Gadgets I Swear By

I'm not big on gadgets. I don't like clutter, and it seems like they always wind up becoming clutter.

But this is a list that I swear by.

The Super Cheap

Mini Broom and DustpanDollar Tree$1.00

I love this for sweeping crumbs off of the table. We've had this for about three years and it's still in great shape, so not bad for a Dollar Tree find. The hole in the end of the handle makes it easy to store--it hangs on a command hook under our sink.  It's easy for the kids to use, and works well for the table, kitchen counters, etc.


ToothbrushDollar Tree$1.00

Okay, this is a gimme. But I love the cheap packs from Dollar Tree because they are...well, cheap.


Soap Dispensing Sponge BrushDollar Tree$1.00

Mix some dishsoap and vinegar and throw it in the shower. Wipe down walls while you are showering and keep them shiny without elbow grease. It is a win, win.

Cleaning Brush SetWal-Mart$2.41

Typically, you'll find these whereever bottles and sippy cups are sold. But they can be used for getting down in a myriad of tiny cracks and crevices (I've even run them between my stove and counter top where there's a lip that collects crumbs).

Not Cheap But Still Awesome

Nesting Measuring CupsPampered Chef$16.75

These were a gift that has definitely been pretty amazing. I like that they clip together so that they don't come loose in the drawer, and the tapered shape makes it easy to find one that will scoop out of almost any container.


Measure -All CupPampered Chef$11.25

One side does dry and the other does wet. The dry side functions so that the silicone insert can scrape the sides and get everything out. I love it, especially for measuring sticky stuff like peanut butter.


Libman Freedom Spray MopWal-Mart$29.99

I am a big fan of spray mops. I like the Libman because it doesn't require a certain type of fluid, so I can make my own or use whatever I want. You can also buy different pads and change them out. I had a Swiffer and I liked it well enough, but it was frustrating to have to replace batteries and, while I eventually figured out how to make one bottle of Swiffer fluid into a reusable one (thank you, Internet), it was definitely more difficult than just obtaining one that was made that way to begin with.

My Expensive Favorites

Ninja Master PrepAmazon$49.97

A gift from my mother-in-law this past Christmas and I adore it. Not only does it make kitchen tasks remarkably easy (I make my own shake n bake breading for pork chops, and it cut the time needed to make a big batch in more than half), but it also makes mean ice-based cocktails. My Debate Night Daiquiris have been the bomb-diggity.


Stand MixerWal-Mart$199.97

You can find less expensive versions of this. Again, a gift--I dunno how I'd have justified it otherwise. But, it's become one of my most used appliances. Bread, cookies, cakes, pizza--it's made foods that used to take an hour to prep take fifteen minutes or less, and that's made me more inclined to make them.

Cleaning with Kids: Keeping your sanity (maybe)

It wasn't long after I got my own place that my mother walked in and exclaimed, "It doesn't even look like you have kids!"

That was on a good day, and she was right: it really didn't look like there were any kids in the house.

It seems like "messy" and "kids" are synonymous (and they are), but I must admit, I bristle a little bit at things like "Good moms have messy house and happy kids." I'm not happy when our house is a mess. It bothers me. I've still got happy kids, though.

Today, I'm going to share my advice for how to balance it. I'll be noting what worked while I was working and what didn't and what works today that might not have when I was working. Also, relevant information: our children are currently 13, 11, 9, and 5. However, I'll be talking about the whole breadth of our time living together, and my spouse and I moved in together when our nine-year-old was three.

Okay, now that I've thoroughly confused you with background, let's take a look.

Clean Up Your Act: Cleaning Kits

Having the right tools is essential.

We keep three sets of cleaning supplies around the house.

The Bathroom Kit

Originally, I'd planned to do a kit for each bathroom, but honestly, it just took up extra space. So now we have a single kit that lives under our guest bathroom sink.

• Toilet bowl cleaner
• Glass cleaner
• Disinfecting wipes
• Dishwashing liquid
• Baking Soda
• Bowl
• Cloths

I also keep a pack of baby wipes in each bathroom to use for wiping down surfaces in between cleaning days.

