Category - Home Sweet Home

Yesterday’s rain caused soccer practice to be cancelled, so I found myself with a little extra time.  I went through my 5 boxes of Halloween decorations and added little touches all through the house.  Not everything made the cut this year because our house is small and already overly knick-knacky.  The house looks pretty much like it did back in 2006.  Except I live in a completely different and yet identical house.  And Bip’s not so chubby and Boo is about to turn 10.

I also finished my new blog header, installed it and changed the fonts and colors to match.  If you’re reading through a feed reader or email, come stop by and see the changes!  I’m particuarly fond of the new header which features Boo in his orange soccer uniform, Pumpkin Girl at age 2 picking out a huge pumpkin, Bip in his pumpkin hat last year, and Becca, who never saw an October, but is too cute to leave out.  She’s singing to my mom in that picture.

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Chores.  It’s one of my favorite topics.  No, really – it is.  Not too long ago I was a chore flunkie.  I had some vague notions of my children doing chores that involved chore charts that worked only as long as I remembered to use them.  I had no real idea of what chores they should do, what chores they were capable  of or what my end goal was.  In other words, I was clueless.

I was surprised to find that others were equally as clueless as I was.  We wanted to do better, but didn’t know how.

Then I stumbled upon Managers of Their Chores by Teri Maxwell.  It changed my life.  I now have a chore system in place that is reliable, easy to modify and has cut the chore nagging down to almost nothing.  All my chore system questions were answered!

I love this book so much that I reviewed over at The Homeschool Classroom.  Stop on by and read more about how Managers of Their Chores changed my life.  And leave comments!  I love comments!

Oh – the first link takes you to the blog, the second link takes you directly to my post.

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We are now operating under our summer schedule. We still have school to do since we go year round, but we finished our language arts program, so our load is cut down significantly. I’ve got some fun things for Boo and Pumpkin Girl to do, including art projects that tend to get forgotten during the busy school year.

Not that summer is any less busy. What’s up with that? We won’t actually do school every day this summer, with the exception of about 2 weeks. We’ve got swimming lessons in the morning starting tomorrow, Boo will be off at Cub Scout camp, then there’s Vacation Bible School, a visit from my parents and a 10 day trip to California.

So we will do school when we are able and enjoy the summer as best we can with the heat and humidity.

Several of our summer projects will include hitting some of the more cluttered areas of the house. We started this morning on the children’s bedroom.

Though they share this room, it has become Pumpkin Girl’s domain. Anytime we have to separate the two of them, Boo takes the playroom and Pumpkin takes the bedroom. That is also how the chores break down – Boo cleaning up the playroom, Pumpkin cleaning the bedroom. Don’t feel too bad for her, though. She has or had until today, plenty of toys in there to keep her happy. However, it was never my intent for the bedroom to have toys. If she wanted something from the playroom during enforced quiet time, she was free to get what she needed. Somehow that grew to quite a collection in there.

My goal was to rid the room of all toys and books, with the exception of stuffed animals. Using what I learned from my decluttering friend Jen, we completely emptied out Pumpkin’s headboard shelves and cubbies. We also cleared off the dresser and Boo’s headboard shelves. All the books- stacks and stacks of them – were returned to the playroom. We will have to reckon with them another time. Decorative items were dusted and returned, including framed pictures, piggy banks and special items. Stuffed animals are now the only thing in Pumpkin’s cubbies. They also live in a hanging mesh thing from IKEA.

Here’s the new and improved headboard.  Still a bit full, but better.

Here’s the hanging mesh thing from IKEA.  Can’t get the whole thing in one picture.

Another thing I learned from Jen was to containerize. All the little items that sit around collecting dust and looking cluttered will do better in containers. Pumpkin Girl has 2 matching baskets for her treasures.  (You can see them in the first picture. ) One holds little odds and ends, her notebooks and special things. Another holds her soft dolls which she is allowed to keep in that room. In our cleaning we emptied a whole container which was given to Boo for his little treasures. It sits on his shelves.

Here are Boo’s shelves.  His didn’t need as much work, just some dusting and putting that white plastic basket to use.

