GETTING ORGANIZED PART 2

Alright, let me introduce you to my VERY best friends, when it comes to a clean house:

"10 MINUTE CLEAN UP"

Just before sending the kids up to get ready for bed I announce, "10 MINUTE CLEAN UP". Everyone scatters. We go from room to room each person participating. Everyone is picking up the things that are out of place, wiping down counters, sweeping floors, etc. Sometimes it take less time and sometimes more. However, it is a rule that EVERYONE participates. We can turn on music or whatever it takes to set the energy level high. We try to make it a positive so the kids are willing to really help out. It is important for us to set the tone for this. Be high energy about it and you will get MUCH more out of your time from everyone!

When everyone is done, the house is TOTALLY picked up. The kids are off to bed and you are left with time to yourself! No more spending the next hour or two trying to recover from the day and NO MORE waking up the next day already behind!

"3 WIPES IN LESS THAN 3 MINUTES"

Go to Costco or your nearest store. Pick up a big can of Clorox wipes for each bathroom in your house. Each night, during 10 Minute Clean Up, pull 3 wipes from the container.

Wipe #1- Wipe down the door handles and light switches. Now run that wipe along the baseboards.
Wipe #2- Wipe down the sink and counter-top.
Wipe #3- The toilet. I hit the handle first, then the top of the tank, lid, then work your way down.

This is great for 2 things. I LOVE that I know that the bathroom is always clean. The second is that once per week, when I do my thorough cleaning, it significantly cuts the time spent in there down! I HATE cleaning the bathroom, but really, this makes it darn near bearable! :)

"KITCHEN SINK CLEAN-UP"

One thing I hate, probably more than anything else, is waking up to previous day dishes! Along time ago I read something about how you should clean your Kitchen sink every night before bed. I started doing that. I LOVE IT! I haven't been 100% since then, but I certainly LOVE the days I wake up and it is clean from the night before!

I have a white sink. I spray bleach in it, let it sit, grab paper towel and then wipe it all out! I shine up the faucet with a little Windex and VIOLA! In just a few minutes my sink is perfectly clean!

Why the sink? Well, in my opinion, the sink is the last thing I clean when I am done with the kitchen. That means everything else is done and I get to wake up to see my lovely "morning face" in my faucet the next morning! Lucky me!

While we are on the Kitchen....

Another quick little secret of mine. Each week, usually when I bring home groceries that need to find a place in my Kitchen, I do a quick clean-up in my fridge. You know how you hear about someone taking a huge amount of time to "finally" clean out their fridge? Well, I have learned that if I just slide things to a side then wipe down the shelves and re-organize, it takes about 5 min. and my fridge is always clean! LOVE THAT!

Alright, I think that is enough for today. Tomorrow is Laundry. Then I will let you have a few days to get yourself in the habit of doing a few of these things.


Next Wednesday we will talk about getting the family on board. Really, if you get help from them, everyone becomes more aware of their surroundings in the house and it becomes a team effort. This is the secret! This is how you go from occasionally feeling like a maid, to spending about 15-30 min. TOPS cleaning and STILL you live in a clean house! Doesn't that sound dreamy?! :) It is amazing how much time in the day you have to do the stuff you REALLY want to do when this shift happens. I will give you a great object lesson, show you the secret to job charts, etc.

Are you excited?!

Then on Thursday we will talk about de-cluttering and "everything in it's place" and make a step by step schedule that will help get your house totally de-junked with clean walls and windows too in a super short amount of time!

On Friday, we will put it all together in a schedule! We will take everything we have learned and make it all happen! You will be amazed at how much this will SIMPLIFY your life!

We are going to pound this baby out! We are dedicating (outside of Monday and Tuesday's post) the next week to getting our family to work as a team and getting our houses clean....and keeping them that way! YAY!

Getting Organized: LAUNDRY

LOOK AT THAT LAUNDRY ROOM! Isn't is amazing? Doesn't it look so...so....so CLEAN?! 

So unrealistic?! 

I remember hearing a woman speak at a convention once. She was talking about the duties of a Homemaker. She was cracking me up. She had the best attitude. Slow to get overwhelmed. 

