Operation: Clean House- Week 1

One thing I have always heard is that consistency is key and apparently this isn't only true for parenting but also for cleaning. I have been using my new Excel sheet for cleaning and have noticed a great improvement. My motivation has increased since I am finally able to keep up with the ever dreaded laundry and dishes. Since I have been doing so well sticking to my schedule I rewarded myself by paying the babysitter to watch K and R on my day off so I could spend some quality time in the nursery and making progress in other areas of the house. I cleaned off kitchen cupboards, put all of the baby bottles in their cabinet, finished packing my bag and washed up all of the new baby clothes.

I also have tried to include K and R in becoming more helpful when it comes to cleaning up their messes. We have started having them throw away their trash and put their dishes in the sink after meals. I also ask them to pick up their toys before I even go cook lunch or dinner. They are also responsible for putting their clothes in their laundry basket, helping me sort laundry and matching socks.

K believes that she is getting too old for naps now that she will be turning 3, so I have definitely been putting her to work. She made all of her own birthday invitations today and helped me sort out the baby's clothes into her drawers. I cannot wait to put the finishing touches on the nursery and am excited to post our before and after pictures.

Preschool Schedule

As we are starting to dip our toe into the waters of homeschooling, I am trying to plan the smoothest way to make this transition without the girls having a whole new adjustment all at one time. I have been thinking about the current routine that we have in place and realized that it is not really conducive to beginning this homeschooling adventure, so I sat down to think about what was missing. I also noticed that we are having an over abundance of television throughout our day because it is hard for me to get housework done when the girls are awake. This is our new schedule that I am going to begin to implement while I am home with the girls, starting on Monday:

7:00 AM-7:45 AM: Breakfast, pick up dishes, wash table
7:45 AM-8:00 AM: Wash hands, brush teeth, wash face
8:00 AM-8:15 AM: Get dressed, put pajamas in laundry (if necessary)
8:15 AM-8:30 AM: Start a load of laundry (girl hand me clothes from the dirty clothes basket)
8:30 AM-9:00 AM: Circle Time (calendar, weather, review shape/color/letter of the week or month, sing a song and read a book)
9:00 AM-9:45 AM: Free Play (play with what ever they want)
9:45 AM-10:00 AM: Clean up toys from free play
10:00 AM-11:00 AM: Play outside (weather permitting- if it is too cold or rainy we will do a gym activity inside such as dancing, musical chairs, follow the leader or go somewhere in the community where they can be active)
11:00 AM-11:45 AM: Lunch, pick up dishes, wash table
11:45 AM-12:00 PM: Wash hands, go potty
12:00 PM- 2:30 PM: Naptime (I will do dishes, sweep kitchen, put laundry in the drier and complete other chores designated for that day)
2:30 PM- 2:45 PM: Potty time
2:45 PM-3:30 PM: Snack time, pick up dishes, wash table
3:30 PM-3:45 PM: Wash hands
3:45 PM-4:45 PM: Play outside (weather permitting)/Craft or errands 
4:45 PM-5:00 PM: Potty time
5:00 PM-5:45 PM: Dinner time, pick up dishes, clean table
5:45 PM- 6:15 PM: Bath time
6:15 PM-6:30 PM: Jammies
6:30 PM-7:00 PM: Snack and educational TV show/cuddle time
7:00 PM-7:15 PM: Read a book
7:15 PM-7:30 PM: Potty time, brush teeth
7:30 PM: Tuck in to bed! Good night

Onto February- Budget update

So January has come to a close and my husband and I were reviewing our budget like we usually do and we realized that for the past two months (December and January) there were some categories that we were having a really hard time staying within the set amount. Some of these areas were: blow money, baby, other, eating out, Target, Sam's Club, etc. so we discussed our goals for paying off our debt and the purpose of sticking to the numbers we had chosen to put in our budget. Then we discuss whether they were realistic or not. We made a few modifications but also decided that we are going to use a strict envelope system.

I had heard about an envelope system before from some people but never thought it would ever be something we needed to do. But, my husband does get cash tips from his part-time job and we were finding that it was easy to spend this cash even though it was already put into our budget, which was not only causing overspending in some areas but discrepancies in others. So we calculated what our estimate (on the low end) of his monthly tips will be and then chose which areas were appropriate for using cash. I then made up an envelope for each category and labeled how much cash goes into each envelope. For example, my eating out is labeled "EATING OUT- $40". Then I got out our stash of cash that was a mixture of his left over tips from January that hadn't been spent, money from selling some thing we had not been using and left over Christmas money. I then filled up each envelope with the predetermined amount and set them aside to use when February began.

