I say floors, I have all hard floors in my house, so this is all of the hard floors, unless that "room" is done another day. For example, the playroom, I will do those floors when I do the playroom.

Introducing...the newest member of our family

Don't get too excited, Linus is not here! This is about a more electrical member of our family. BG brought home a new vacuum for me yesterday!!! I know, it doesn't sound too exciting and it was not a late Mother's Day gift, although I would have been completely fine if it was!!! What led to this new purchase (if you read this blog at all, you would know that we are thrifty and don't spend money without extensive research).

Well, on Saturday I was cleaning the house and my vacuum finally just pooped out on me. I was in the middle of vacuuming and it just turned off. I thought I had blown a fuse or something, but that wasn't the case. I have had this vacuum for about 2 years and for the last 4 months or so, it has seemed something was wrong with it. It is supposed to be self-propelled and it is a Hoover, but it was so hard to push, that it was turning into a workout! It didn't seem to be working at all, and I had been telling BG about it, but I don't think he believed me!

Now to the disgusting part. This is what I emptied out of my new friend today.

That is the box that the vacuum came in, just to give you a point of reference as to how much crap was in my carpets. And the disgusting thing is that none of the carpet even looked dirty.

This is just wrong, for so many reasons. For starters, I just vacuumed on Saturday, yes, three days ago! That is just wrong! I absolutely HATE carpet, it grosses me out! Thankfully, only our bedroom has carpet in it, the rest of the house has hard floors. We have area rugs around the house and the appeared to be clean, but when I would be picking up SD's toys and got a close up of the rug, I could see dog hair and other dirt, etc. on them. The thing about carpet is that it seems cleaner because you can't see all of the crap that is buried in it, but in actuality, it is nasty, nasty stuff. I like my house clean, and have never felt like I could get the carpet in our bedroom clean. It is a beautiful, and I am sure expensive, carpet, but I can't wait to rip it out and put hard wood floors in it (our floors are beautiful and expensive, so it will probably be a while).

I am so glad to have my new vacuum, I actually spent about an hour vacuuming last night. I vacuumed our bedroom alone 5 times and I was still getting stuff in the canister. The first time I did our bedroom, the canister was overflowing with dirt. I kept vacuuming until there was only a little bit of stuff in the canister. Our carpet is all nice and fluffy now and has those vacuum streaks in it, which I love. I am so glad to get this before Linus arrives, because I would hate to have him playing on the floor in all that nastiness! I like my house very clean and I can't believe that I have been living like this, unintentionally of course. I feel a thousand times better knowing that it is cleaner than it was!

Cleaning up Christmas

I so enjoy this part of the Holidays. Not that I love picking up everything necessarily, but it is a time of organization for me, actually for BG as well. We got on the ball this year and over the past two days, we have gotten all of our Christmas stuff packed away and actually put it in the attic already. The only thing left is the lights on the roof, which is BG's job. I am sure he will do it next week some time, not that it matters since we won't have them go on anymore. The main reason we are so on top of things is because we are going out of town and we have a real tree each year. This in and of itself is a fire hazard, add to it that we have had it since the first weekend in December, and it just reeks of FIRE! So, that was our motivation. Why do I like this activity? Well, we LOVE Christmas, so we have a boat load of decorations which means all of our everyday stuff has to be stored away. So, after Christmas, I collect all of the decorations and clean all of the now empty surfaces before I put the regular stuff back out. It is nice to be able to dust table tops without having to move a million things. And, furniture is moved, so I got to clean behind some couches, etc. It is nice to have a clean house, something I truly cherish. Now, when I come back from being out of town, I can just relax, not try and hurry to get Christmas put away.

On a side note, update on SD. She was up from 1-4 on Christmas night and then 12-2 last night. I decided to finally take her to the doctor, hoping that it was something going on instead of a new pattern she was starting. Last night I started thinking that it was probably an ear infection, sure enough, I was right! I am sorry that I waited so long to take her, but at least now we know what it is and have medicine that will hopefully take care of it all!