Home Management Binder

I joined the weekly challenge at A Bowl Full of Lemons. The challenge this week is to create a household management binder. I was unable to participate in ABFoL's 21 Days to Getting Organized Challenge because I just couldn't complete any of those tasks in one day. I do hope to do each of those challenges, it's just going to take me more time. I might actually get to finish this challenge because I get the whole week and I already have one started.

I had a plain blue 1" Avery binder with several sections that help me keep my family and home (kind of) organized. I went ahead and used the challenge as a good excuse to buy a cute binder. Normally, I would not spend that kind of money on a binder (I'm too cheap) but I do love office supplies and went ahead and splurged. Toni suggested we look at Target for cute but inexpensive binders and that's where I found mine. I bought a 1" binder and a 2" binder.


I moved everything from my old binder to my new binder and from here I will add to and subtract from mine as necessary. I know I have some outdated information in mine and am hoping to get some ideas on important things to add.

Menu Plan Monday

I'm going to link to Menu Plan Monday for the first time today. Menu Plan Monday is hosted by Laura at Org Junkie. I am not linking up because I think I have anything special to offer. I'm linking up because I don't have anything special to offer. I try my best, but cooking and menu planning is not something I am good at. I know Laura says her life has changed because of menu planning. That is not the case for me. It has made deciding what's for dinner much easier. I also am much more prepared for dinnertime because I have taken some time to plan ahead. I'm linking up because often when I look at the menu plans on Menu Plan Mondays I feel inadequate. My hope with linking up is to show other moms a menu plan doesn't have to be anything special, and that's ok.

Sunday-Crock Pot Pizza
Monday-Baked Potato Soup
Tuesday-Spaghetti
Wednesday-Left-overs
Thursday-Salmon in Foil (from Meal Makeover Moms)
Friday-Homemade Pizza
Saturday-??Husband is supposed to cook (but usually doesn't)

The above plan shows one of my weaknesses, vegetables and other side dishes. I always have frozen veggies and I try to remember to pick up something fresh to use during the week. I always have apples and applesauce. I try to steam a veggie or cut up a piece of fruit, or both, each night.

Wow, this sounds even more pathetic than I thought. Oh, well. It has been and could be worse.

Sundays

Sundays are another day pretty free from scheduled chores. The things I need to do every Sunday are:
1. Give kids their allowance. (Yes, I have to write it down or else it doesn't get done.)
2. Pay bills due the upcoming week.
3. Check & update my calendars and to do list.

That's it. I also tend to do my grocery shopping on Sundays.

Yesterday, I gave the kids their allowances in the morning. I grocery shopped after church. I slacked a little on my dailies. I did the dishes but did not vacuum. Since January is winding down I worked on a January task. I cleaned a little bit of the fridge. I made a pretty involved (pretty involved for me) meal and had a meeting after dinner. I usually pay the bills and update my calendar after the kids go to bed. After I got back from the meeting I just didn't feel like doing that. So, I didn't get the bills paid or the calendar updated. I did check the bills and calendar before I went to bed and we'll be ok IF I do them today.

I better go do that.

Saturdays

I try to keep Saturdays pretty free from assigned tasks. The only two tasks I want to be sure are done during the weekend is having everyone empty their shoes out of the shoe basket and a swish & swipe. That way if we have plans, I don't feel like I'm falling behind. If we don't have plans then I can tackle a bigger project, catch up, or just hang out. Sometime during the weekend someone in the family does a swish & swipe. The first weekend of the month it's my husband, the second it's myself, the third it's my daughter, the fourth it's my son. We have been doing it this way for a couple months and the kids have actually been really cooperative. My daughter, who is 6, does a pretty good job. I accept with my son that he probably won't do a very good job...yet. What I'm doing is allowing him to get a little practice. If I do it on Tuesday and Thursday of that week it doesn't matter if it's not done very well on Saturday. My husband has yet to swish & swipe but, to be fair, I only mentioned it once and either haven't reminded him on his weekend or he was gone.

Today I did my dailies but none of the weekend tasks got completed. The kids had a lot of extra jobs to complete (due to their horrible bedtime behavior this week) and I wanted to tackle a big job. The oven. I have never cleaned the oven in this house. I don't remember ever cleaning any oven. One of my favorite podcasts is Vicky and Jen. In one of the recent episodes Jen said she never cleaned an oven. Vicky thought she meant used the self cleaner. She repeated, she had never cleaned an oven. I thought, "Me either, is that a big deal?" About that same time some of the junk in the bottom of the oven actually caught fire. Yes, I had a fire in my oven. I realized I had to do something. Being the procrastinator I am, I didn't do it right away. Then I saw two blog posts on A Bowl Full of Lemons about cleaning the oven using this Shaklee product, Scour Off. I'm trying to be greener so this Scour Off product sounded like a good idea. Plus, Toni gives you free shipping on your first order so I thought, why not?

I got the product on Thursday and couldn't wait to use it. Today was the day.

You need to know that earlier in the week I had already worked on the oven a little. That means, believe it or not, it actually looked worse than this. Here are the before pictures:



The white at the bottom of the oven is the baking soda I used to put out the fire.



While the door looks bad here, it was worse earlier in the week. The window was much more covered.




This is the oven thermometer. It's very hard to read. I don't know how this happened, though. Nothing ever spilled on it. I guess the disgust from the rest of the oven just seeped onto it.