Now that February has begun we have decided that any cash that comes into our house through tips, selling things, birthday money (for us- not the kids), etc. will be put aside for the envelope system. We will then divide up the cash on February 28th into the respective envelopes for March and any "left over" cash will be cash that is above what was in our budget and will go into a separate envelope to be deposited into our bank account quarterly and put directly onto debt.

The final change that we had to make for this month was adding new categories and redistributing money. We noticed that an excessive amount of money was going to the "OTHER" category so we wrote down all of the expenses and tried to find similar items. From this we found that we needed to add a category for the oldest two children for clothes as they are now in sizes that we have not been able to "stock up" on. We have continued to keep our "OTHER" category but will keep a running list in our notebook of the "OTHER" purchase and continue to look for patterns so we can add new categories as necessary.

Seeing Red!

This week we are going to talk about the color red. We are going to eat something red at every meal this week and even make red cookies for valentines day and few art projects for the girls to give to daddy and their grandparents for valentines day. My schedule I have made is as follows:

Monday:
Breakfast: Red Froot Loops
Lunch: Strawberries
Dinner: Fish Sticks with Ketchup
Art: Red playdoh

Tuesday:
Breakfast: Wildberry Muffins with red food coloring added
Lunch: Papaya
Dinner: Chicken with red sauce (homemade sweet and sour sauce)
Art: Valentines (Finger painting hearts with red paint)

Wednesday (I work so we will only have dinner as a family):
Dinner: Chili with Red beans (Kidney beans) and tomatoes
Cooking: Red sugar Cookies with Red frosting

Thursday ( I also work so we will only have dinner as a family):
Dinner: Buffalo Chicken Dip with Franks RED Hot Sauce
Art: Hearts with red paint and a toilet paper tube shaped like  a heart

Friday (Once again I have to work so we will only have dinner):
Dinner: Lasagna with red sauce
Reading: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish
*Wear Red clothes to work/babysitters: I will let them pick out their outfits hoping that R has learned what the color RED is!

Finally, each day we will be watching the Meet the Colors DVD by Preschool Prep Company. It can be found at http://www.preschoolprepco.com/h/p/mtc/index.php and is also available for digital download.

Hopefully I will be able to share pictures throughout the week, since it seems to be letting me upload them now!

Weekend of Peace and Quiet

Today, my mom is going to pick K and R up from the babysitters because I have once again failed my glucose test and have to take the three hour test. This has happened to me every single pregnancy. The cut-off is 130 and I got a 134, so now I have to spend 5 hours of my Saturday drinking that nasty glucola, getting poked and waiting in the hospital waiting room! Although I am not loooking forward to my Saturday morning I am going to take this opportunity to focus on Operation: Clean House. Besides catching up on sleep, I have a laundry basket full of socks to fold and a baby room to clean and organize and some bills to pay and file. To some people these may sound like boring tasks, but when they can be done while kids are away having fun and I can watch a whole TV show or listen to music as loud as I want and have motivation to get my whole house clean it doesn't sound too bad to me.

Operation: Clean House

Since having R, I have really been struggling to keep my house in tip top shape. I went through a time of post-partum depression which totally took away my motivation, and then she required so many doctor's appointments and her allergies and special needs were very stressful as I was trying to adjust to being a part-time working mom and having two kids under the age of one. This was almost two years ago now and things have just progressively spiraled out of control. My laundry is being thrown on the laundry room floor, my bedroom hasn't been cleaned or swept in almost two years, my hall way is filling up with plastic tubs and my kitchen is in constant disarray. I don't even want to talk about the length of time my dishes were going unwashed.

In December, I really started to evaluate the root of the problem and realized that I have no storage space and too much stuff! The more clutter I have hanging out the less motivated I get to do anything and the longer my dishes and clothes have to wait to get washed. I vowed that in 2013 I would manage this mess!!

It is now the third week into the New Year and I am thankful to say that I am finally in a pattern of managing my dishes and laundry. I am doing this by alternating these chores. One day I do laundry and the next day I do the dishes. It took me a whole weekend to get caught up! I spent a whole Saturday washing, drying and putting away dishes so that my sinks were clean and I could start from square one. Then, I spent my whole Sunday washing, drying and folding all of the clothes that had piled up on the laundry room floor.

