My New Chore System

I can’t seem to stay in one place as far as chore systems is concerned, but I just go with what works at any given time. I think it’s ok to mix thing sup a bit, too. Adds variety.

In searching for chore apps in the Google App Store, I stumbled upon a new little gem of an app, MoneyOrc. Aside from the app being very useable and awesome, I have never worked with a more responsive bunch of people behind the scenes.

I set up my 4 with their rotating chore charts (the MoneyOrc team was very kind to bump up the rotation to 6 weeks from 4 to accommodate our needs, see I told you MoneyOrc is awesome!), and I even added myself with a child account so I could have a nice checklist of things I need to do each day.

The kids check off their chores as they do them, then I check their chores at the end of the day. You can view chores by week or by day which is my favorite view. If they didn’t do their chore or didn’t finish it, they don’t get credit for doing it and have to pay a penalty (of your chosing) which comes out of their weekly allowance.

You can also issue penalties for behavior which also cost them.

The whole point of the app is to teach kids about money using as many real world scenarios as possible (including investing, jobs, and insurance).

Check it out, give it a try. What can I say? It’s awesome :)

Minimalism and Me

I am so excited by how minimalism has effected me so far and I’m still near the beginning of my journey.

I believe that God has been bringing me slowly to this point for many years, but I’m so hard-headed sometimes that He’s gentle with me and is patient with my frailties. My mom is a cleanie, I’m a messy (so is my dad and so was his mom, so I come by that part honestly).

Our house was always neat and tidy and when I was young, we didn’t have too many things. But somewhere along the way I start collecting things. I’d see some pretty little thing and get it or someone would give me something and I never ever thought of getting rid of anything I owned. I was like a mockingbird hoarding all the pretty little things that caught my eye.

When I got married I already had things in boxes that I wasn’t using, but I still didn’t think of getting rid of them. When we moved to our first home, we didn’t downsize anything. When we moved to our 2nd home, we again didn’t downsize eough (aside from an attempted yard sale and one thrift store pickup) and some of the boxes that had never been opened up from the first move were carried along to the new house and put into our storage building to sit and rot.

After we had our first child, I was introduced to Flylady and tried her out for awhile, but for some reason I was never able to stick with her program. I do, however, remember some of her practices, one of which was decluttering every day for 15 minutes ("You can do anything for 15 minutes!"). I guess 15 minutes was never enough for me or maybe I didn't actually do that part, who knows.

When we lived in our last house, I had a friend who I now believe is a minimalist because her house was always neat and tidy and there wasn’t a lot of stuff everywhere. They had a couch/loveseat combo and some cushions in the living room, but not much else. I think she had 1 pair of scissors. I thought that was totally undoable, but it didn’t seem to bother her. Apparently her parents were the opposite of her and were consumers to the max, buying things all the time, filling their house with stuff so maybe she was reacting to this in her own way. She might not even have known she was a minimalist, she just was.

When we first moved to our current house, we moved gradually over several weeks. We came with the bare necessities (just enough clothing, just enough furniture, just enough kitchen supplies…) and it was lovely. The house was clean and light and lovely. And then we did the big move. Ugh. We were inundated with stuff. Our office was crammed full of boxes and furniture and stuff. That was the last time our house felt neat. We unpacked what we needed and a lot of it just stayed in boxes, but enough stuff came into the house for things to start to feel cluttered.

We were given some furniture which added more things into the mix. We were blessed with lots of free clothes for the kids, which was great. However, I wasn’t all that great about getting rid of clothes when the kids grew out of them. I have way more clothes for each size (especially for the younger 2), that they can’t wear them all.

Something else Flylady would say was, “You can’t organize clutter,” and that hoarding was a sin. Hanging on to things that you aren’t using when you could be blessing someone else with your abundance wasn’t right. That stuck with me, but I had a little kickback from D, “Shouldn’t we keep them ‘just in case?’”

He also thought we should have a yard sale and I kept balking at that idea since I’m not an organizer and didn’t want to try to plan something like that. Eventually he softened on that point and I did start sending things to the thrift store. We have taken several wheel bins full of things to the thrift store over the last 2-3 years which is great, but… Things are still just so cluttered and cleaning is taking too much of our time.

Last year my mom gave me the book The Power of Half about a family that cut their belongings in half and moved into a smaller house so they could help others with the money they got from selling their things. I got about halfway through the book, but life got so busy (taking care of stuff) that I stopped reading it. I think seeds were being planted, a little here, a little there.

We have had a dream, for awhile, of moving out into the country and, while for now it is still just a dream, but I want to lighten our load just in case we ever get the green light to “Go.”