The Dusting Kit

The dusting kit lives in our laundry room linen closet.

• Dusting spray
• Swiffer extendable duster
• Extra pads for duster
• Electronics wipes
• Dusting cloths
• Glass cleaner
• Cloths

The dusting kit is actually used for more than dusting, but it covers pretty much every room but the bathrooms and kitchen.

Kitchen Supplies

I don't have a kit for kitchen supplies YET...but I'd like to add it some day.

• Glass cleaner
• Baking soda
• Ceramic stovetop cleaner
• Disinfecting wipes
• Razor
• Sponge cloths
• Cloths

I also keep white vinegar on hand for cleaning the microwave.

You may have noticed that glass cleaner winds up in every spot, and disinfecting wipes in two out of the three--I find it useful to just have it on hand in the room I am using it in (or the kit I am taking to that room). For me, it helps to corral everything at once and not kill my mojo....

Clean Up Your Act: Creating a Cleaning Schedule, Part 6: Communal Living Areas Day 2

Day 2 of our communal living clean up: Tuesday.

The Scene: A lone warrior surveys a dusty and forlorn kitchen...

I kid, I kid. Today is the day that is usually the most intense cleaning-wise. I'm a little paranoid about making sure the kitchen stays properly disinfected, and sometimes, that takes time. Also, our new home has white cabinets, and that...that takes some doing to keep them white sometimes....

I promised yesterday I would talk about how I decided which day to do our kitchen/dining area and which to do our living/entry/office. It's really pretty boring. Our trash runs on Wednesday, usually first thing in the morning before my spouse even leaves for work at 5:30, so I needed to be make sure that anything smelly from the fridge would be cleaned out before then. Thus by default, Tuesday became kitchen cleaning day.

I say that kind of nonchalantly but it's honestly an important point when you're looking at setting a rhythm to get things done around the house: Make a note of recurring activities that may influence how much time you have or when it makes sense to do something. I like to think of a little snippet from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations:

to do less, better

That's my mantra in most things, but especially in housework.

So what does my kitchen chore list look like? Here's a peek:

I've talked some about my differentiation between "quick" and "deep". Quick indicates that I just hit in passing--enough to keep stuff from gunking up and to notice if it needs a deeper clean. A deep clean indicates that, regardless of what kind of condition it is, I clear it and clean it top to bottom. Between Quick and Deep in my kitchen, it keeps things manageable. Most of the time, cleaning something on a "deep" day doesn't take much more than a moment or two longer than it does on a "quick" day.

Let me explain what some of these look like, from Daily to Biannually:

• Stove Quick: I just wipe down the top and clear any splatters
• Counters Quick: I just wipe down what I can see--I don't move anything unless I have to.
• Stove Deep: I have a ceramic stove, so I break out my cleaners and my razor and make it smooth and shiny.
• Oven Quick: I use a damp cloth to wipe down the inside of the oven, unless it has something that requires immediate attention.
• Fridge / Freezer Quick: This starts Monday night, when we have a leftovers night. Then I wipe down any surfaces I see on Tuesday with a damp rag, and I clean up any messes, but I don't pull out the drawers or shelves.
• Cabinets Quick: I wipe down the front and doors of my cabinets.
• Pantry Quick: I do a once over and make sure that everything's back where it should be and I sweep what I can see.
• Counters Deep: I move everything and wipe underneath. I also wipe down any containers, utensil crocks, stand mixer, etc, before I put them back.
• Oven Deep: I prefer to use a baking soda mixture, but this is the day that I actually use more than a damp rag.
• Fridge / Freezer Deep: Shelves and drawers are removed and washed in soapy water. I check expiration dates as I go also.
• Cabinets Deep: Everything comes out, the shelves get wiped down, and order is restored to the kingdom.

What about the dining room?

• Table Quick: The kids do this after every meal. It's just a quick wipe down.
• Table Deep: I wipe down the sides and legs, and move the table to sweep under where the legs are.
• Chairs Quick: I wipe down the back and slats.
• Trash: I wipe down the outside of the trashcan, clean the edges, and move it to sweep and mop underneath.
• Chairs Deep: Stain treatments. I also wipe down the legs and usually the feet.
• Trash Deep: I remove the liner to spray it out and wipe it down. I try to clean out any cracks and crevices.