She said, "After years of struggling with laundry, always trying to get it done, always trying to win the battle, I have finally come to realize...Laundry is only ever done for the Naked and the Dead." 

It totally made me laugh! Trying to be DONE with laundry, while your family has the audacity to be walking around somewhere out in the world wearing clothes, getting them dirty, wiping their little grubby fingers all down the front of them, and each article will, at the end of the day, end up back in a pile, reminding you that your laundry is NEVER done! 

Well, that is unless you change your definition of DONE. 

I am all about a schedule. It takes a lot of things off your mind. You know what needs to be done. You schedule it and then it is off your mind. The feeling of being overwhelmed...gone! 

I know there are many of you that have your own schedule. The thing that works best for you. I am going to share what has worked best for me. Then I want you all to figure out what it is that will do the trick for you. 

Let's get to the run-down.....

Each day is assigned to a certain type of load or loads, depending on the need. I try to keep each day to 1 load, but every once in a while it ends up at 2. 

Monday- Whites and Hand-wash/delicate items

Tuesday- Colors

Wednesday- Jeans

Thursday- Towels

Friday- Bedding & Whites 

Saturday & Sunday- Off

In our house I am up by 5:30-5:45. I get up and start my laundry before heading downstairs for family breakfast and scriptures.

At 6:30 I transfer the laundry to the dryer, while the kids start getting ready for school. If there is a second load, I would start it now.

At 7:30 I open the dryer and fold the items as I take them out, then put them away. It takes about 10 min. tops. I transfer the 2nd load, if there was one, to the dryer at this time. 

With this schedule I am "DONE" with laundry by 7:30am or 8:30 if there is a second load. Everything is put away so my laundry room is left clean....not as amazing as the picture above, but it is clean and off my mind. That makes me happy! 

Another little jewel I have learned about laundry is that kids are more capable than we think! If we will teach them when they are interested in it, they do much better. 

When Jake was 5 we started working on sorting for his math skills. This is when I enlisted him to help me sort laundry...before the discovery of presorted laundry baskets...which I love! 

Then as I would load he always wanted to dump the soap in and push the buttons. Each time I would teach him what goes with what temp of water, how to determine the level of water needed, etc. THEN I started teaching him how to fold. He didn't do it perfectly and it took him FOREVER, but he was excited to be doing such a big thing and I always excitedly told him he was doing it perfectly. He got better with practice. In no time, he was totally doing his own laundry! Really...at FIVE! 

Now that he is 9 I laugh when I go to put something in the washer and it is already going. It makes me happy! Then I will hear him put it all in the dryer. Then watch him carry his laundry basket full of clean clothes to his room to fold, hang and put them all away. 

A lot of people worry that their kids will ruin something. I say, it's just clothes! I helped him sort and do all of that for a long time. He was totally into it. It made him feel big. I explained what would happen with a mixture of red and white, etc. If he ever ruined anything...what a great object lesson! He hasn't, kids get it more than we think they will. However, if he ever did, I would force myself to be calm :) and say over and over, it's ok, it's replacable and then let the lesson teach itself and keep letting him do it. 

Alright, now make some plans. Figure out what would work best for you. Really, if you have anything that you do, please share it in the comments. That way everyone can read some different ideas and decide what would be best for them! 

Now, you have a bit of a break. I want you to put all of these things into place and start working on it. Next Wednesday we will continue with the Organization stuff. FUN! 

GOOD LUCK!

 

{MESSY PARTY} Sending Summer Out With A Bang

{If you would like to see any of the images enlarged, click on them. Especially the collages! There is a lot of goodness there that you DON'T want to miss!}

 

A while ago my friend Brooke posted on her blog about going to a "Messy Party". Bubbles, body painting and lots of fun and then a clean up on the water slide. The idea was GENIUS to me! I LOVED the concept. I wanted to have one!

And so it started.

The ideas got bigger and messier as time went on. This Summer has been the funnest Summer we have ever had and we wanted to send it out with a bang! Pretty soon the date was set, the invitations were sent, over 75 people were on the "Going To Be There" list and we were on our way to the park with over 12 gallons of pudding, 50 pies, 20 gallons of paint, about 10 gallons of cooked spaghetti noodles & a whole lot of fun in mind!