A couple weeks ago I was feeling so overwhelmed with clutter and stuff and not being happy with my surroundings, but I just didn’t know what to do about it, I felt very unmotivated. I started searching for websites on decluttering and then I started looking for decluttering support groups.  I thought maybe having some people to hold me accountable or provide moral support would help me. I found a Yahoo group that looked promising so I tried to join and then sat and waited for a day or two for approval which never seemed to come. I started searching for “downsizing” and found a few articles about that, but I also stumbled on Light by Coco’s blog and started watching some of her videos on minimalism and immediately felt this might be a solution for me. I started getting excited, … and motivated!

In my bedroom I have a beautiful cedar chest from Malawi which is the place I keep our extra blankets, but we have more blankets than will fit in there so the rest were piling up on top of the chest. The first thing I did was to put all the blankets on my bed and sort out the less favorite or the bulkier/heavier blankets and I piled them all into a ginormous Space Bag, sucked all the air out of it, then snuck it under the boys’ bunk bed behind the under-the-bunk drawers. After I did that, I was able to get all the rest of the blankets into the cedar chest with nothing on top. Woohoo! (The front of the chest is decorated with stickers by Ana, at least for now.)


I started watching almost every YouTube video I could on minimalism* while I was doing my minimalizing/downsizing. This kept me motivated and inspired.
Here is a post I sent my sister (in-law) on September 25:

“Yesterday I tackled the closet and pulled out a few more things that I don't wear, won't miss and tossed a few pairs of old shoes which were falling apart. Then I neatened up the shoes. I took all of Ds clothes off his dresser (yes, they don't make it into the dresser, yet…), and re-stacked them neatly. I pulled out a few of his shoes which I thought might go for him to decide on. He did decide to get ride of a couple pairs, yay! I took the Tommy Hilfiger bedspread, ripped it apart, took out the old icky stuffing which was too heavy for us anyway and turned it into a temporary duvet cover for the bedspread that we had been using. Our bed look majorly better. I took everything off of D's night stand, dusted it and put it back neatly. I sneezed, sneezed and sneezed again, but it was worth it! I'm so happy with my room now! I don't mind the door being left open, lol.”

Somewhere in my searching I had stumbled on Project 333 so I gave that some more thought and tried to come up with a summer capsule (since it was ever-so-slightly summer when I started this journey) and put the rest of my hanging clothes in a Space Bag for the next few weeks until I feel the need of a Fall capsule. My girls had quite a  of clothes hanging in my closet that were too big for them so I went through them all, pulled out the one that might fit in the near future and put the rest in a Space Bag and then into a large wheeled bin for storage.

There was a plastic bin of cloth diapers in my bedroom taking up space so I pulled those out and I plan to wash them (freshen them up) and sell them. There were 2 bins of stuff that need sorting in our room taking up space and I was able to get them in the place of the diapers so they are there needing to be sorted, but are at least out of the way now. My dressing nook (with counter, 2 little drawers, and mirror) was piled with toilet paper and paper towels so I found better homes for them so I could clear off my counter. I cleaned out my drawer in my dressing nook and put my hair doo-dads/brushes/combs… in there. Then I was motivated to clean my bathroom and clear off the counter and top drawer in there.


We had brought in the winter clothes from the storage shed (all 5 huge wheeled bins full of them) and I washed them all (over the last month or 2) and I finally got around to sorting through them.
Nina (12) helped me go through the clothes and separate them into boys’ clothes, girls’ clothes, Mom & Dad’s clothes. The boys had 2 overflowing big wheeled bins full of winter clothes, the girls had a little less. Nina helped me further sort the girls’ clothes into her and her sister’s clothes and then helped weed her winter clothes down so that they now fit into 1/2 of a wheeled bin. Then I went through Ana’s clothes and got those down to the other 1/2 of the wheeled bin. Much better!

Ana does have some clothes that are too big for her that she will wear in the next couple of years so I put those into another Space Bag, shrunk it down and it’s also in the bin with the other too-big clothes. I went through the boys' clothes and anything (either boys’ or girls’) that was too small, but still in great condition, was set aside for friends’ children and everything else was put in the bin for the thrift store.

I downloaded & printed out the 2015 in 2015 Decluttering Challenge from Nourishing Minimalism’s blog and started keeping track of how much I was getting out of our house. So far we have gotten rid of (or will shortly) over 725 things! That is mostly clothes, but every bit helps.

I went through the coat closet near the entry and cleared non-winter clothes out so now there is plenty of room in there for winter coats/jackets.

I also got a bee in my bonnet to get rid of my dresser. I was only using about 3 drawers in it anyway and that was before I decluttered what was in it so I was pretty sure I could live with something smaller. D is convinced that Eli needs a dresser (beyond the 3 drawers under his bunk) so I decided I would move my dresser into his room (at least for now) and move in the antique dressing table, that was out of place in the music room just taking up space, and use that for my dresser. With a little help from my boys, I got them swapped out (much to the chagrin of Geo who wasn’t jazzed to have another piece of furniture in “his” room).

