Cleaning

I finally got done steam vac'ing my house! Yeah!!! It looks great. It's taken me forever to get it done. My mom gave us the steam vac for my birthday last year, but because of my Chostochondritis flaring, I haven't been able to do it.

The past month though I have been on a mission to get my house to stay clean. I started a new routine, and I'm so happy with how it is going. Because of the routine, I have focused on getting the carpets on just one floor of the house done at a time. This seemed like it would be a pain, but our steam vac is actually quite easy to set up, and that gives the rest of the house for the kids to play in so they don't end up playing on wet floors.

So, here is my solution for keeping a house actually CLEAN with minimal effort. Every morning I:
- wipe down the shower in our bathroom, the counters and toilets in all of the bathrooms and clean the inside of the toilets in all of the bathrooms
- clean the surfaces in the kitchen
- put a load of laundry on (Erik puts our laundry away, and on the weekend does any laundry that doesn't get done during the week... have I mentioned I have the best husband on the planet??)

These rooms don't get dirty because they get cleaned everyday, so doing ALL of that takes less than 15 minutes, and our bathrooms like freshly cleaned all day everyday. I wish I could say the same for the kitchen, but it is such a high traffic spot that it tends to collect junk. Still, it is clean at the start of every day.

Once I am done the everyday stuff, I work for 30-45 minutes on one floor of the house, the same floor each day for a week, and then switch to another floor the next week (we have 4 floors in our house). This means that every room gets a very thorough cleaning once a month, yes I realize that is enough to make some people shudder, but we are not very good about getting dusting and stuff done, so this is FANTASTIC for us, and remember those places that get really icky are getting cleaned everyday.

That just leaves the floors that need mopped, which we can get away with doing once a week, so I make sure I hit those at some point during the week and I am set! My plan is to pick one big thing on each floor to do along with maintenance cleaning each month. This month I picked the carpet, so everything got steam vac'd. Next month I'm thinking scrubbing floors by hand and doing baseboards... but i haven't decided for sure, I'd also really like to do closets and cupboards, so we'll see. One more floor left this month. This is week 4, but we had some bigger than normal messes this month because it's the first month so I had to spend 2 weeks on the family room level, but I'm okay with that, this system feels very forgiving to me. I hope I can maintain it!

Family Blog Updated

I finally got our family blog updated! Check it out:
http://dayinthehomeschoollife.blogspot.com/

A quick quote

" Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really meet; and two others at first speech are old friends. "
- Mary Catherwood

Things That Delight Me

In no particular order:

- listening to my son play as he weaves his own imaginary world.
- talking to friends
- talking about God
- even better yet, talking to friends about God :)
- having my nice warm kitty crawl up on my lap
- cuddling up in warm blankets
- sleeping in
- waking up to a clean house
- clothes, blankets, and towels fresh out of the dryer
- snuggling with a baby
- reading a really good book, the kind you don't ever want to put down
- finishing a project
- being able to "be there" for a friend
- tulips
- bright sunny, cool, days
- freshly fallen snow
- the moon glistening off of the snow
- the feel of air blowing through my hair during a boat ride
- getting really good coupon deals
- getting something for nothing
- comfortable silences with those I love
- Christmas morning
- walks in the woods
- Yellowstone
- nature
- feeling completely and totally in sync and connected with God
- the silence of a house right after everyone goes to bed
- morning snuggles in bed (after I'm awake :) )
- getting to know those people that I know the second I meet them will become friends.
- checking my e-mails in the morning and finding e-mails from friends
- opening my business e-mail to find a lot of orders waiting
- beautiful scents that don't make me sneeze
- vanilla
- surprising someone
- baking a special treat
- cookie dough
- impulse hugs and kisses from the littles
- snuggling and reading a story with my son
- seeing the look of pride cross Nick's face when he accomplishes something
- seeing 10 packages on the porch all full of orders I put together and all ready to go
- teaching a class
- seeing the moment something "clicks" ina person's eyes, especially if I have been teaching that something to them.

I could go on all day.... I think I'll stop there for today though.

So much to do...

I think I need to split into about 3 or 4 people, or at the very least 2. There is just so much to do and it seems like I can never even make headway on it because as soon as I make headway in one area, then the others get worse. I know I need to trim back what I need to do, but I can't figure out how, because none of the things I do are optional. What do I cut... the business? time with Nick? homeschooling? time with Erik? family time? housecleaning (yeah, that's already been cut too short)? Just too many responsibilities for one person!

What is it about pink?

Have you ever noticed how many women adore pink? Add to that other shades in the pink family.... burgundies, roses, etc, and you'll hit a lot of women's favorite colors. I wonder what it is about pink that has such girl appeal? I could be the pink is for girl's thing, but I don't think so, I mean blue is for boys, but not all men love blue, in fact I'd bet there are more men who love red than blue, most men I know like red or green. So why do we love pink?

Not that it really matters, it's a beautiful color, just a thought to ponder.

This Week

This week has been one of those weeks that makes me question my sanity. Why am I doing this? Why don't I just pack up my child and send him off to school everyday, just like most of the other mother's in the world? It's not that there has been any issue with homeschooling, but the kids are driving me CRAZY. They've been fighting non-stop around the clock it seems like. They're yelling at each other , I'm yelling at them to stop yelling at each other, Erik's yelling at the kids, I'm yelling at Erik, the kids are yelling more, and all I want to do is sit in the middle of the floor and cry. I am not a yelling person, I don't like to get that angry, and I don't like to be around yelling. I know we are all feeding off of each other, we've just got to break the cycle. We need a nice quiet family day, but both Erik and I have got a ton of stuff to get done this weekend, so it is not likely to happen, plus we are just coming off of a vacation where we had plenty of relaxing time. Seriously though... would public school really be so bad? No, it wouldn't, but it isn't the best either, and that is what I want for my son, the best... now if I can just get our house back to being the best, we'll be all set.