First Stop.......Duck, Duck, Goose with a floury twist.

As the kids started coming we sat them down and had them play "Duck, Duck, Goose". The messy came in when my sister Lisa & I supplied them with a cup of water and a cup of flour to dump over the "goose's" head!

This KILLS me! This is my little brother Parker. Apparently he was nervous about the girl walking past him. He must have been SURE that she would get him, although it looks like she was just going to walk on by.

Hahaha! His worries were dead on! She made a quick turn and soaked him!

Next up.....Hands Free Chocolate Pie eating contest!

My son Jake and I make the PERFECT pair! I have ALWAYS wanted to "pie" someone in the face and he has always wanted to be pied!

We both sort of loved it.....A LOT!

As you can see....this was a TOTAL hit with all the kids!

Even Master Calvin got in on the action!

Now, on to the Battle of the Painted Spagetti!

Four 5-gallon buckets were filled with water & enough flour to make it nice and thick, then a TON of food coloring. We topped that lovely mixture off with as many Spagetti noodles as we could get our hands on. This was definately a fave of mine. You should have seen the colors flying when this mess started! AWESOME!

Oh, and where is the princess in all of this?

Well, she was about as dirty as she cared to get at the moment. See that bit of chocolate on her cheek that is causing her mild irritation? Yeah...she doesn't love messy. Never really has. Poor thing.

Now for the Slip N Slide.....

You didn't think we would use water, did you?!

Oh no! We came prepared with buckets of pudding!

AWESOME!

Can I just say that my hubby ROCKS! He made this a blast for the kiddos! Splatting a bowl full of pudding on a head here and there and keeping the slide nice and slick. Messy is NOT his thing and he was totally behind me on this whole idea! What a guy! Man, I like him!

By now these kids were good and messy and in serious need of a hosing off! But I am pretty sure they were loving every second of it! 

And so it was time for our GRAND FINALE! Did I tell you I started dreaming really big with this whole idea? Well, I meant it! And thanks to a few connections, meaning the two guys in this picture.........

My little brother Kyle (on the right) just happens to be a Fireman/Paramedic in Pleasant Grove and my friend Brian just happens to be his Captain. So, I called them up, told them my idea and this is how they responded......

The ladder was raised 105 feet in the air. Brian was perched...and clipped in, thank you very much, and ready to give these kids about 1,000 gallons of water per minute, for as long as they could handle it!

Can I just say, the view from where I was standing, looking out over the valley was AWESOME! I can only imagine how it looked from 105 ft. above where we were! Maybe next time I will have to see if they will let me check it out! ;)

AMAZING! This was seriously the thing that pushed this party right over the edge! The kids loved every second of it!

I could not possibly thank my little brother, Brian and their team enough for entertaining the crazy thoughts in my head! They were AWESOME!

The obvious choice for a treat to top the day off (as if all the pudding and pie wasn't enough) was

DIRT DESSERT!

Now, this is the point where Mallory thinks that she is FAR too dirty to be anywhere near comfortable (mind you, she was the least messy of all the kids that participated), so what does she do?

 

OH MY!  

This child of mine has NO concept of modesty. As soon as the majority of the kids were gone she figured it was over and she was out of that dirty suit and asking Aunt Lisa for a spray down, lickety split!

Luckily we found some shorts and covered up her hiney!

But Aunt Lisa couldn't get over her little "plumbers crack". Such a funny little girl with all the innocence in the world to make her think that running around naked is A-OK. We are going to have to keep work on that one!

Honestly, this was the funnest party! We all had a blast! A big thanks to all of you that helped me pull this off, especially my Ryan. He spent a lot of time raking spaghetti noodles out of that grass and cleaning up after the mess and not once did he ever curse me! In fact, he actually likes me even more, I think! He is the best! Like E V E R :) Thanks Babe!

I absolutely can't wait until next Summer! We are SO doing this again!!

{PGFD....you're in, right?!}