I moved the dressing table to the same wall that the chest is on (the dresser was on the wall catty-corner to where it is now (just to its right but you can see it better where it is now and the mirror helps to make the room look larger). I have my undies and slips in the right drawer, T-shirts and shorts in the left drawer and I moved jammies to the bottom drawer of my nightstand. I put a few things on the shelf of my closet, but otherwise, everything fit just fine. I love it in my room! (The little popsicle stick frame is something Nina made for me, waiting for some of her artwork).

Today I bagged up all the clothes I’ve gone through that are waiting to go to the thrift store to get them out of the music room where I was sorting. The music room still looks like Hurricane Joaquin made a pass through there, but with one of the bins out, there is more room to walk. I will get through it all, there is still much less in there than there was. Yay!

We have amassed too many sheets (fitted & flat) for the beds we have, but I’m still not sure D will be ok with me getting rid of them, so I put at least half of them into quarantine in the bottom of our hall closet and in 3 months or so, if we haven’t needed them, we might not need them ever.

That reminds me, I also quarantined a bunch of stuff in our kitchen. Actually, that was probably the first thing I did, even before the blankets, come to think of it. Our bowls… cupboard was overflowing and every time I would open the doors, bowls or measuring cups, etc. would jump out at me. I pulled out things I didn’t use, thought I could get along without… and put them all in quarantine. I weeded out our kitchen utensils and either quarantined them or stored a few in a high cupboard to see if we ever find ourselves reaching for them.

I also bagged up all our extra bowls and silverware and issued one spoon and one bowl to each kid and myself (D is exempt). We are responsible for washing our own dishes after each meal (if we want to have clean things for the next meal). I’ve also paired up forks & plates to everyone as well. Dishes were such an issue so I’m trying to think of ways to lessen the load on the dishwasher (Geo at this point) and to keep the dishes moving along so we don’t have to have a perpetually messy sink.

There is still a lot that needs to be done, but I’m so spurred on to keep at this until things are as minimalized as I can get them (within reason) so that we can live a more peaceful life. I still need to go through Ana’s summer clothes, go through our books, go through all the things in the office which aren’t in any particular “home,” go through our storage house…

I can’t wait to see what happens next!

See my next post about a chore system that is working for me.


*Some of my favorite YouTube minimalism videos:
Darci Isabella
Abundantly Minimal – Sarah
Light by Coco – Coco
A Rich Life with Less Stuff – The Minimalists
"Minimalism, Spirituality, and Why it Matters" – Joshua Becker
5 Reasons Minimalism Changed My Life - Samantha Lindsey
My Green Closet - Verena Erin
Simple Living - Love Raw Vegan

and favorite blogs:
http://www.theminimalists.com/
http://zenhabits.net/
http://www.becomingminimalist.com/
http://nourishingminimalism.com/

My (Current) Chore System

I’ve tried a slew of ideas, some have worked better than others, sometimes I change because of the ages and abilities of my children. Anyway, this seems to be working for now.

I put the above chore chart in a sheet protector and it lives on the side of our refrigerator. I made some temporary circles from construction paper and use tacky putty to stick them where they go. I made this to be a 4-week rotation and each week’s allotment of chores includes 1 kitchen chore (to be performed after each meal), 1 bathroom chore and 1 Room Of Focus chore.

In the example above, Mom (purple) empties the dishwasher after each meal (or whenever the dishes are clean if there is a lot to wash), cleans the tub and mirrors, and keeps the living room tidy (everyone is responsible to put away their own things, then I sweep, vacuum, and tidy up what’s left);

Eli (green) sweeps the floors in the kitchen and dining room after each meal (or at least as often as necessary to keep things neat), sweeps the bathroom floor and wipes up any grubby spots on the floor or around the toilet, and helps all of the rest of us with our chores (at least 5 minutes of hard work for each person who is actually doing their chores);

Geo (blue) loads the dishwasher as soon as I unload, keeps the toilet clean, and keeps the front of our house picked up (tosses trash, puts bikes and scooters in carport, etc.);

Nina (pink) keeps the counters and table cleared, wiped and everything put where it goes, the counters and sink clean in the bathroom, sweeps the hall and keeps it clear of things and keeps the music room tidy (music straightened, piano turned off, etc.)

And last, but not least, Ana (4) checks to make sure our dog, Lucy, has food in her bowl and water in her dish, helps make the bed and keep her 1/2 of her room tidy, puts “hair and teeth things” away, and helps Eli with is chores (when she isn’t bothering him so much that he asks for me to keep her out of his way, sigh).

