Spring Cleaning: Better Late than Never

Okay, so I failed miserably with my motivation and attempts to spring clean … weeks ago!   We did talk about it in school one day, and that was great (I’ll share that with you tomorrow).   But that’s as far as we got. 

Until now.  You see, now we are down to our summer homeschool schedule (1 hour of math/week + lots of reading, from now until mid-September).  With each morning free of school work, I have gained all kinds of time to play catch-up.   I think I should change the term “Spring Cleaning” to “School’s Out Cleaning”.  That makes way more sense for us. 

We spent 3 1/2 hours upstairs yesterday.  The boys worked on their room (ish) and E and I worked on hers.  When I say ‘worked on’ I mean my style of work.  I don’t mean my husband’s style of work, which is essentially to put all things into a pile and make it instantly look better.  I always appreciate his thoughtfulness and desire to help after one of his clean up projects, but at the same time I go a tad bit crazy on the inside because I know it means way more work for me than it would have been if I had just done it from the start.     Please tell me I’m not the only one with a husband who helps in such a manner…

No, when things are a mess, I really think there is only one way to tackle it properly.  Dump it all out. 

Yeah, I know.  And I only thought to take this picture about 20 minutes in to the task, so it was way worse than this at the beginning.  I dumped out 4 drawers of toys and shortly afterward, also dumped out the toy box you see at the bottom of that picture.  I had a number of containers around me for sorting all the items, plus a pile of laundry and a pile of books.   I had a basket of things to go downstairs, things that belong in the boys’ room, lego, doll things, teaparty things, dress-up things, etc, etc. 

We purged some books and toys, pulled out the dresser, bookshelves and bed to vacuum, dusted the ceiling fan, baseboards, cleaned the window and did some hands and knees scrubbing of the floors.  I even took an eraser to the pencil marks on the window sill and on the back of the door that followed a 3-year old temper tantrum back in the fall. 

E was keen to handle the heavy machinery vacuum. 

But then it was done and now it just feels so GOOD in there again!   It doesn’t take long to get messy, but I was guilty of not packing up some things that should have been packed up ages ago!  Swim diapers?  Baby monitor?  They had been sitting there, unused, for 2 years now.  

Now, E’s room serves as the template of motivation for the rest of the house. 

Next up?  The boys’ room.

Uber-Fresh

I washed our two favourite throws last week and they hung on the line for 2 straight days.  They were there partly because I wanted that lovely spring uber-freshness to permeate them, and partly because I was just too lazy busy to bring them in.

But for several days now I’ve been taking deep cleansing breaths while in the general vicinity of the said throws.  Sometimes I plunge my head into the back of the couch just so I can get a great big whiff of it.  I just can’t get enough of that fresh air smell.  Freshness REALLY works for me on Wednesdays, and on all days.

But it makes me think about all the other things in my life that could use a healthy dose of freshness.  I’m not just talking about the kind you can smell and see, but the kind you can really feel when you walk into a room.  I have some serious freshening to do!  I’ve had a long-standing urge to get organized here at Casa-del-Chaos and those cozy little fresh air-smelling blankets are pushing me closer to accomplishment. 

Sometime between now and Sunday, I will put together a plan.  A real plan on real paper.  A plan that brings more uber-freshness into my home — spring cleaning and then some.    I’m going to recruit the kids and get them taking ownership in the uber-freshness too.   I wonder if I can build a mini-unit around it for school…?    For Earth Day tomorrow, we will be picking up garbage in the community so that’s a pretty fitting start. 

Those throws and the accountability of this blog are wonderful tools.  

I am excited.  Oh yes.

Stay tuned.  I will update the process next week.   (See?  There’s that accountability thing again.)

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

Confessions of a Clothesline Junkie

When we first moved to Nova Scotia, it didn’t take long to notice that people here are obsessive about their clothes lines. Oh, my mother hung her wash alright. But her love of the clothes line pales in comparison to the admirable women of Atlantic Canada.

Here, you will see neatly organized lines all year round. Even in the dead of winter, you could see a dozen or so lines of laundry hanging in the snow between our house and the grocery store. The Dr. and the Missus who formerly owned our previous house didn’t even have a dryer!  Nope. They moved the washing machine from the basement into a closet in the kitchen, so they could instead have easy access to the outdoors.  How’s that for clothes line commitment?

I remember a conversation with a girlfriend a number of years ago. I had commented about the clothes line situation, and she told me about her mother’s clothes line behaviour. You see, Mrs. McPhee would sort the laundry from the largest items to the smallest before putting them on the line.  Apparently, it makes for a ‘neat line’. 