Why do I wipe down the walls and baseboards more often in the dining area? For some reason, they wind up an absolute wreck so much faster than anywhere else in the house.

Anyway, this is probably my least favorite cleaning day. I love seeing the finished product, but making sure it's done the way I want is tedious and monotonous. I'm glad that it went quickly today. ;-)

Clean Up Your Act: Creating a Cleaning Schedule, Part 5: Communal Living Areas Day 1

Today, I'm going to kind of combine what I do for Sundays and Mondays, because I don't blog on Sundays.

Sundays, I usually devote to a of reset the kids' spaces. The way our house is laid out, we've got the kids on one side, with a bedroom for our sons and another for my stepdaughters, plus an extra bedroom that we use as a playroom, plus our guest bathroom. Then in the center is our communal spaces and my office, and on the other side from that is our master bedroom and bathroom. It is brilliantly quiet, after living on top of each other for five years or so, and sharing a room with my older son for the three years before that.

I debated back and forth on how best to balance keeping their playroom and bedroom in check with still teaching the kids to be responsible. It's kind of gone back and forth, but right now, I do a weekly reset and clean of the playroom to make sure that it stays pretty organized, and the kids do a weekly clean and reset of their bedrooms. I typically handle the monthly, quarterly, and biannual chores, but it's become a case by case basis. Some of those chores are absolutely kid-friendly, so I delegate those to the kiddos.

We also have a pretty strict screentime regime: half an hour a day during the school year, with the ability to earn extra time for reading, playing outside, and helping out. We don't do an allowance currently, but I am trying to roll out our bounty system again. That'll be a blog for a different day. Before any screen time is allowed, their spaces have to be picked up and all of the toys have to be removed from communal spaces. This helps keep it fairly neat as we go through.

Here's a look at what we do in the playroom:

It's pretty straightforward, I think. Here's the one for the kids' rooms:

What's the difference between linens and comforters and sheets? Nothing, technically. I just use "linens" to mean rugs and curtains in this case.

Here's the hallway that links that side of the house:

It takes a fairly rough beating over the course of any given month, which is why the walls and baseboards get washed more regularly than most of our other rooms. So far, so good.

Mondays are set up so that I can get the communal areas back in check. Over the weekend, when we are all home, it gets pretty banged up. Taking Monday and Tuesday to work on these areas lets me do a quick reversal back to Tidytown before things get out of hand.

Mondays, I focus on the Living Room, Entryway, and my Office. Tuesdays are for the kitchen and dining area. I'll explain how I decided which went on which day in tomorrow's post.

Our Living chores breakdown like this:

A deep vacuum involves moving all of the furniture, which is why it only happens twice a year. Right now, it's not a big deal--I move the couch and loveseat every week when I vacuum because they are light. The only other furniture is the entertainment center. However, when I made this list, I was kind of envisioning the future, when I want to add a side table, small bookcase, and chest that will hold our turtle's tank. That is definitely not a task I want to undertake every week, or even every month. I will try the twice a year schedule and see if that works out, and if not, it's one of those things I can always adjust.

Couch and Loveseat just reminds me to vacuum the cushions because even a no food in the living room without permission rule isn't quite enough to corral all the crumbs, to say nothing of sand and dirt that seems to cling to children with alarming tenacity.

Our living room and entryway are connected, no walls in between them, but I find it useful to divide them, as the flooring is different. Here's how it breaks down for the Entry:

Our entry currently has no furniture, but I find it useful to dust above doorframes, and we have our Pale Blue Dot print here, and I simply have to keep it dust-free, right? :-P

The closet makes the list twice. Weekly, I give it a quick once over and return stuff to where they should be. Monthly, I review the organization and make any changes that need to be made. I also find it helpful to shift extra jackets and shoes back to their appropriate closets to free up space--it's not a large closet.