I made the chart pictorial, not because most of my workers aren’t readers, because they are, but because I can see from across the room what any given person is supposed to do. Also, I tried at the very beginning to change chores daily, but it got to be too hard to remember what chores we were on so I changed it to weekly chores which works much better. After the first day, I can remember what I did the day before and don’t even have to look at the chart to know what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s a real time-saver.

The number next to each row of chores is the order of evening showers except that my number trickles down to Ana. I have been trying to get the younger 2 to take their baths/showers earlier in the day so there’s not such a bottleneck during supper/shower time, but that might not work as well in the summer when there will be more playing the dirt, even in the later hours of the day.

Since I don’t always have time to (1) do all the chores by myself or (2) check everyone’s work myself, I came up with a way to designate. If I can’t check someone’s work to make sure they are done, I made this little wheel chart (which I can change every week based on my rotation schedule below). It helps us all know who should check whose work. So in the example below, Eli would check Nina’s work and on around the circle.

I came up with schedule because a certain older sister has a problem doing the dishwasher duty with a certain younger brother every other week (because he is “so slow”) so I came up with this chart to keep things “fair.” (I also made the rule that if the unloader takes too long, the unloader can expect to also be the loader, that helps too).

We try to do a “Family 15” every day outside of “chore time” and that helps a lot to keep things mostly tidy. If any of my crew doesn’t do an adequate job in their area and it requires my help to get the job done, I do their chores for them, but they know I don’t come cheep.

I’m a good worker and I do a good job and I expect the “workers” on my crew to do the best that they are able to do (I understand that they each have their own best and it’s not anyone else’s best, though I do try to help them improve their best when I can). When I don’t think they did their best or didn’t even try to do their jobs, I either put on my red bandana, or just inform them that I’m working for them (sometimes I give them a few minutes warning), set my stopwatch and go like crazy. It usually doesn’t cost them more than $1 when I do work for them, but there is a certain worker who seems to be taking a long time learning the lesson of diligence and hard work. I feel bad, and I have discounted my fee to him since he is less experienced than his older siblings and still in the training phase, but I want him to understand that there is a consequence to not doing jobs in this house.

I have recently started “hiring” help when I don’t have time to do someone’s chores. They all know that they can be hired to help Mom and that if they don’t do a good job or do their chores, Mom will hire help to work for them. I don’t pay them my going rate as I don’t think they work as fast or as well as I do (yet), but at least it’s something and it gets the job done. It also tends to cut down on the “No fair! You’re stealing our money!” complaints if they can turn and earn some of it back working for someone else.

So, I say this is my current system, it probably won’t last forever, but for now it seems to be working pretty well for us. I’ll post again if I come up with anything better.

Flying Again

I tried FlyLady when I was a mom of 1 little and did ok until I was a mom of 1 slightly bigger little and morning sick with little #2. Then things started falling apart. I guess I fell off the wagon and took about 9 years to find my way back on. Now, I wouldn’t say I’m fully flying yet, but I’m taking some steps in that direction, I guess I’m in flight training :).

I’m kind of doing it all wrong by not starting with her babysteps, so maybe I’ll have to check in and make sure I’m not getting off track any. But I think I have the main bits together.

I made Control Journals for me and the rest of the littles (including the 2 yo). Sticking with our kid colors, Gigi, miss pink, chose 2 cute fairies (cleaning fairies) on a pink background, the boys wanted something more guyish so we went with the firefighter theme (putting out “hot spots”) on blue and green backgrounds. I found another cute fairy princess for Missy’s journal (against orange) , and of course, mom’s had to be FlyLady on a purple background, lol. I figured it would be a tiny bit harder to lose them if they were brightly colored.  Some have still somehow managed to go missing since I made them a couple of days ago.

The insides are 1/2 sheets encased in plastic report covers folded in half. This keeps the pages safe from tearing or being spilled on and also makes the pages easy to turn. The very first page is the Morning Routines, then Evening Routines, then Daily Routines, then Zones.

Geo and Gigi have school control journals in the very back part of their control journals. Our school schedule pretty much recycles each week so that part is in plastic with one sheet with specific assignments out of plastic so they can check things off as done.

Everything else can be checked off with dry erase markers or grease pencils (haven’t tried these yet, but I think I might). They seem to have a problem losing their pens so I might have to put a pencil case in each journal for the pens to live so they won’t wander away as easily.

The numbers in the boxes are estimates on how long I think it should take them to do each chore. It can give them a goal to beat with a timer.

My morning and evening routines are probably too long for right now, but I’ve highlighted the ones that I want to make habits at first (5 each) and will build from there (so I don’t feel bad if I don’t get to my whole list just yet). I don’t want to crash and burn like I am so prone to do.