What did I know? I was stunned that a woman with 9 children had the time (and desire, for that matter) to arrange the items based on size. I simply couldn’t believe it!  Then I noticed that many people around here did that very thing. Did these busy women know something I did not?

Slowly, and completely unbeknownst to me at the time, I started to do the same thing. Little by little, I was hanging neat lines too.  By the end of our first summer here, I had fully transformed my clothes line behaviour.  And I was proud of my neat lines too!

Now, I confess, I have taken it to a whole new level.  Oh yes!  Not only have I proudly converted to sorting by size, I now also sort by person and by whether the item is housed in the closet or drawer!  Amazingly, I have found that this actually saves me time.  I have to pull the wet items out of the basket anyhow, why not just pull them out it some sort of order as I hang them.  This also means that I can take it off the line in order of each person’s pile; no sorting after the fact.

As an additional time saver, I separate my laundry in a completely different manner during the spring/ summer/ fall months. At this time of year, I have a running basket of small whites and small darks/ colours. You see, there is one thing this clothes line junkie won’t do – I will not hang underwear, socks and dish cloths.  That, to me, is just a pure waste of precious minutes. It would take ages to hang a load of skivvies!  That’s time that I just don’t have, so into the dryer they go. (Besides, I’m not big on seeing other people’s “unmentionables”, so why should they see mine?)  By having a good quantity of socks and underwear, it really only means 2 loads in the dryer every 1-2 weeks.  Not too bad, but a serious time saver.  I have to draw the line somewhere.  🙂

A few other clothesline tips:

1)  Hang the tops from their bottoms and the bottoms from their tops.  This means that pants are hung upright, shirts are hung upside down (it makes the clip marks less noticeable and nicely straightens out any collars).

2)  Hang items so they sag in the middle.  In addition to giving you more space on the line, this seems to make the clothes softer as they have a better chance of blowing in the breeze.

3)  Solicit help.  My three-year old feels like a champ just by handing me the clothes pegs, smiling all the while. 

Yes, I’ve progressed greatly in the clothesline department, but I don’t think I’ll ever be one to take frozen jeans off the line in January.

Still, Mrs. McPhee would be proud. 

This post has been shared over at We Are That Family, because clothes lines really work for me.

Team Tasks: a chore system that works for us

 

Okay, so I am totally one of those moms who gets her kids involved in the household chores from a very early age.  By the time they are 2 or 3, I feel they are more than capable of doing some easy jobs.  Really, I think it’s a great idea to let kids grow up just always recognizing that participating in the Family Tasks is just what you do.  Laziness is not a quality I hope to foster in my kids.  Diligence, stewardship and teamwork on the other hand?  You bet!

Of course, if you have older kids, it is never really too late.  Get them involved!  The might not like it at first, but eventually, it will become second nature for them and (gasp) they may even take a bit of pride in their responsibilities.

I know it’s a widely debated subject, but we decided from the get-go that the kids would not be paid money to do their part.  They do get a small monthly allowance but it’s not tied to anything in particular (more on that another time).  Mom and Dad aren’t paid for the usual stuff, it’s just part of being a family.  We work together.  We are a team!  

Over the years, in the Land of Chores, we have tried it all.   Stickers and schedules  and, and, and…  But I am happy to report that we finally have a chore system that really works for us.  We’ve been using it for a few months now and it has been going remarkably well.

I must say first that as a homeschooling family, we have the advantage of not having to race out the door each morning, so it’s obvious that some serious adjustments would need to be made for families with kids not educated at home.  But the tasks don’t need to take a long time.  Some can be done in five minutes, so it shouldn’t really be a big deal for them to squeeze something in to their day.

Divvying It Up:     As I mentioned earlier, our kids take turns having “their week” to choose certain things.  It was a major sanity saver for us, so I’d suggest reading about it here.  When it came time to assign the tasks for each day, we decided it would make sense to rotate them with the weeks.   This way, it will be easier to track and the jobs they really dislike get done every day one week, and ZERO days the next, becuase that’s when their sibling takes over.  The more kids you have involved in the Team Tasks, the less frequently the rotation will come back to them.  If you have 4 kids, they are really only handling some of the tasks for one week of each month.  Not a bad deal.  We so far haven’t rotated the littlest into the ‘weekly mix’ (she has her own sticker chart) but I suspect we will when she is turns four. 

The Chores      Aside from the basic things they are expected to do (make bed, put laundry in the hamper, pick up toys, put laundry away), they each have 3 things to do each day.  Two of the things are quick (empty the dishwasher, set or clear the table) and one is a bit more intensive (like dusting the main floor or cleaning a bathroom).   The longer ones usually take about 10 minutes, but once or twice it has stretched into 60 minutes on the particularly dawdly days.  Thankfully they have now figured out that it’s best to just get er done.    If they do, all of their tasks together only take 15 to 20 minutes.  As grown ups, we know that waiting doesn’t make the task disappear, it only makes it harder to do.   Hellooooo…  (ahem) …. Laundry?  It never disappears with ignorance.  That’s experience talking, my friends. 