And finally, my office, one of my absolute favorite rooms. Indeed, this room (which I blog from regularly) was one of the reasons I fell in love with this house. Technically, it was meant to be a dining room, but there's already a breakfast area in the kitchen and this room was carpeted. I was also specifically looking for a place that I could put a desk, both for blogging purposes and because I'm looking at returning to school myself after Little A starts kindergarten. Thus when I saw this room, I was immediately struck by how useless it was as a dining area for our family and how grand it would be to use it for my office. And it has not disappointed! Here's my labor of love to keep it tidy:

Originally, I was dusting all of my shelves every week, and then it occurred to me that I would probably be better off to just hit them with Swiffer duster and do a deep dust, where I remove everything and get behind and dust books and frames and knick knacks individually, about once a month. I really like this system; it's my second month with it divvied up this way, and it has really freed up my time for the majority of my weeks each month.

That's the wrap for the first part of our communal areas. My goal by the end of Mondays (or rather, by lunch time--after lunch is time for blogging! ;)) is to have these three areas reset and ready for the rest of the week.

This works really well--this past weekend, for instance, we were a bit busier than usual. We've been trying to get my stepdaughters' room ready to be painted before they come down for Christmas, and so we were going through a couple of boxes that we'd stashed in there and hadn't processed yet. Most of the contents were electronics that we had to decide whether to keep and set up in the playroom or take to Gamestop and trade in. This turned out to take longer than I'd anticipated, and it also meant that various components and other crap were strewn across my living room floor for the better part of Saturday and Sunday. For some reason, having a mess like that, even partially contained but still visible, is like an invitation to my family to throw shit wherever they so please, and so by this morning, it was a bigger wreck than it's been since we finished unpacking. My desk was covered with receipts and paid bills and other paperwork to be filed. There was stuff mysteriously knocked off of the bookshelves. It was, as they say, ridiculous. We also had put off grocery shopping this weekend, which meant that I was stuck doing it this morning after dropping Big A at school. To say the least, it was not an ideal set up, and yet, I was still done with the cleaning by 11, when we had lunch. Not bad at all, considering I couldn't get started until 9 because of the shopping.

And that's really the whole point of having a cleaning schedule. By getting into this routine, I flow. I groove. In the end, I have more time this way than I've ever had in the past. And that's a win in my book.

Clean Up Your Act: Creating a Cleaning Schedule, Part 4: Give yourself a make up day...and a day off

Today is Friday. Fridays are grand, aren't they?

I never really appreciated Fridays when I worked because in retail, Fridays usually are the start of the busy part of our week. I rarely had a full weekend off, so Friday was just another work day.

Nowadays, I appreciate them a little more. Tomorrow, I won't have to get up at six to get the kids moving before Big A has to be at school. Spousal Unit won't have to get up at five to be at work by six. We'll wake up, probably to sunshine and kids snuggling up to us. Fridays are truly a doorway to the weekend now.

Fridays are also an important day for my schedule: my make up day.

When I first started using a cleaning schedule, I carefully scheduled every day of the week...and I quickly figured out that I was exhausting myself. I was also getting behind if the week deviated even slightly from my scheduling. A good system should be flexible...and mine was not. Not at all. There was no room for error.

When we moved in here, I revisited the schedule and realized that it's not difficult to group my cleaning into days and give myself a day to catch up on anything that I missed out on. For instance, yesterday, I had an IEP meeting for my older son's speech. In bygone days, this would have the potential to irreparably throw off my cleaning schedule for the week. BUT NO MORE! I knew going into yesterday that if there were things I couldn't get done, they could roll over to today with no real issue. Technically, Fridays are laundry and yard work days, but our yard doesn't require much maintenance, so it gives me plenty of time for catch up while I'm waiting for loads of laundry to finish up.

Another day that I made time for was a day off--every Saturday.

Saturdays were another day that weren't really important when I was working and neither of our sons were in school. I could spend whatever days I had off during the week doing fun stuff like going to the zoo or the movies or whatever. It was great, I'm not going to lie. The zoo on a Wednesday? TOTALLY EMPTY Y'ALL.