MOTH to the rescue

No, not a flapping-winged fluttery thing, MOTH stands for "Managers of Their Homes" and is a "duh" sort of common sense approach to managing all the little details in a homeschooling-mom-of-more-than-a-couple-kids' life. I have always balked at the idea of a rigid, by-the-clock kind of schedule, but a dear friend of mine suggested I try it for a month or so and just see what it might do for me. Well, I'm always one to try a new challenge so I opened up my friendly Excel, made a bunch of tables and started populating all the little cells. I have a column and so do each of my kids. The schedule starts when we get up in the morning and ends when I go to bed at night. It has actually helped our days to flow much smoother, the kids seem happier knowing what to expect, they are pretty much guaranteed a nice bit of free time in the afternoon, the house stays neater because I have something planned for them one way or the other all day. Either it's meals or chores or school or playing/free time, ... and having something to do keeps them out of trouble and keeps the messes to something like a minimum. I don't have the book, but as soon as I can, I'm going to get my own copy, I've heard great things about it. But till then I'm implementing it as best I can imagine how with a few pointers from my friend. It's going well, really well and now I can truly say I love my strict, line by line, 1/2 hour by 1/2 hour schedule! I'll get a sample of my schedule up asap.

Revamped My Routines

Awhile back I decided that my visual side really needed a bit of a crutch when it came to my FlyLady control journal which lists my Morning, Afternoon and Before Bed routines as well as weekly chores and space for To-Dos and the like. I had it to where I liked it, ... for awhile anyway. But I've decided that it's time to simplify my routines a little so I redid my control journal. Here's a snapshot of my Morning Routine:
It sits in a sheet protector and hangs on my fridge where I mark off each task as it's completed with a dry erase marker. I even made the kids their own routine sheets (great for when they actually look at them, lol).

Mount Washmore Nomore!

I'm finally getting to do some laundry!! It's been, what... a week? More maybe. But DH hooked up a sump pump to the gray water in our septic tank and is running it over to another septic tank that is on our property (was there for a trailer that the previous owners had). This is a very temporary fix, but it's allowing me to get caught up on my laundry and it couldn't have come a moment too soon. Eli was out of pocket dipes and our towels were all dirty. So I'm on my way and very relieved!

I decided that I'm very much a visual person so I found a bunch of clipart to coincide with my Flylady Control Journal and I just check off the images of what I'm supposed to do as I do them, I think that might work better than me just looking at a page full of text (yes I can read, lol).

I slept in this morning because I got to bed a few minutes later than I would have liked and then Eli woke up once and Gigi came in and said she had bad dreams and didn't want to sleep in her bed. She got in our bed, but she was too wiggly and I wasn't getting any sleep so I made a little bed for her on the floor and went back to bed.

I was really hoping that DH would go with Geo to his dentist appointment this morning, I wasn't sure how I'd handle seeing Geo in pain... but Mr. Sleepyhead decided that he'd stayed up so late last night working that he didn't want to wake up that early so I got to go... yipee [sarcastically clapping hands, jumping up and down while rolling eyes].

We didn't tell Geo that there would be shots because that would have sent him thru the roof. He would have stressed over that so much and would have made things much worse. I'm glad we chose this route. When we got in, they put the laughing gas mask over his nose (he chose orange scented) and after several minutes was starting to feel rather giddy. The dentist came in and was real friendly, donned his orange flavored rubber gloves (what they won't think of next!) and put some numbing gel on his gums. Then, while the nitrous mask was blocking his view, he snuck the syringe in and numbed him all up without him even really knowing what was happening. He did say that it was hurting, but he didn't flinch or anything.

So after a minute or so his mouth and cheek started feeling like it was falling off his face and he couldn hardly talk or swallow (it was funny in a sad sort of way). So he and I started conversing in sign language (to a point, he needs a bigger vocab) and the spit vacuum was employed so that took care of those two things. Then he started getting bored so the dental assistant went and got him a Bible Story Book from the waiting room to look at.

Finally the dentist came in and chit-chatted with him a little more. He checked the numbness of Geo's cheek and lips and introduced him to the drill (that whistled and had headlights). Well, as soon as he started drilling, Geo tensed up and said it hurt so they put the nitrous mask on again and gave him some more nummy juice and after a couple minutes tried again.

I could tell that it either hurt or was bothering him because he was tense, but then again, I am too in the same shoes. The doc reamed out a good sized hole (I didn't look too much, rather icky) and then put some medicine soaked cotton inside to kill any infection going on (he said there was drainage, I guess from some kind of infection?). Then he put the filling putty in. It was soft at first but hardened up and after an hour Geo could chew on it. He gave me some more antibiotic for Geo to take for the next 4 days and we were done with this installment.

