Family Humor

The kids were talking about various naughty things that they did when they were younger today.  They brought up one of the times that the two boys were told to clean their bedroom.  After several hours of supposed labor, I went upstairs to check on their progress.  The room was surprisingly clear of clutter.  I complimented them on their hard work and asked them to run the vacuum  before they were finished. 

A short time later, I heard the front door open and close, then open and close again after a few minutes.  Then footsteps clamored up the stairs.  More footsteps were heard going down the stairs and the front door opened and closed again.  I hurried after the child to see what was happening and discovered the lawn strewn with items that had previously been scattered all over the boys bedroom floor, dresser, and desk.  Instead of putting things away, the boys had opened their window and threw everything out into the yard!

At the time, I didn't see the humor in the situation.  Now it makes me laugh to remember the incident.  What a blessing it is to have time provide the buffer necessary to put past incidents into a new perspective.  

Full House Again

Katie moved back in with us yesterday.  It didn't go as smoothly as we would have liked.  She is going to room with Paige and Allie for the next month or so, until we move into the project house.  The two youngest girls were supposed to get their room deep cleaned over the weekend.  On Tuesday, I asked them to make sure that everything was put away.

In all the business of working on the other house, driving kids places, and normal living, I didn't check on their progress.  Katie wasn't happy to be moving into a very messy bedroom!  Paige and Allie refuse to put anything into their closet, because it's clean and once they put things in their closet, it becomes difficult to keep clean.  While their thinking seems strange, it does make sense.....sort of.  Katie's stuff is now in piles in the center of the room.  There is no room for the trundle bed to be pulled out.  Therefore, Paige slept inside the closet last night. 

Last night filled my heart with happiness.  Everyone was in the family room sitting and talking.  Katie was joking with Amy about who was going to set where.  Steve was adamant that a Taco Bell trip was necessary before Amy, Kate and Steve could go to the movies.  Paige and Allie were giggling together on the floor.  Madelyn was laughing with Joe and his girlfriend. in another corner of the room.  I know that several of the kids will be heading off to college soon and that the days of us all being together are numbered.  Right now though, I'm going to enjoy having everyone together.

After Party Recovering

Katie had her graduation open house yesterday. The weather was perfect with comfortable temperatures, a gentle breeze, and sunshine. It was a hectic week as we prepared for the event. Katie wanted to have the party at a local park about 3 blocks from the house. There is a picnic pavilion, walking path, playground equipment and skate park nearby. After we started hauling in extra tables, Mike realized that there is also a canoe portage and swim area in the river that flows through the park. Mike was able to speak with a few canoe groups and learned about a few easy 3-4 hours canoe trips that we can take over the next couple of weeks.

Even though the party was to be held at a park, I still wanted the house perfect. On occasion, we have had people drop by our home before and after parties. I wanted to be prepared. The kids and I have been working frantically to clean out closets, organize school supplies, paint walls, complete unfinished projects.

Mike offered to cook almost all the food. He barbequed 60 pounds of pulled chicken, prepared way too much coleslaw, fried tortilla chips, cooked 2 gallons of homemade salsa, and made 4 gallons of baked beans. My contribution to meal preparation was jello salad and 2 dozen cupcakes. Mike loves to cook, so he enjoyed all the cooking, even though he didn't realize how long it would take to cook large amounts of food.

During cooking day, the house got trashed. Food and serving dishes were from one end the house to the other. Woody came by to decorate Katie's cake, which created a frosting mess in the kitchen (where the frosting was made) and dining room (where the cake was decorated.) It took hours for us to get everything in order before bed Saturday night. The boys and Madelyn ran errands, supervised Paige and Allie, and cleaned.

Everyone helped haul everything to the park. The boys and I decorated the picnic pavilion. Everyone also pitched in to drag everything back home to our immaculate home. No one dropped by the house, so some of my children feel that all our deep cleaning was worthless. I still see the value.

I promised everyone that they could sleep as late as the want Monday morning and had an absolutely free day, to do whatever they wanted. There were a few disagreements and a few tears last week, but I was so proud of how everyone worked together. The kids have certainly earned a few days of recovery.

We probably won't get back to finishing our remaining school work for this past year until next week. I'd like to get a few summer outfits made for the younger girls and everyone needs a small break.

Clean House

The first two weeks of January, we let the house go. To be completely honest, I let the house go. The January emotional funk had set in and it was all I could do to keep up with the school work and laundry.

The older four children rotate the dish duty in the kitchen and were doing a very poor job. Pulling dirty dishes out of the cupboard does nothing towards my piece of mind. It tends to make me cranky. I don't have time to teach and keep up with the dishes during the day. So I was wracking my mind searching for a solution. Something that did not require me to be a drill-sargent or nag.

Katie hasn't been able to find a job and wanted more spending money. She asked if she could clean the kitchen everyday for $7 per week. We talked about my expectations for a clean kitchen and if she realized the amount of work involved in doing dishes for 9 people. She got the job.

