Peace and Quiet Take 2

On Tuesday & Thursdays Charlotte and I have been taking turns trading kids. On Tuesday I watched Jessie and on Thursday Char watches Kylie. Today is the last day trading for a while because school lets out tomorrow.

Today I am staying home and cleaning!

My brother & SIL are coming tonight which is always good motivation to clean. Plus I decided it would be really nice to start summer vacation with everything really clean. The kids do their chores most days but once in a while things need a good cleaning by me. They clean their rooms but seem to miss the stuff in corners and under beds and in the corners of the closets. They clean the bathrooms but don't scour them. They vacuum but miss the edges, etc. The do the bare minimum to pass their job off and hope I don't inspect! So today I'm spending my 2.5 hours of quiet time good cleaning the house.

I caught the cleaning bug last night so I'm off and scouring!

Next task: the bathrooms!

Thwart It Thursday

I'm tired today. I could barely make it through my workout this morning. I stopped twice to rest because I felt like puking and I wasn't working out very hard? It's hard to get to bed early enough to get enough sleep by 5:45 am when the alarm goes off!

I'm going to run errands and go shopping today but still want to thwart something on my house so I've decided to clean up one side of the garage. It's home to all the kids sports equipment and outdoor toys and it is in disarray. It is supposed to rain today so I'm hoping to be working in the garage while it is raining outside so I can enjoy the rain.
So here is the after pictures:

And no rain so far today :-(

Thwart It Thursday

I never made it all the way through my list yesterday. I did however get my living room looking great. I completely dejunked the bookshelves, entertainment center, piano & window seat. It looked fabulous when Brian got home.
So today I'm going to finish off my list from yesterday plus I have a few extra things added.

• Finish Laundry & Put It Away
• 2 Baskets of Odds and Ends Put Away
• Slim & 6 Pack Workout
• Scriptures & Ensign Read
• Clean My Room
• Wipe Down the Bathrooms
• Sweep & Mop Kitchen
• Dishes Done & Kitchen Cleaned
• Spend 15 minutes cleaning up downstairs

ETA: I'm making good progress today and may actually get through my list!

ETA: Yahoo! I made it through my list! I forgot to thaw chicken for dinner so we're doing a potato bar instead of Kendra's Chicken. I'll make chicken tomorrow. It's been a good day otherwise. I'm tired, really tired but I think that has to do with getting up at 5:30 this morning and doing Burn It Up & Slim & 6 Pack.

Thwart It Thursday

I do all our personal taxes as well as all our business taxes. Last year I procrastinated my taxes until the last possible moment. In fact I even mailed one of my business tax forms late!
This year I am going to get on top of things. I've spent the last 2 hours entering data and reconciling the business accounts and finally everything balances! Now I'm working on payroll and then will start my quarterly reports and start working on data for W2s so I don't mail those out on the last possible date this year.
I'm not going to touch the personal taxes yet since I still have 4 full months to get those done but the first business tax reports come due at the end of the month so I'm going to get them done today!

ETA: It's 2 hours later and I am still sitting here... I got all my quarterly taxes done so the next thing that is due is W2s at the end of February!

ETA: Miracle of miracles... I got my W2s done and ready to mail out and it is only January 8th!

Thwart It Thursday - Suburban

There is something in my suburban that stinks. I can't find the source. I'm starting to think maybe a milk jug tipped over and leaked some milk on the way home from the grocery store. Or maybe Kylie spilled something or maybe there is something rotten hidden under a seat of something. So today I'm going to attempt to thwart whatever is stinking up my vehicle by thoroughly cleaning in out.
Paper clutter is also starting to appear in the office so I need to spend a few minutes going through the mail and school papers that are starting to pile up. Then spend a few minutes straightening up in each of the other rooms in the house.

ETA: I found the culprit causing the stench in the Suburban... melted ice cream. Saturday we ran through the Arctic Circle drive through and got the kids ice cream. Kylie had dropped hers. It had been picked up but some of it had gotten under the floor mat and ultimately was the cause of the rotten smell. Now my suburban is all cleaned out and vacuumed and looks and smells much better... now for the paper clutter and straightening up of the rest of the house.

Thwart It Thursday - Finishing the Basement

EDITED TO ADD: I did it! I got the massive piles of stuff downstairs taken care off. It took me nearly 5 hours today to get it done but it feels great now that it is clean downstairs. 3 more bags for DI and 2 bags of trash. I still have 2 baskets of stuff that were downstairs that belong upstairs that I need to put away and then the job will be complete!

Goal for the day is to finish the basement (except the food storage rooms). Our nephew Mitchell has come to live with us and he needed somewhere to sleep and keep his stuff so I cleaned out all 3 bedrooms. Mitchell has Kylie's old room, Kim & Kylie are now sharing and Brett, Bryce & Bradley are sharing now. But that means that 3 bedrooms worth of stuff now has to be combined into 2 bedrooms. I emptied everything out of all the rooms and put it into the family room. The bedrooms are all put back together but there are still lots and lots of boxes and containers of stuff that need to find a new home or be given to the DI. I'm going to go through all of it today and get it taken care of instead of let it sit there for week as I normally would do. It will take me the good portion of the day but I have nothing that I have to do today other than that.