But that changed when Big A started school. Suddenly, it wasn't so easy for us to make that time while I was working. Indeed, it's a big reason that I started looking to leave retail.

Today, I save Saturdays to spend with my family. We do stuff together in the mornings and head to my mom's in the afternoons (usually the boys spend Saturday evening with her #blessed...). It's fun and carefree and the last thing I want to do is to disrupt that by giving myself a lot of shit to do.

So when you're making a cleaning schedule, adding a day to catch up on stuff and a day to just chill out and spend time doing things you love, hopefully with people you love.

You'll thank me, I promise.

Clean Up Your Act: Cleaning Schedules, Part 3: Kids' Bathroom

Okay, this is my least favorite room. So let's just get to it, shall we?

I hate this room because no matter what I do, it is always dirty again five minutes later. Like, as soon as I wash the toilet, my kid is going to come up and be like, "Okay, I need to go poop, Mom!" Like, thanks, kid. Thanks...

But I digress.

Here's the chore breakdown for this bathroom, which is the one that people see most often:

Every day, straightening, wiping down the counter, and cleaning the sink keeps the room in balance. Without these steps, I wind up with a crazy mess every single week.

Straightening, as a chore, means restoring the room and putting everything back to its home base. I also take note of anything that's a particular mess and going ahead and fixing it before it becomes more of a mess.

Our bath toys get thrown right in the empty dishwasher. It's a great trick for cleaning and keeping them fresh and non-mildewy.

Walls, baseboards--pretty standard. Light switches: I actually remove the plate from the switch and any outlets that I can and clean them. This is also when we replace any that may need replaced (none have in our new home yet, but I'm sure that day will come).

Light fixtures is just climbing up and dusting the fixtures to make sure that they are clean.

I only clean toothbrushes by soaking them in mouthwash. There may be a better way. Month three is not a cleaning but replacing, so that works out well.

For the parents out there: Potty seats are the worst. Especially padded ones. If you have a padded seat, pull the pad up and you may find the source of any lingering odor in your bathroom. The first time I did this, I nearly upchucked. It was awful.

I have two cleaning kits: one for the bathrooms, one for every other room. My bathroom kit looks like this:

• Basket to hold everything
• Toilet cleaner
• Glass cleaner
• Disinfecting wipes
• Dishwashing liquid
• Baking soda
• Small bowl
• Cleaning cloths

I also keep a pack of baby wipes in both bathrooms--I use these to wipe down the sinks and counters every day, and sometimes to hit the toilet rim if the kids miss....which happens way more often than I'd like!

The baking soda mixed with a little dishwashing liquid makes, in my opinion, a fantastic soft scrub for all of the porcelain. Love it.

I also revisit (and this will probably be substance for another post in my Clean Up Your Act series) this guest bathroom before (this may shock you) we have guests! Overall, though, cleaning it once a week makes for a great balance and it stays pretty tidy for the rest of the week.

Clean Up Your Act: Cleaning Schedules, Part 2: Master Bedroom & Bathroom

I'm going to go room by room for the next week to talk a little more about how I determined what needed to be done in each one. Bear with me, please.

The first time I attempted to generate a list of chores, I simply wrote up a list of chores I thought needed to be done and I went with it. It quickly became apparent that I'd missed a few things--things that I tended to notice, for some reason, only when I had company.

Apparently, visitors are the absolute best way to attract your attention to things like dirty baseboards or that spot on the wall behind the trash can you didn't realize existed.

Anyway, I decided to try a different tactic: I grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil and I went into each room and I sat cross-legged in the floor and generated a list of everything I thought needed to be cleaned. Then I generated, in this first go round, two categories of chores: Weekly and Monthly.

This too quickly showed its flaws. It neglected maintenance chores that needed to be done daily, and there were some things I was doing every week or every month that I simply didn't need to. The timing was bad.

So I added two additional categories: Daily and Quarterly. This worked really well for me at our first house, and actually greatly reduced my stress during our moving process. Our landlords had a habit of scheduling showings but not notifying me twenty four hours in advance (indeed, I once had a woman show up to see the house while I was in my pajamas--AH!). My cleaning list, though, made it a simple thing to right the house even if I only had fifteen minutes or less notice.