After moving around the furniture and doing major cleaning in several of the rooms in the main living area, Joe approached me and asked if he could clean the two bathrooms and sweep/wash the dining room floor for $4 per week. He only wants to do it until he finishes earning enough money to buy an iPod. We had a discussion about expectations and amount of work involved. He was hired.

Madelyn approached me a short time later and asked if she could clean the family room and music/game room, vacuum the stairs and hallway for $3 per week. She was hired.

Allie asked if she could empty out waste baskets from the bathrooms and take care of the shoes, boots, and coats that are left lying on the floor for $1 per week. The paraphernalia by the door is a sore spot for me. She too was hired.

The children are only cleaning their room(s) once each day and I'm picking them up throughout the day. What a huge difference in our household! Everyone is mellower and less fractious. I'm not stressed as I try to do 27 things at once all day long. I know that this won't last long. Probably only until the weather breaks IF I'm lucky. For now though, it's a huge blessing to me. I feel like a lady of leisure. There is time to read to the younger girls more often, play the piano, give piano lessons, sew, carve stamps, and exercise. Life is good.

Musical Furniture

Madelyn, Paige, and Allie decided that they wanted to share a bedroom. Madelyn has been using our front room as her bedroom since we moved into this house. The front door opens into our dining room and the living room is good sized, so it seemed a simple solution. Now, she prefers to have a bedroom upstairs like all the other children.

This weekend was spent moving furniture from one location to another. We're all sore and will need to spend tomorrow morning finishing up, but we are taking the rest of the day off.

Here's what we accomplished:

1. Took down Madelyn's captain bed and moved up stairs. Reassembled.
2. Removed and sorted out two tall bookcases that had books two rows deep on each shelf.
3. Moved empty bookcases from one wall to another. Returned books to shelves.
4. Moved upright piano to new location.
5. Emptied out large, two door storage unit and moved 6". Refilled storage unit.
6. Moved sofa from family room to new music/game room.
7. Emptied desk and moved to family room.
8. Moved desktop computer, printer, and scanner to desk and reassembled.
9. Removed 100's of DVD, video games, VHS tapes, 3 game systems, and large older television from armoire.
10. Lugged extremely heavy (the piano is much lighter) armoire from sunken family room to game/music room. Hurt myself.
11. Replaced all items into armoire and set up electronics mess.
12. Emptied two chests of drawers and moved one upstairs. Moved other chest to dining room. Left mess of items from chests on dining room table.
13. Decided we were all going to eat in the family room tonight and take care of the rest tomorrow.


Tomorrow I need to sort out a few stacks of books, maybe 50 books total. The dining room table needs to be uncovered and I should sort out the school cupboard, which I may switch with the 2 door storage unit.

I'm so happy with all the stuff that we got accomplished today. Everything was dusted and polished. The walls, ceilings, and windows were cleaned. The change of bedroom was just what I needed to get motivated to knock out my major cleaning jobs. When spring arrives, our home should be organized and in good condition. We will have time to play and enjoy the outdoors without knowing that there a jobs that should be accomplished.

Making Headway on my To Do List

1. Joe and I planted our garden today. Normally, the second week in June is too late for me to put in a garden, but the weather has been really cool this spring. We didn't plant many long growing items, primarily food that will be ready to serve in less than 60 days. Here's our list: okra, green beans, two types of beets, radishes, spinach, carrots, and green onions. Tomorrow it will be time to do container plantings of herbs. The kids and I also planted 4 Rose of Sharon bushes (thanks Melinda!)

2. While I was puttering around outside, I fixed a section of the privacy fence that wasn't particularly stable. A new pole was installed and some nails/screws went in to provide more support.

3. The boy's bedroom is almost finished. Steve and Joe worked really hard organizing and disposing of unnecessary items. We had a huge amount of trash this week! The kids also worked on the play room, which is being renamed my Workout Room. The playroom has been a problem for several years. Small children go downstairs and dump out tons of toys in a few minutes and create hours of work. Reminding them to pick up one type of toy before getting out another doesn't work. Placing toys in hard to reach areas doesn't work, because they climb and get into the hidden toys anyway. Most of the kids don't use any of the toys in the play room any longer. My youngest two children have too much time on their hands when I'm teaching the older ones.

The girls' toys will be stored on metal shelving along one wall. When they want items from the play room, someone older will bring the items upstairs. Hopefully, it will give me more control over the number of things being used.

4. Five large shelves of books were organized in the family room. Sorting books is one of my favorite chores. I love rediscovering old "friends" and introducing new books to various family members. Two large boxes were filled with books we no longer want or need for our garage sale. Only 27 more shelves to do!

5. Seven loads of laundry were washed, dried, folded and PUT AWAY. Why is it that moving the clean piles of clothes to the appropriate drawers is so difficult? There always seems to be one or two piles sitting out when I go to bed.