Then, that next Monday I did all of the dishes again, but this time it was only a sink full and took me about 20 minutes. I did them first thing in the morning, let them dry all day and then put them away once the girls went to bed. The next day (Tuesday) I did all of the laundry that had accumulated in the past two days, which amounted to one load. I put the load in first thing in the morning, switched to the dryer when the girls napped and then folded it when they went to bed.
Like I said I have been doing this successfully now for the past three weeks, but, I am still having some struggles. I have been putting the girls clothes away every laundry day after folding the clothes, but my husband and I still have about 5 baskets of laundry stacked up in the laundry room. I am also having trouble finding the motivation to fold socks on a regular basis and have all of them in their own laundry basket. My next step is to get these two huge obstacles under control so that I can get into a better routine with them as well.

I have found that once I get a fresh start I am having better luck managing the mess. But, I am having trouble finding that time to organize everything so I can start from scratch!

If you have read all of my other posts up until now you may realize that I am IN LOVE with Microsoft Excel, so that is how I decided to proceed with phase 2 of Operation: Clean House which will kick off the beginning of February. I started by making a column titled "Date" that is numbered 1-31, so there is a row for each possible day of the month.

Then, in the second column, called "DISHES/LAUNDRY" I indicated whether it would be a dishes or laundry day, alternating for all 31 rows.

The third column I titled "CLEAN" and this is where I listed a specific room/appliance to clean. For example, I have a slot for bathtub, sinks, toilet, counters, oven, microwave, refrigerator, etc. and then also for living room, bedroom, stairs, etc. These things alternate all the way down for the 31 days. Some items get cleaned weekly, some are monthly, I personalized it to my families needs. For example, we have two bathrooms so items in the bathroom were listed twice, while things like the oven and microwave are only listed monthly.

Finally, in the fourth column, labeled "SWEEP". I list all of the rooms in my house. I have 9 rooms, so every 9 days the list repeats. I tried to co-inside the "CLEAN" schedule with the "SWEEP" schedule so I am cleaning the rooms the day before it is on the schedule to be swept. This way I can make sure all clutter is picked up and dusting is done before I sweep.

On the side of my spreadsheet I put in special notes, for example I have four bedrooms, so I wash one set of sheets each week on the Monday or Tuesday, whichever is laundry day. I also noted that bills are to be paid the Tuesday of pay week and mailed out on the Wednesday of pay week. Then, we grocery shop on Saturday, update our budget on Sunday and take out all of the trash Sunday night. I am a visual person so it really helps me to spell it all out and have a check list so I can cross off what I have accomplished. I also noticed that I was becoming too overwhelmed with my checklists I was making everyday because it had a never ending amount of things to get done. This new schedule I devised only has 3-4 things I need to do each day which is more manageable and helps me feel motivated and relaxed about getting things done. Also, with this plan I am hoping that everything can be organized and I can be on some sort of cleaning schedule before the baby is born in April. So, look for updates in the upcoming weeks for things that had to be tweaked and how things are progressing with Operation: Clean House.

Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Since yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day I decided to do a little introduction for my girls. As I was looking for fun activities to do with them I realized how complex the whole story of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life really is, so I had to evaluate where to begin. I decided to start by discussing how everyone has hopes and dreams. I told them that yesterday has been set aside to celebrate a man named Martin Luther King, Jr. who had a dream that everyone would be treated nicely no matter what. We talked about ways to treat others nicely. K came up with keeping her hands to herself and using nice words. I was pretty impressed because I actually had no idea how this would go.

Then we moved on to talking a bit about hopes and dreams. I explained to them that hopes and dreams are things that you want to do as you get older. K told us that she wants hopes and dreams to become a doctor when she grows up. So, we decided to play doctor for a while. R wasn't too interested in all of this information and did not participate much in the conversation but gladly agreed to be the patient.

Then after their nap it was snack time. I had a chance to see a really cute demonstration on Pinterest using a brown egg and a white egg to talk about how although the outside looks different the inside is still the same. I didn't have any brown eggs, but really wanted to use this idea when I remembered that a teacher friend of mine used the same concept in her kindergarten classroom with M &Ms, which we always have on hand! I gave the girls each two M & Ms and R ate hers right away and begged for more, but K came up with some good ideas about how they were different. Hers were different shapes and colors, one had and M and one did not (it was on the bottom). Then I asked her to bite each one in half and tell me what the inside looked and tasted like and she responded "chocolate!". As they finished eating the snack size bag of M &Ms we discussed how people may be different colors, shapes, sizes, boy or girl, etc. but they are all the same inside and everyone has feelings and hopes and dreams!

I was really impressed with how interactive K was during all of the activities and it just solidified for me that homeschooling is the right choice. Those were the first "lessons" I had actually prepared and she was so responsive. I cannot wait to get started on talking about the color RED!! Hopefully I can find ways to keep R involved as well, since K already knows her colors.
Also, I have some many more ideas for celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s special day that I can not wait to try some of them out next year!