The dresser  (below) still looks a bit cluttered since it is a display area for all sorts of treasures. Nothing, and I mean nothing else is allowed to be on the dresser.

All papers and flat items are stored in document boxes. Each child has one and they can store anything that fits in there. When it’s too full, we sort through it and toss out anything they no longer want. They can keep all those paper things that seem so important at the time, but they are safe and out of sight. Over time, most of those things lose importance and are thrown out without tears or remorse.

We have a basket full of blankets in the bedroom. Boo dumped the whole thing out to refold the blankets and we found several little toys squirreled away in there.

The room looks a whole lot better now. “It’s nice and neat like my friends’ bedrooms,” said Pumpkin Girl. Hopefully with the removal of the toys and books, it’ll be easier to maintain. She’s going to need a lot of guidance here. A lot of guidance. We’ve been through this with her before, but this is the first time we’ve removed so many things.

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The Great Clean Up of ’08, Mid-Winter Edition continues on which equates to the Great Mid-Winter Blog Silence.  Sorry about that.  Priorities people!

The newly discovered empty space in my house continues to take me by surprise.  I’ll turn a corner and suddenly be confronted by the openness.  Wow, whose house is this?  Oh wait, it’s mine!  Very cool.

Very inspiring, too.  I’m getting very possessive about my new spaces.  If someone, myself included, puts something down “just for now,” I make sure it gets put away.  I keep seeing things out of place and getting the urge to put things away.  It’s refreshing.

I have to admit that all the clutter was bringing me down.  In spite of some looming upheaval (I’m being deliberately vague here.  If you know me in real life, you know what I’m talking about), my mood is upbeat and positive.  And that’s saying quite a lot.  I’m generally a glass half empty person.  Actually, I’m more of a “Typical.  I didn’t even get a glass,” type.

So the clearing of the clutter goes on.  We’ve hung some pictures and dropped stuff off at the thrift store.  Over the weekend I sat down with Boo and Pumpkin Girl and discussed their chores.  Like most children, they seem to think that chores are only there to make them suffer.  Of course, suffering builds character, so we can’t totally discount the use of chores as a means to character building.  That aside, I also pointed out that as members of the family, they are obligated to participate in the upkeep of the home.  I think it’s in the Bible, actually.  Maybe Leviticus.

I explained that besides using them for manual labor having them share the workload, that I was teaching them to take care of their own homes someday.  Boo is well on his way to being able clean the whole bathroom by himself and Pumpkin Girl can clear, clean and set a table like nobody’s business.  For Bip, he can put away his own shoes.

The following day, Pumpkin Girl and I cleaned out their bedroom.  Using some of my new found skills, we sorted, purged and containerized.  She can keep all her little treasures, but they have to go into containers.  Her collection of pine cones is now attractively displayed in a basket.  Same with her Princess Pez collection.  To finish it all off, we even dusted.

I have a little bit of homework from last week, mostly a bin of papers.  I think I can push and get it all done by tomorrow.

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Where oh where have I been?

I’ve been purging again.  Junk that is, not um, you know, otherwise.

I was doing pretty well working on little corners of my home and it was making a difference.  I organized, tossed and redistributed all my messy spots.  The only problem was that little word – redistribute.  When I don’t know where something goes, I toss it into a bin or basket.  I have the greatest of intentions with those bins, but alas, they just stayed there, stacked upon each other, mocking me with their faux organization.  I glared at them, threatened them and hid them, but still they remained.

Last week I had enough.  I contacted a sort of real life-mostly internet friend who used to be a professional organizer.  I hired her and she drove 3 hours with her children to come help us and our mess.

All the children were wonderfully well behaved, even the two year olds who went without a nap and their mothers’ attentions all day.  Philip took the afternoon off to wrangle the children and make food runs.

We worked hard all day, dumping out our bins of shame, tossing out most of it and finding a place for the rest.  At the end of the day, both Philip and I had a pile of “homework” to finish and – get this- I can see the carpet in the entrance hallway!  And all of the bins downstairs are gone.  Gone, I tell you!  Some of them were re-purposed, one is temporarily holding things that I ‘m giving away or selling and 3 are sitting completely empty.  AND we have a system for dealing with mail. Amazing.