6. One small laundry basket of Mike's shirts were ironed. There are two large baskets of ironing resting on my folding table in the laundry room, but they can be done another time. Mike has work shirts and slacks in his closet!

The kids were a huge help today. We got so much accomplished that I'm hoping to have my major cleaning done by the Fourth of July.

Deep Cleaning

Mike installed a new door on the boys bedroom over the weekend. I'm really happy with the work he did and am glad to have that task off the To Do List. As I was inspecting the new door, I managed to get a good look at the boys' bedroom. YUCK!!!!! There were piles and piles of stuff everywhere. It's been awhile since I was in their room and I now know that I need to monitor the situation more closely.

I decided to take a walk throughout the room to get a better perspective. Did they need more shelf space? Closet and drawer space? Do they simply not put things away? All of these questions were answered with a resounding yes. The thing that drove me nuts the most was that their rug was bumpy. They don't have wall to wall carpeting, but have an area rug that covers the entire floor. There are/were many thousands of LEGO pieces underneath creating a pebbled beach effect. It was not something that made my heart sing. I'm hoping that I don't discover carpet damage when I get to the vacuuming stage of this project.

Today began the big deep cleaning project. It will probably take me all weekend to complete the bedroom, with and without the boys' help. I started by sorting out the few clothes that were in their drawers and discovered that most of the drawers are empty. And broken. The entire dresser is shot. In one row of drawers all the supports are missing. The drawers were simply stacked on top of each other. It's understandable why the boys weren't using their drawers to hold their clean clothing. Why didn't they mention that the drawers were broken. I've been complaining about washing clean clothing a lot lately. It's hard to keep clean and dirty piles of clothing separated when they are stacked on top of a dresser and on the floor. The piles mix and mingle and create more dirty laundry!

We hauled their dresser out to the garage for Mike to see if it is salvageable. Then we emptied the little girls' dress-up clothing and Barbie stuff out of the spare dresser and moved the spare dresser into the boys' room. Hopefully the dresser will hold up under rough usage.

While doing all the sorting and rearranging, I discovered many stray socks for various family members. This evening, I will reunite these strays with their mates. Wouldn't it be great if they could reproduce?

Before walking upstairs, I got a good look at the play room. Guess what will be getting deep cleaned next week?

Brady Bunch Kitchen Revisited

Aaak!!! The color of my kitchen is awful!!!!!!! It ended up being a slightly light avocado green, reminding me of the Brady Bunch kitchen. We only put on the first coat before I realized that this was not what I wanted. Mike is bringing home some bright white for me to mix into the remaining 2/3 gallons of green. After we get the lighter color, I'm going to cover the doors and drawer fronts, leaving the actual cabinets the darker green. I'll post before and after photos when I finish.

Weekend Activities

Friday, I drove my mom to the hospital for some further testing before her biopsy on Tuesday. The doctors will be determining the type of masses she has in her lymph nodes.

The temperature was in the mid-60's on Friday, so I spent the afternoon trimming trees and clipping bushes. The work should have been accomplished in the fall, but I never got around to it. The children cleaned out the dog kennel and picked trash from the yard. Steve got out his skateboard for a while and discussed building a new ramp for the summer.

Our church's Pioneer group had a sleep over on Friday. Madelyn and Paige were dropped off around 6:00pm. Amy, Katie, Steve, and Joe wanted to see Mall Cop so they went to the theater in Otsego after dropping the younger girls off at church. Mike and I saw the movie on our anniversary. Allie and I spent the evening playing Wii Fit and eating gourmet caramel corn. It is so rare that Allie and I have time alone together. She really had fun and we had a silly evening!

Saturday morning, I drove back to Otsego to pick up Madelyn and Paige from church. Amy needed to get back to school, so we drove up to her college from church. We didn't get home until after 1:30pm. For some unknown reason, I decided to sort out the large book cases in our living room. Nine shelves have been sorted and one large box has been filled with garage sale books. The living room is still torn up, but hopefully I'll complete the project Monday.

Mike had car problems Saturday night, so he took my van to work today. We weren't able to go to church due to Mike's work schedule. I spent the day thawing out our big freezer, completing 12 loads of laundry, washing out the freezer and returning the food, and working on the ironing.

The house is in various stages of organization and cleanliness. We're going to do our spring cleaning this week. I'll be gone on Tuesday and part of Wednesday, because of mom's surgery. The kids will be able to get their closets and bedrooms shipshape while I'm gone, so the week will still be productive.

Housekeeping Tip of the Day

The boys' puppy is doing a great job of being house-trained. The first couple of weeks that we had Buster, he had a few accidents on our entry rugs. The boys cleaned up the puddles and used spot remover/carpet cleaner on the rugs. Last week, I decided to wash the rugs in our front-loading washing machine to remove any germs.

Parts of the rubber backing on the rugs flaked off. The parts got stuck in the motor of the washing machine. It cost us $100 to have those rubber flakes removed. In the future, I'm going replace the rugs for a mere $20.

I married a wonderful man....he didn't say a single word.