When we moved into this home, I repeated the process. Much of the framework was the same, but a few things changed (as a random example, both of our bathrooms here have windows but neither of the ones at the old place did).

Just recently, it became apparent that this house doesn't need as much maintenance as our former place, so I once again found myself revisiting my chore list to add a new category: Biannually. A space for Spring and Autumn cleaning, I suppose.

Here's the process that I went through. Today is my Master Bed & Bath day, so I figured I would share those.

First, I just typed up the list of chores I'd generated in Excel. No fuss, no muss, as they say.

Next I added my timetable labels:

I'm sure you can guess what came next:

Straighten: Return everything back to its home base
Vacuum: Quick vacuum, no furniture moved except hamper
Deep Vacuum: In depth vacuuming, including under bed and behind furniture
Behind Dressers: Move the dressers, clean up anything that has slipped behind, dust, vacuum

Here's what it looked like for the other two areas that I clean on Wednesdays. First, the master bathroom:

Yes, I included make up and toothbrushes. I would totally forget about them otherwise! I also just realized as I look at this that I forgot to include cleaning under the sink in my new list (I do it monthly to try to catch any leaks early). Dammit. *runs off to Excel to fix*

And last but not least, a little weird hallway that leads to our master bedroom:

I will explain how I decide what I'm doing each day in a later post in the series.

How do you keep track of the big cleaning chores?

Clean Up Your Act: Cleaning Schedules, Part 1: Creating a Daily Chores List

I have an ulterior motive for this series of posts: recently, my best friend, whom I adore, asked me to help her come up with a cleaning schedule. She's getting ready to finish school and she wants to transition into "adulting".

I'm honored, but I'm nervous--this is something that I've only done for myself.

So I'm working through the process for myself to better understand it. Yay!

Today we're talking about creating a daily chores list. I feel like daily chores are the unsung heroes of home-keeping. For a long time after moving out on my own, I neglected daily chores, and instead found myself trying to cram a week's worth of cleaning and laundry into two days off...while I was pregnant...and parenting a toddler...and trying to be a decent spouse.

You may say, "Well where was your spouse?!" and that's a fair question--it quickly became apparent after we started cohabiting that my spouse and I have very different standards of clean. Clarifying those standards and reaching a middle ground was, as you might have guessed, an important part of reaching  daily balance.

The other half of my Zen equation, though, was my daily chores list.

This, as I shared last week, is what that looks like now:

But that's not how it started. Oh no. It started as me getting really frustrated that, once again, the sink was absolutely crusty with toothpaste. Again. Did I mention AGAIN? Because it was, in fact, AGAIN CRUSTY WITH TOOTHPASTE.

This was one of those little annoyances that took root and grew. Toothpaste. Dishes. Sweeping the dining room table after dinner. There was a litany of little things that I felt like I was forgetting, either to do myself or to have someone do, every single day.

Slowly, this list emerged. The importance of having a list of chores you do daily can't be overstated. These are the chores that, if you do only them and nothing else except clean up after yourself, will still keep your home manageable.

When I was still working, this was a huge deal. No more was I embarrassed to have my mom stop by unexpectedly. I didn't feel guilty if I skipped a day of cleaning to take the kids to the zoo. If I was opening, I would do the morning chores before I left, and the afternoon chores when I got home. Whoever didn't cook dinner would do the evening chores. If I was closing, I'd do afternoon chores before I left for work, and spousal unit would be in charge of after dinner clean up.

Daily chores are pretty individual. I have a friend who lives with just her spouse. For her, dishes don't have to be an every day chore--if she rinses them out, she can leave them for a day or even two. For other people, laundry is a once a week chore...and for still others, they do a load a day religiously.

For me, I wanted my daily chores to keep the house looking tidy. That meant reseting things back to where they belong at least once a day. Where we are today, my whole list takes about an hour during the day if there's been a lot of traffic in and out, including the time to make lunch for spousal unit. The kids stuff takes them about half an hour. It's manageable, which was my biggest desire for this aspect of my cleaning schedule.