Here are the after pictures:




Not perfect, but much better.




My son said, I didn't know we had a mirror on there. (The window looks like a mirror because you can't see out of it as well as you can see in.)




This is the really impressive part. The picture isn't clear because I couldn't use my flash but you get the idea. I'm guessing my oven would have cleaned up much easier if the yuck hadn't been baked on for so many years.

My after pictures don't look quite as good as this from Clean Mama or this from A Bowl Full of Lemons but I'm just taking a wild guess that Toni and Clean Mama have cleaned their oven some time in the last ten years. Also, I ran out of Scour Off. I started applying on the sides and back, which I now know was a mistake. I should have started on the worst part first. Plus, I ran out of time. I had to leave before I was finished. I'm going to get some more and try to finish it up. I'm a little obsessive so while it was ok with me not to clean my oven for ten years, now I feel the need to get it spotless right away.

Get up already!

One of the non-negotiables for many of the super organized is to get up before everyone in the house and get yourself ready. I know flylady thinks it is really important to get yourself completely ready every day. She even believes you should get dressed "to the shoes." That goes a little too far for me. What does make a difference for me is doing my make-up. For a few years there I didn't wear much make-up. That was something I was able to do when I was young. I had nice skin and didn't need make-up. I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened but at some point that changed. There have been many, many times I have looked in the mirror and thought, "I can't believe I went out in public looking like this." When I look in the mirror on those days it's a little bit of a shock because that is not what I thought I looked like. I imagine I look like I did ten years ago. Smooth, bright skin. No wrinkles or puffs or dark circles or spots. When my daughter was a couple years old I remember thinking that I didn't want that (non-make-up) face to be the one she remembered. I wanted to look better.

Within the last year I realized I needed to put make-up on just about every day, especially if I am leaving the house. Not only do I look better, I feel better. I don't wear a lot of make-up. I wear some mineral make-up to even out my color, a little bit of eye shadow, mascara and blush. It doesn't take me very long to do it, so that's not the issue. My eyes tear very easy so I have to wear waterproof mascara. In order to get that off, I have to use mascara remover. I use Clinique's Take the Day Off. As I am writing this it doesn't seem like a very good reason to avoid putting on make-up but it is a bit of work to get it off. I was doing really well for a while. Then the last month or so I've put it on less and less. When I don't do my make-up I tend toward wearing huge, old, baggy sweats and t-shirts. That does not make me feel good. Earlier this week (when I had to pick up my daughter from school with "the pink eye" as she calls it) I started thinking that I need to get back into the routine.

Yesterday morning, knowing I was going to be running errands, I did my make up. Thank goodness!! The assistant principal from my daughter's school was at our bus stop. (That is another story and I am not happy about it. No, she doesn't usually ride the bus to school.) It's not just that I want to look my best to make a good impression on those at my daughter's school (luckily Monday I was able to slip in and out without much interaction.) I want to get a job at that school within the next few years. I would have been horrified had I been in my big, horrible sweats and no make-up. I am taking this as a warning. Get up and get dressed. It doesn't take that long and it makes a huge difference.

Fridays

Friday is my bedroom/hall/entry day. On Fridays, I alternate between dusting my bedroom, the hall, the entry and the office/spare room. It's probably not often enough and if my Fridays continue to be as easy as today, I'll have to change that. Fridays are also the one weekday I only have the two year old in the morning so it is also the day I run errands. I got up late today so I didn't even get my dailies completed before we had to leave to meet the bus and then drop off at preschool. The two year old and I ran a lot of errands and on the way home he fell asleep. I do not mess with naps, so there was no vacuuming happening here (that's one daily that didn't get completed today.) I finished the dishes and tidying up pretty quickly. My four year old was at a friends so I had a quiet house and time to myself and I wasn't sure what to to. I should've just sat around and read a book or watched tv but I wanted to take advantage of the time. I decided to handle some things on my to do list I had been putting off. I hate making phone calls and get way behind on emails so I handled lots of that stuff today. In the end, I got to mark some things off my to do list and just enjoyed an easy afternoon.

Tonight, it was the boy's turn

So, the bedtime battle tonight was with my son. When it comes to bedtime struggles, he is not usually the one who gives me a hard time. He and I have our own issues but bedtime is not one of them. This afternoon the little boy who gets off the bus with my daughter came over and stayed for dinner. Around 7:30 I could tell it had been too long. (I guess I should follow the advice on the We are THAT family blog, leave when you are having fun.) I gave them all dessert and we took the friend home. Getting in the van was an issue, the girl blocked the boy, he got mad and hit her. Then, he tried to hit me, twice. When he does that to me he doesn't hit me like he hits her. He just sort of taps me or swings, just to see what I will do. After we got back home he kept going. We headed to the bathroom to brush teeth. He swung again and again. So, I started walking him to his room. Naturally, he stopped walking so I would have to pull him. He got up to walk down the steps and swung at me, again. That pushed me over the edge. I held him by the shoulders and said in a mean mommy voice, "You do not hit me." I held him by both hands and drug him to his room and left him there. It worked, he got his reaction. All in all, I know the way I reacted wasn't that bad. It could have been much worse. Still, I expect more from myself. I need to keep it under control. Bedtime with the girl was great. (They tend to do that, when one really sets me off, the other is super good.) Next time, I'm going to try giving him a hug. Even if it doesn't work I'll feel much better at least trying that.