We'll have to go back in a month or two to get a stainless cap put on. But I was so proud of Geo and I'm so happy that he won't have to worry about a hurting tooth any more! Praise God for that! They asked him if he wanted a sticker and he said he wanted three because he had a baby brother and a sister at home. They thought that was so sweet so gave him 3 little toys and 3 stickers. They really were so nice :) I thank our pastor's wife for referring them.

I have a diaper deal that I'm planning at CVS (as soon as some money that I'm expecting gets here). If all goes as planned, I should be able to get a package of dipes for $3.50 or less (that's with ECBs and coupons driving down the price). Not bad. I've gotten my mom into CVSing too and she's doing the diaper deal as well to help me stock up on some for Eli. I like cloth, it's great and all, but my dear MIL has decided that it's her mission and her passion to see her little grandson in slim and trim 'sposies. I have to say I'm not totally against the idea because my diapers have an odd smell in them that I can't get rid of and I'm tired of it. And the less laundry I have to worry about at the moment, the better. I plan to start potty training in the spring so hopefully this won't be a problem for much longer! So thank you so much Mama D, it's truly sweet of you and really appreciated!

I do feel that I had a productive day today. I got everything on my list done except for cleaning out the van (cleaned sink/counter/stove, swept floor in kitchen, made my bed, cleaned the bathroom counter and toilet, cleared off my dresser and dusted, folded and put away a load of clothes, took some clothes that I weeded out of my shirt drawer and bagged them up, got them out of my room, folded up some blankets from Gigi's makeshift bed and vacuumed our floor, did several loads of laundry, washed/put away dishes...) I have some clothes I need to fold, tho, so I'd better get to that before it's time for me to head to bed.

Whatta day!

Well, I really thought I was going to bail ship and head over to Mom and Dad's, but we stuck it out here. It didn't rain an awful lot last night so we were able to flush the toilet 2 or 3 times and shared water for baths (sorry if that's tmi, but desperate times called for desperate measures and, as DH said, they used to do that in the "olden days"). I opted to wash my hair in the sink as I just don't do well washing my Rapunzel locks in a bathtub. It actually worked pretty well.

DH found out that before we can do anything to the septic system, we had to get a permit from the county health department. He called them and filled them in on the problem and they sent a guy out to check it out and bring the permit. He thinks the field lines might just be blocked because damaged lines would cause pooling on the surface and there isn't any. Who knows what the problem is, I just know it's a big problem. All my lovely Flylady routines (well not all but a lot) are going down the tube. The biggy, shining the sink and keeping dishes out of it has been steamrolled over because we're cautious to use that much water (especially after 20 or so gallons of bathwater). I had thought about doing all my laundry at the laundromat, but DH is going to try to rig up a way to get the water from the washer out the window via a garden hose. Not exactly sure how that's going to work yet, it remains to be seen. He'll be my hero (not that he's not already) if he makes that happen!

Today I was able to empty one box of junk and then took that box (plastic tote really) to Eli's dresser and pulled out some more of his clothes. I took out at least 1/3 of what was there and was able to get rid of another tote of clothes that were sitting on top of his dresser. All in all (since the beginning) I've managed to get rid of 4 large plastic totes of clothes 18m-2T! (Ok I admit it, he had way way way too many clothes!). I still need to get into Galena's room and do that to her clothes. I know that will be a blessing to her as her clothes are in terrible disarray.

Hmm, I got the kids computer settled into it's new home, redid my laundry area, weeded out the kids clothes, it's time for me to decide what my next mission is. Maybe taking down the Christmas tree? (Ok, slightly less bad than it sounds, but only very slightly, lol). Eli pulled the tree down after it had been up only about 2 days and I knew that if we put it up again, it would just come down again. So it's sitting in a jumbled heap in the corner and I've been ignoring it because there were "more important" things that I wanted to do first (and really, who loves taking the tree down?). The lights wires are going to be a headache to get untangled. If I had the money, I'd be tempted to cut them off and buy new ones. I think we'll have to figure out how to get the tree put back up so I can then disassemble it properly. That might not happen tomorrow since DH is going to have bigger fish to fry so maybe I need to have a plan B mission just in case. Um, I guess I'd really like to get my sewing corner organized and I had the thought of turning the bookcase that's behind my head so that it's back is to the wall which will open up the space. I don't know if that will be a good thing or not. I suppose if it's not cluttered, it will be ok.

Amendment

I'm making an amendment to my blog-a-day challenge. I finally decided it wasn't "loving myself" to feel so guilty about not posting so now I'm going to post as often as I can, hopefully every day, but if I miss a day, I'll just try to get it the next...