I've also found for me, personally, having a set list of tasks that I do has helped me manage my mental health. I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder when I was 17. I managed it with medication for some time, but eventually weaned off, opting instead for cognitive behavioral therapy, with the understanding that I can return to medication therapy should I need to at any time. I recently heard a TED talk where the speaker said that the opposite of depression isn't happiness, it's connection. I really agree. This is the aspect that having the list helps me with--it gets me up and moving, I have a list that allows me to see my progress, and I don't feel as prone to withdrawing. Even now, as I feel my seasonal depression creeping up, I'm glad to have it as a part of my mental health regimen.

Important Note: In no way am I advocating housework as a cure for depression. For me, having a set list of tasks to accomplish is but one of many, many ways that I manage my depression. I felt like this needed saying and emphasizing. If you are suffering from depression or any mental anomaly, please seek the advice of a licensed mental healthcare practitioner.

So back to how I came up with my manageable, motivating list of tasks: I sat down and I thought about what was important to me. I also considered what my spouse had voiced as his preferences over the years and what I could reasonably expect my kids to be responsible for.

For me, the importance was definitely making sure that there was nothing to trip over (I'm a klutz) and making sure that the house looked neat. Visual clutter makes me feel anxious and trapped. For my spouse, it was definitely dishes.

The chores were rounded up and added to a list, then divvied up among all of us. Over the intervening time between then and now, the list has changed a little--I added making lunches when I lost my job, because before that, we had the money for spousal unit and I to eat out when we were working. We just recently adjusted the laundry days because our youngest kid is going through clothes like crazy (he changes clothes to be different characters....). Overall, though, even during the move, the list stayed pretty much the same.

What works for you will be different. What's your process?

Managing My Time: My bastard system to keep myself moving

Last month, I finally broke down and did something I'd been meaning to do for a while: I created my own planner pages. They aren't pretty, but they have proven incredibly functional over the intervening weeks.

To keep a long story brief, I have been searching for the perfect planner for a while. Hell, forget perfect, I just wanted a planner that I could use and not feel like I needed three others to supplement it. By the time that I made the decision to make my own pages, I had three planners that I was using--one daily one that broke the day down by timeblocks, one that I used for planning my blogging, and one that I used for planning and keeping track of our household.

What I wanted was pretty simple. I wanted enough room for a spot to block out my time, track my reading schedule, put in what was for dinner, keep track of things for my kids' school, record events for the family, jot down tasks, track what chores were due that day...

I mean, really, is that so much to ask for?????

I jest, of course. I realized a long time ago that I wouldn't find something that fit all of those needs, but what was surprising was how many didn't even come close, and how long I was willing to give them a pass on not meeting more than one or two of those needs at a time.

So this is what I came up with:

I'm still tweaking it. I've changed several parts of it--for instance, I had the reading schedule at the bottom with blog posts, but then I realized there wasn't much space for me to record ideas for two different blogs for the day.

I fill in the Monthly and Quarterly chores section from a spreadsheet I generated of chores that need to be done each month and quarter. Originally, I just went down the list and assigned the chores to a day without putting any thought into it. Then I realized that I was wasting a lot of time--I do a room or two every day, so if say, I had a Quarterly Kitchen task on my Living Room day....it was wasting effort. So I went back to the drawing board and explored whether I could match tasks to the day that I was already cleaning in that area, and it really worked well. I'm quite happy with the outcome. This is week 3 since I made that change, and I feel much more productive.

I also generated a Daily Chores list to help me track what chores I'm doing when. My Daily Chores are those chores that I do even if I do nothing else. All told, counting after dinner clean up, it comes to about 45 minutes of effort every day. The list looks like this:

Morning chores take about ten minutes, after noon five minutes, after dinner clean  up about thirty minutes if I had to do a lot of cooking.

I'm thinking of adding an additional printable for my daily habits series that I've been doing for this blog, because it's been fun and I'd love to keep it up.