So over the last few days I’ve been away from the computer, finishing my homework.  Besides schooling the children, doing laundry, and changing diapers, I’ve been putting away all the things we identified that went into other rooms.  The upside to all of this, besides all the new found space, is that I am so motivated to keep up the rest of the house.

I love internet-turned-real-life friends! Jen (yes, another one!) did a really great job.  She even made me tackle a closet that I thought looked pretty darn good.  We found Bip’s social security card, a pair of long-long and much missed Becca shoes, a Thomas Kinkade print that I forgot we had and an embarrassing amount of cash.  Oh, and Mom, I found those Longaberger checks.

So that’s where I’ve been.  I have some emails that I need to reply so if you’re waiting to hear from me, I’ll be getting to you by tomorrow.  But only after I do another little dance in my empty hallway.

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It’s the end of the year and time for a new Notebook.

I’ve always been a Writer of Lists. It keeps me focused and theoretically organized. The problem was, my lists were never in one place. My homeschooling plans were usually folded into the current Sonlight catalog and my to-do lists were lost in a pile of stuff to do. Holiday plans were who-knows-where.

After Rebecca died, I struggled with my short term memory. I’ve since learned that is a common symptom of grief. I couldn’t remember the simplest of details. The task of planning a funeral while living in a different country overwhelmed me. I started writing everything down. And I do mean everything. Whatever I wanted to remember, I wrote down in one notebook. Later I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, focus on anything more than two weeks in the future. I kept writing things down and it helped tremendously.

The notebook I was using was a steno pad we had around the house. When I filled that one, I bought a medium size 5 subject notebook. Each section was for a different kind of notes – random things, homeschool plans, upcoming projects, our upcoming move. Now I was able to find the information I needed quickly. The dividers even had pockets to keep small papers in. At the beginning of 2007, I started a new notebook with a different color cover.

But early this Fall, I was sitting planning the Brownie year with my co-leader, one of my 7 Friends Named Jen. Jen just happens to be practically identical to me, right down to our husbands who sing. She and her husband, and me and Philip are all working our way through Star Trek Deep Space 9 from Netflix, completely unknown to each other. Which doesn’t really have anything to do with anything, but I thought I’d mention it. Which makes twice I’ve mentioned Deep Space Nine on my blog, so I’m afraid I’m starting to look like a Trekker/Trekkie/Big Geek. Which I’m not. Really.

What was I saying? Oh yes…Jen and her notebook.

Jen has a notebook, too, of course, being the Me that lives in New Housing. Except she doesn’t just have a notebook, she uses a Circa. The best was to describe a circa is that it’s the versatility of a three-ring binder with the slimness of a spiral notebook. But better. With a Circa, you can move pages around however you want. You can use any size paper. Did you write an address down on a scrap of paper? Just punch it with the special Circa punch and add it to your notebook. And with no heavy binder rings to bother with, your Circa notebook stays lightweight, slim and portable. Here, go watch the video. I’ll wait.

I’ve wanted a Circa system for years, but they are expensive to get started. But watching Jen moving her pages around her notebook sealed the deal.

When we went on our Disney Cruise, Boo and Pumpkin Girl wanted autograph books. My plan was to carefully remove the pages to include the autographs with the characters pictures in our scrapbook. Phil recommended making circa books, brilliant man. They worked wonderfully. I used scrabooking cardstock and each autograph will just pop right out of the book when I’m ready.

Ok, so I’ve gone on and on about the Circa notebook. I’ve got more to say, but I’ll save it for tomorrow. Let me just fill you in on how to get a Circa system. Right now the best place to get them is through Levenger. If you have a store near you, go in and have them make you a sample book, in your choice of sizes, for free. It’ll be small, but you’ll get the covers and rings that you’ll need to get started, plus a sampler of paper. Close your eyes and buy the punch, and you can punch whatever cheap paper you can find and be all set. Or, order online. They’ve got a $40 sampler that comes with a $40 gift card. You’ll be all set and you can use the gift card to buy that expensive punch or a really nifty leather cover.

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