Yesterday DH told me to hold off on doing any more washing because our septic tank was full again! The field lines aren't wicking away the water from the tank like they're supposed to and so the tank was full and any water from our house really didn't have anywhere to go. That fact became grossly apparent after Geo had taken his shower last night (thankfully not during his shower) and I was washing a very small load of diapers (gotta have diapers) and the spin cycle go to be too much for it and sewage started backwashing into our lowest area which is our bathtub (gross, yuck, bleugh, ad nauseum!). Since we won't be able to do much toilet flushing today and knowing how kids are, I think I'm going to take them and flee to my parents' house in the mountains and I'm taking my laundry with me, lol. I think DH might stay here and try to get the situation fixed. First the tank is going to have to be emptied again, then he's going to rent a back-hoe and dig out the field lines (leach beds) and replace them. He'll also dig up the rest of his garden for spring and move some bushes from around the septic tank to the perimeter of the yard. Their roots seeking out moisture during the dry summer probably played a big role in the field lines' collapse. So that whole area needs to be de-planted so this doesn't happen again.

I thought I had Eli's clothes pared down to a reasonable amount and then heard Flylady saying that kids shouldn't have more than 5 pairs of play pants and a couple of dress pants. Well, that was eye-opening seeing as Eli probably has 20 pair of jeans alone, not counting corderoy, khaki and church pants. Um, I think I need to go back and try again, lol. Maybe I could do 6 pair of jeans (I like even numbers), 1 khaki, 1 tan corderoy, 1 blue corderoy and 1-2 church pants. And his shirts are another thing altogether. But if I wash every day (which won't be a chore if my loads are smaller and more manageable), I should be able to get by on much less. I'm trying to instill in the older 2 the idea of getting more mileage from their clothes. If they aren't too dirty after a day's wearing, I've told them to lay them out by their beds to put on the next day. That will also really help with the laundry. I'll see if I can't get our water bill down yet! :) And clothes that aren't washed so frequently last longer so that's good too.

Last night the kids needed to use the bathroom (the kind where you can't get by without flushing, lol), so, since I needed to run some things by the library anyway, we all bundled up and went over there and took advantage of their plumbing. I think we're going to need to get out of here pretty soon today so we don't tax the water system any further.

Oops, I did it again...

(didn't post yesterday) Well, um, I was in super hyper cleaning mode yesterday, I got something like 6 loads of clothes folded and maybe 8 loads washed, tidied the kitchen, shined my sink, did some dishes..., and culled a bunch of clothes out of Geo's overly crowded drawers. We are truly blessed to get hand me downs from their older boy cousin, but we just almost have too much. Flylady says that if the drawers are too full, it's not fun to put clothes away so I'm just keeping the nicest shirts (plus 2 really grubby ones so he can use them to paint in or play outside in the mud...) and mostly blue jeans or khaki pants and a few corduroy. I'll put them up out of the way for awhile just in case we run out of clothes between washings (like we have in the past when I wasn't FLYing) and if we don't need them, I'll put them in the "to sell" pile. Reminds me, today DH looked at a shirt I had washed last night and said "Is this clean? I just put it in the dirty clothes yesterday." I said "I washed it." He sniffed it and got a funny, surprised, happy look on his face. That was a good feeling.

Last night I went and picked up a Sunday paper and was mightily disappointed by the wimpy bundle of coupons that was in there. I hope my coupons didn't fall out somewhere. Then I folded some more clothes before bed, put food away, shined my sink, and got everything ready to take our cat in to the vet today.

Which leads me to the huge blessing of the day yesterday! I got a call from the vet that I've been talking to about having our cat Charlie spayed. There were no openings till the end of March and I was despairing at the thought of having Charlie cooped up in our laundry room for a month and a half. The lady asked me if they'd booked me in yet and I said no, but I was starting to think that I should. She said "Would you like to bring her in tomorrow? Someone cancelled." Would I??!!? Where are you located and where do I sign? LOL I was so happy.

So, after a very sleepless night (Eli is still sick and wasn't wanting to sleep as much as he usually does), I woke up at 6:30, got dressed, ate, and was out of here by 7. I thought it would take a little longer to get there than it did, but I got there at 7:30. I wasn't supposed to be there till 8. There was a mass of people bringing their pets, maybe 18-20 people crammed into the medium sized waiting room. It was rather a mad-house. But the workers seemed really nice and treated the animals with compassion. I'll have to go there again tomorrow morning, this time they want me there at 7:30 so I know that if I leave just a little before 7, I should be good (as long as there are no traffic snarls on the way).

DH told me yesterday that a lady from our church was coming over to test her air mattress in our pool to try to find an air leak. And something like that would have sent me into a tizzy in the past, fear that she might come inside my house, but this time I looked around, realized I was "only 15 minutes from clean" (a Flylady-ism) and what a great feeling that was!

Another terrific thing that happened yesterday was that I found Gigi and Eli's birth certificates. I'd misplaced them (or so I thought) and had searched and searched for them with no luck, but decided to look in a place I was almost sure they weren't and there they were. Praise God! That was an answer to prayer.