This works for me because I enjoy having every moment of my day pretty well scheduled. Without structure, I feel more anxious and insecure. I'm working on it, but working with it helps sometimes too. I'm not a spontaneous kinda person. :-)

Anyway, that's how I manage my time and stay motivated. Since instituting this system, I do find that I have more productive days versus before, when I kind of languished and then spent a day or two a week doing a lot of work to try to catch up.

Our Family Palavers

For the last three weeks, we've been conducting a Family Palaver every week, usually on Sunday.

What's a palaver? Merriam-Webster offers several definitions, but I think the most relevant in my opinion are:

• A long parley usually between persons of different cultures or levels of sophistication
• Conference, discussion

It's just our term for family meetings, taken from Stephen King's Dark Tower series, because that is how I roll.

When I started these palavers, my main goal was to get everyone on the same page and start working on our communication as a family. We'd recently begun emphasizing positive parenting, and I wanted to incorporate the kids more into how we run the family.

Each week we have the same basic agenda. Right now, I run the meetings, but I think that shortly we will start rotating, especially letting the kids run them.

We have a few basic supplies that we use:

I use a desk calendar, a large drawing pad, and a dedicated notepad to keep notes from week to week. I'm going to replace the drawing pad with an easel pad.

We use our dining room table to keep us all focused.

The one on the left is our agenda. We move the clip from item to item as we go. The one on the right is our goals for the week past--we do two goals for grown ups, one for each kid, and two for the family to work on as a whole. During the week, our goals page hangs on the fridge to remind us.

So far, it's been difficult to get everyone committed to the principles, but we're getting a little better as time goes on. I think that engaging the kids by letting them lead the meeting will have an even better impact on their engagement.

Do you do family meetings? How do you handle them? Tips or tricks that you'd share? I'll take anything! ;-)

Why a Family Binder Didn't Work For Me (and what I learned about organization in the process)

If you google "family binder", the algorithm turns up over 37 million results for you to peruse. One of my earliest projects as I prepared to transition to home life was to create an amazing family binder. It had all of our relevant information, calendars, chore charts, school information--ev.er.y.thing.

To hear how many of the home blogs I follow tell it, the family binder is absolutely indispensable. It's the glue that holds the family schedule together. There may be other cogs in the machine, but it always comes back to the family binder.

So I bought a binder. The first binder I got was a trapper keeper. I think this was my ten year old self interfering--I always wanted one for school but they were expensive. I organized it using dividers, and document protectors, and such. I added a hole punch to the very front. It was a thing of beauty.

And then I never used it.

I told myself that it was too big and bulky. That was the problem. So I decided to go with two smaller binders that I found at Target. One would have pressing stuff that we used every day, the other would be for our finances--our bill tracker, important documents, insurance info, what-have-you. Again, it was a thing a of beauty. Or they were things of beauty, I suppose.

And again....I never ever used them. I told myself maybe they were just in an inconvenient place. Maybe if I moved them...

So I did. I moved them all over the place. To the kitchen counter. To a shelf on the bookcase. To a different shelf. To yet another shelf.

And I still didn't use them. And if I wasn't using them...you can damned well bet the rest of the family wasn't using them.

It just wasn't me. It didn't work for me, no matter how hard I tried or how badly I wanted it to.

I learned something important about organization in general at that point, something that I think for me could only be learned through experience. Sometimes it just doesn't work, and when it doesn't, you can't make it. Find a different way. Find a way that meshes with your life in a mostly natural, seamless way.

I've applied this lesson to most of my organizing efforts since, and it has failed to fail me yet!

How do I keep the family organized? Simple. We have a calendar on the wall, we have a family meeting once a week, I keep the family planner, and we have a filing system for all of our papers and things. We post chore duties and family rules where everyone can see them.

If something needs to be dealt with, we have a mail sorter in the kitchen. We stick a post it note to the front of the item with an explanation of what needs to be done. We clip relevant information to the calendar when we need to. We have five binders that are part of our filing system--financial, home, school, and two for instructions and warranties. None of them contain information that we use on a daily basis. It's for reference when needed.

Basically, my lesson was best summed up simply and succinctly: You do you.