The Reward

Since we were have never been keen on the idea of paying money for things that should be done anyway as part of a healthy, cooperative and well-functioning family, we knew that was out of the question for us.  Stickers were okay when they were little (Sunshine is super-pleased with stickers for now), but frankly, they weren’t so hot either. 

So instead, the boys earn minutes of computer time.  They each have the ability to earn up to 2 1/2 hours of computer time each week.  Friday and Sunday are the days to cash in.  They used to get 15 minutes of computer time each day which worked very well for a number of years, but didn’t really work as they got older.  This is really only a little bit more time each week, but it seems like a lot when it’s all piled up together like that. 

For now, we are also using poker chips to make it fun and to visually demonstrate the time they are earning (and using).  The chores are marked with 2, 5 or 10 points to correspond to the minutes for each task.  No chores, no computer time.  At all! 

Now that they have a handle on the routine, I’ve also started using paper to track the points.  I just circle the minutes earned each week and it makes it less cumbersome than the points.  In a few weeks, I imagine they will drop the chips altogether.

The chores and point allocation does get tweaked every so often, but this is the one we’ve got on our fridge right now.  It’s working extremely well.  

It’s My Week! 

   Every Day:   Reg. Bedroom Tidy (2) + Empty Dishwasher (5) + Set Table (2)

   Monday: Main Floor Bookshelves (10)

   Tuesday:  Vacuum Boys’ Room  (10)

   Wednesday:  Ask Mom for a task and do it joyfully  (10)

   Thursday:  Small Bathroom  (10)

   Friday:  Main Level Dusting  (10)

   Bonus:  Kindness, Obedience and School Diligence (up to 15 minutes for each)

It’s NOT My Week! 

   Every Day:  Reg. Bedroom Tidy (2) + Tidy Front/Back Foyers (5) + Set Table (2)

   Monday:  Dust Boys’ Room (10)

   Tuesday:  Upstairs Bookshelves  (10)

   Wednesday:  Ask Mom for a task and do it joyfully  (10)

   Thursday:  Large Bathroom  (10)

   Friday:  Main Level Floors & Stairs (10)

   Bonus:  Kindness, Obedience and School Diligence (up to 15 minutes for each)

The Benefits:

1)  Mom is Happy  What’s that expression?  Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. 

Okay, maybe I wouldn’t go that far, but I don’t think I can adequately describe the joy I feel when I come into the kitchen for my second cup of morning coffee and see my 7 year old emptying the dishwasher without being asked.  It seriously makes my heart smile.   

2)  Kids Are Happy     It didn’t happen right away, but the kids now really take pride in their work.   They earn a sense of accomplishment, the feeling of making me happy (which I know they love to do) and the HUGE advantage of computer time at the end of the week.  Kids really do thrive on knowing the expectations.  All we have to do is set them. 

3)  More Time for Better Things      Many hands really do make light work.  When we get all our ‘stuff’ done, we have more time to read, play a game, go for a walk, and just… BE.   That is a real blessing. 

4)  Teaching Moments Abound        All of this puts the kids into a routine that might last their lifetime.  When they are older, they should be more likely to roll up their sleeves and work alongside someone who needs a hand.  They should see a need, jump in and fill it because accomplishment in ordinary daily things has always been a part of their day.  I have to believe that they will be more eager to get things done than the kid that didn’t have to lift a finger his whole life. 

I was a kid who had responsibilities in her family.  I was taught to cook and clean and care for things.  I am confident that the routines my parents put in place have contributed immensely to the work ethic I have today.  

I know what kind of adults I want to raise.  I’m so pleased to have finally settled on a chore system that works for me.   It works for all of us! 

This post has been appreciatively linked to Works For Me Wednesday.

Laundry: Navigating the Neverending Mountain

Surely to goodness, laundry is an issue for every household.  We all create it, and somehow, some way, we all have to sort it, wash it, dry it, fold it and put it away so we can do it all over again.  It  just.  never.  ends.

We live in an old 3 storey house with an unfinished walk up attic that we hope to be able to finish someday, if/ when our finances allow.   Like SO many old houses, the washer and dryer were in the basement.  Up and down two flights of stairs for each step of the laundry process.  It got to the point where I just started to ignore the growing laundry piles.  It wasn’t good.  And I shuddered to think of what it would be like when we eventually finished the attic!  That’s a lot of hauling. 