Yet another great and happy thing that happened today was that I just discovered that we're eligible to join the larger library system for our state. We used to be part of that system before we moved, but where we are right now, our library system is 2 counties wide and just doesn't have all that much. So, now we'll have access to our little local (and super convenient) library as well as the full fledged mega library system. And the closest library is only about 20 minutes away which is not all that bad. This honkin' library system is the one that my knitting buddy is a member of and I'm always jealous of the great knitting books she can get. Well no more! Hehe, doing a little happy dance.

Chagrined

How could I drop the ball and forget to blog yesterday and Wednesday? I was doing so good. Here's what happened (it's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)... I went to a Pampered Chef demonstration last night at our pastor's house (his wife was hosting) and had a really nice time, but didn't end up getting home till close to 10. Then there were some stuff like laundry and cleaning out the sink (gotta leave that sink shiny, Flylady says, lol) and I just plain forgot. But hopefully it was just the one time. I have no idea what happened Wednesday [shrugs shoulders].

Today was lovely and sunny and beautiful and is supposed to be that way for the next day or two, nice! I managed to get most of school done even tho my night schedule (going to bed at 10, up at 6:30) was really messed up by Eli waking up a couple of times to nurse ("Baba, Baba... [very plaintively] Baba"; tho he actually started saying Mama and Mommy today which was so exciting to me. He also started saying Nanana so he's trying out his Ms and Ns now [from Bs and Ds]), and Gigi waking up crying around 11:00 or so because she was coughing and it hurt. I rubbed some Vicks on her feet, not sure if it worked, but I had to try, then I let her go to bed in our bed (DH was still up working) till DH came to bed and then he moved her to a little makeshift bed on the floor. So I didn't make my 6:30 wakeup time and that kind of threw my whole day off.

I did manage to do Kelly's Mission of the day (it's another Flylady thing) which was sweep and mop the kitchen floor. I also did the dining room floor as it was in dire need. I tidied up in the bonus room some, made a little more elbow room, did some vertical stacking of boxes so that things weren't spread out all over the place. I also moved the laundry sorting bins out of site (well 1/2 of them anyway) and moved the ironing board to where they were so it's not in my way when I come out of the laundry room anymore. The bins that show have lids on them and stack so they don't look too awful. Geo got into the cleaning and started sorting his toys. I think I'll introduce him to Riley's Challenges (yet another Flylady thing), see if he can get on board with that. I think I'm going to start listing the school subjects we need to cover every day on the white board so he can see what to expect and how much more we have to accomplish before we're "done" for the day and he can go do something else. I asked him if he'd like that and he said "yes." We finished reading a book about Ben Franklin today and I learned a lot that I never knew before. He was a very interesting fellow.

It was so much easier to clean up for Sabbath since I'd been keeping up with things every day rather than saving things till Friday afternoon. The bathroom, hallway, family room and kitchen aren't too bad. Now I need to start branching out to other parts of the house, but it's very gratifying to have those places staying fairly decent on a regular basis.

For the last little while, maybe a month or two, Eli has been jumping with both feet off the ground which is very cute to watch. He has good balance too for a little squirt.

Wednesday we went to the dentist because Geo has cavities. He had some acid reflux when he was around 3 or 4 (gone now) and it played havoc on his teeth. One of the cavities was so bad that it was giving him pretty bad toothaches (which we treated with oil of oregano & olive oil on a cotton swab which he bit down on, and tylenol) so now he's on an antibiotic as the cavity went all the way to the root (ouch!) and they want to make sure there's no infection before they take care of it. He's going to have to have a pulpotomy (what they do instead of a root canal for baby teeth) in a couple of weeks. I don't look forward to that!

Yesterday the septic guy came and took care of our septic problem and now we're good to go again. Still have a plugged toilet in the laundry room, tho; he hadn't been told that we wanted him to do that and he didn't have any tools with him. That toilet is being a sticky little thorn in my side.

Our cat is in heat and the cheapest clinic around ($20 to spay a cat!) is 2 months booked out. We've been keeping Charlie (our cat, and btw, she's a she [the kids named her]) in our laundry room as there were so many boy cats hanging around the house and we didn't like the odds. But I can't imagine keeping her in there for 2 months! I'm not sure what we're going to do. I wish I'd called a long time ago before she went into heat, but it's too late now. We can't afford a regular vet so we may not have any options. We like our kitty so it's not like we want to get rid of her or anything, but we also don't want kittens (or more accurately we don't want to have to try to get rid of kittens). Poor Charlie is talking to me right now, sounds like she's saying "Hello? Hello?" as in "is anyone out there?" Poor li'l chickadee.