I'm Not Naked or Dead so I Guess My Laundry Isn't Truly Done...

"The only people whose laundry is truly done are the naked and the dead." ~ Emily Watts

This is the hallway where my laundry pile was. I decided the stacking cubes that were in the hallway were just a breeding ground for clutter and for laundry that needed to be put away so I got rid of them. I don't think anyone in the house had a single pair of matched socks but now all the socks are matched! There was probably 100 pairs of socks total between the 7 of us that I got matched! Wonder how long I can stay on top of the laundry. Not for long because Emily Watts nailed it with the following:
“Laundry is the never ending chore… because what are you wearing right now? Potential laundry!” ~Emily Watts

Thwarted Part 1 - The Closet

After a quick trip to Wal-Mart to buy a shoe shelf and some more hangers I got my closet done. Brian should be thrilled because our room is now clean. The only thing left is under the bed and that will have to wait until the other portions of my house that are actually seen are all clean.

I seem to have an over abundance of white shirts! I think that comes from being my mother's daughter. My mom's standard "uniform" as she called it was dark pants and a white shirt. White because it could be bleached when it got spilled on. I inherited her tendency to wear a portion of whatever she was eating on her shirt.

Thwart It Thursday - Operation Laundry

"If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees." -- Kahlil Gibran

So nobody tell the trees ok!

Here is one of my secrets... My Laundry is Out of Control! Whoever designed our house obviously didn't have the laundry problem I have. We don't have a laundry room, just a washer and dryer in a closet right by the front door. Come on seriously who puts their laundry area near the front door with no door to close to block the piles of clothes?

Today I am attacking my laundry. This is another one of those seriously embarrassing pictures. One that is embarrassing to post but I know if I post it I will get the problem taken care of. My kids aren't the clean kind of kids either, they are the dig in the dirt play outside get filthy dirty kind of kids. So having 5 of them means we have a lot of laundry.
I have 2 goals today to thwart my ever increasing pile of laundry.

1 - To get all the clean laundry folded. I'm not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing that this entire pile of laundry is clean. At least I don't have to wait for the washer and dry to get the laundry clean. I can just fold it and get it put away.

2 - Go through everything in my closet. DI everything that no longer fits and organize the rest of it. Ultimately I need to do this to all the kids clothes too but I think I'll just start with my closet and the laundry pile for today.

Mother, Tackle, Wash, Thwart, Fix, Scour & Savor IT!

So I love Tackle it Tuesday. It so works for me. There are so many things I just don't get done and having just one project to take on has really worked for me. Unbelievable my office is still clean! It feels so great.

My good friend Yoga drove down to visit me on Saturday. After and early lunch at Durangos a couple hours of shopping and then a late lunch at Outback I left feeling rejuvenated. I love you Yoga and am so grateful you went out of your way to spend and afternoon with me!

One thing we discussed briefly was Tackle It Tuesday. Yoga had been trying to come up with something for the other days of the week. She'd come up with Wash It Wednesday and Fix it Friday. It got my brain going and I wanted to come up with something for each day of the week because I thrive with motivation and love the sense of having something that I can accomplish and be proud of.

After church today with the help of a dictionary I enlisted Brian and the kids to help me come up with something for everyday of the week.

So we already had:
Tackle it Tuesday - Tackle any project that you need to get done.
Wash it Wednesday - Dishes, Laundry, your car, the spots on your walls...Lots of possibilities for something that desperately needs washing.
Fix it Friday - Fix something that needs fixing, mend clothes, repair something, replace something that is broken, etc.

The remaining ideas come from my husband and children. We brainstormed and voted on them and this is what we came up with.

Mother It Monday - We had lots of ideas from Mend it to Make it to Move it to Muster it... but it was unanimous that Monday should be Mother It Monday - Do something to be a better mother, read a book, take a walk with the kids, a bike ride, go to the park, sit and talk... Anything to better my relationship with my children.

Thursday was nearly impossible to figure out! Throttle it, thrash it, throw it, thrice it, through it... Ultimately we decided upon Thwart it Thursday. The definition of thwart included: to oppose and defeat, to hinder or prevent. We decided on picking some area of the house needed to be defeated. Clutter or chaos or even bad habits in any form that need to be thwarted.

Scour it Saturday - Anything that needs scouring or to be clear or rid of what is undesirable. Some sort of deep cleaning task from the oven to the soap scum to anything that is needing a good cleaning and scrubbing.

Savor It Sunday - Obviously not a day of work but rather a day to reflect on all that is good in life. A time to appreciate and relish and enjoy what we have been blessed with. (Brett says we should call it Sit it Sunday so we can just "sit" and rest all day).

I don't promise to tackle all of these each week but my goal is to accomplish at least several of them each week. I know there will be days when simply meeting the basic needs of my family is all I will be able to accomplish. But I hope to be able to get a better handle on thing by simply setting a small goal each day and accomplishing it.