So, we moved the laundry upstairs into a little alcove in the hallway of our home.  It once was the baby’s room.  At 5′ x 7′ it was perfect for a crib on the right wall and a dresser/ change table combo on the other.  But she moved out of the crib and into a big girl bed and bedroom, leaving a lovely little spot for a laundry room.  Imagine that!   Doing the laundry on the same floor where it is created.  

It has saved my sanity.  No joke. 

Okay, so I recognize that not everyone has a new little nook for their washer and dryer.  But even in the nastiest of basements, the laundry area can be spruced up a bit to allow a sorting area and a folding area.  And a lick of paint can make all the difference in the mood. 

Over the years, I have tried various “laundry management” routines.  Even without physical changes to your laundry area, perhaps these little nuggets of laundry experience will help you navigate the Neverending Mountain. 

Tip #1:  Get a Handle on the Sorting       I’ve tried various methods over the years and have settled on one that works for us all.  We have one main hamper in the hallway that everyone shares.  Every day or two, it’s someone’s job (sometimes mine, sometimes a child’s) to empty the hamper into three baskets:  lights, colours, darks.    This is a fun task for the kids.  So far, they all enjoy it and it’s a great way to involve them.  Getting them involved helps them to realize the amount of work required, and makes them a bit more careful about putting clean clothes in the hamper. 

Tip #2:  Make Time Work for You:        As a homeschooler, I spend from 9am to noon each day one-on-two with the boys.   With some trial and error, I figured out that my best time to fold laundry (let’s face it, the most labour-intensive part that nobody else can do well enough) is outside of this three-hour window.  For this reason, I usually wake up in the morning and throw in the first load before I do anything else.   Because it’s all sorted, it’s just a matter of tossing in enough for a load.  Easy peasy. 

On the days when I know I am going to be out all day, I put the wash in before I go to bed, and pop it in the dryer as soon as I wake up in the morning.  This often means that I can have it dried and folded before I head out.  This is a major time saver for me on busy days, and would be a great thing for working moms.   Fitting laundry into the schedule doesn’t have to mean doing 12 loads on your day off.   I can say that, because it’s how I used to operate and it definitely made the mountain way more daunting than it needed to be.   

Tip #3:   Make a Schedule       It doesn’t need to be on paper, but it might help you stay committed if it is.  My schedule always includes a load or two on Mondays, sometimes three depending on how much mountain climbing I feel like doing that day.  Though it varies by my other commitments each week, I also try to do a couple loads on Wednesdays and again on Fridays.  That is the day I wash the bedding.  The schedule also includes having the kids put their own laundry away as they are able.   Even the 3 year old puts away her own socks, underwear and jammies. 

I make sure (as best I can) to clear the folding tables and make sure the baskets are practically empty by Friday evening.  A clean kitchen at bedtime makes me feel so much better in the morning, and it’s the same feeling when I know I’m caught up on the laundry going into the weekend.

Tip #4:  Take a Break     Just because laundry is created 24/7, doesn’t mean it needs to be washed 24/7.  I find it’s a good idea to have ‘no laundry’ days.  Since my husband is home on weekends, Saturdays and Sundays are definitely not the days I want to spend in the laundry room.  Family time is more important than the laundry, plain and simple.  And the knowledge of a laundry-free weekend provides the impetus I need to wrap it up by Friday.  (Note:  the exception to this comes on weeks it’s been pouring and the sunshine joins us on the weekend.  In those cases, I adjust to take advantage of good clothesline days.)

Tip #5:  Count it All Joy (James 1:1)    It’s easy to grumble about the laundry.  I’ve done more than my share of grumbling over the frequency with which it is produced and the speed at which it seems to multiply.  However, I am on a quest to seek joy in all things.  Yes, this means laundry too.  

The joy of course, is that I have children and they are clothed.

The joy is that they have the ability to be active and they get dirty.

You could even say that the dirt is in direct proportion to the type of day we’ve had as a family.  Dirty socks are the sign of a good day.  Black-when-they-should-be -white-muddy-puddle-socks are the sign of a great day.  The days the kids play in the rain, race their boats down the hill and sit in the puddles to splash?    Those days are the ones that make the best childhood memories ever. 

So yes, there is joy in laundry.   There really is. 

When you find it, you might even notice a smile on your face as you fold.  I’ve caught it myself a few times.  So might you. 

Me?  I used to cringe.  I used to mutter under my breath and frequently aloud.  But lately, I’ve caught myself smiling about it more now that I’m intentionally seeking the joy.    (Most of the time anyway.  I never said I didn’t need to remind myself too.)

May you find the blessings in your Neverending Mountain.

This post has been linked to Works For Me Wednesday.  Hop on over to see more great inspiration.