Shaklee tip

Recently I mentioned my relatively new interest in Shaklee cleaning products. I am still planning on writing a post about my experience with Basic H2, Basic G, and Scour Off. I am also awaiting a shipment of Shaklee laundry products and will include those as well. I'm not ready to do that yet but I do have a Shaklee tip I want to share.

The Shaklee products I use come in concentrated liquid formulas. You buy a jug of the concentrate and then put it in a spray bottle with water. You combine a relatively small amount of the product to a much larger amount of water. For Basic G (I think) it is 16 ounces of water to 1/2 teaspoon of Basic G. At first I used a regular measuring spoon to measure the product and used a funnel to make sure it got in the small mouth of the spray bottle. I quickly became frustated with that because when I would measure the product it usually spilled out of the measuring spoon.

I came up with two solutions to remedy that:
Sometimes I use the medicine syringes and spoons I use when my kids need medicine. They were sitting in the utensil drawer rarely getting used.


I have also used a tiny measuring cup I have that measures teaspoons & tablespoons. The Shaklee spray bottles don't have measurements on the outside. So, I measure my water in my 2 cup measuring cup and pour the product into that. From there I use the funnel to pour it into the spray bottle.

Both of these solutions have worked great for me.

I'm linking up to Works for Me Wednesday.

Shaklee-free membership

I plan on writing a post on my experience with Shaklee in the future. I am not ready to do that today but I did want to write about a special Shaklee is offering that expires tomorrow. Shaklee is offering free membership with $30 purchase. I learned about Shaklee earlier this year and had a great experience with Scour Off. I also use Basic H2 and Basic G for my general cleaning. I purchased some laundry products today and got my free membership, which gives me 15% off future purchases (I think forever.)

If you were considering trying Shaklee or considering joining, the time to do it is now. I have not priced it out, it does not look to be cheaper than what I can get at Target but I wanted to try it anyway. I might as well buy it when I can get the free membership so I will get 15% off anything I buy in the future.

I buy my Shaklee through Toni at A Bowl Full of Lemons and she offers free shipping on your first purchase. Also, check out the Earth Day special. It offers some products I already had but if you are new to Shaklee it might be a good set of products to start with.

New use for old thing--my baking soda sprinkler

In an effort to encourage being green, Jen at i heart organizing challenged her readers to repurpose something they already have and use it in a new way. Instead of buying something new, use what you have at home.

Here is what I came up with:
A baking soda sprinkler.

This is kind of double green. I used an old parmesan cheese canister to hold the baking soda I use to clean with.

In an effort to be greener I have started trying to use more natural cleaning products. I read over and over how awesome baking soda is for cleaning. I've tried it and so far, so good. Initially, I was lugging around a giant bag of baking soda when I was cleaning but knew I needed something else. Since I usually sprinkle the baking soda I thought this was my best option.

It is, as always, more practical than pretty.

I am linking up to Works for Me Wednesday.

April declutter & cleaning update

April was a big month for me for decluttering. A Bowl Full of Lemons recently held a weekly challenge about purging, so that is where it all started. Then, i heart organizing declared April as a month to purge and that kept me going. Here is how I did...

I started in the kitchen and purged (you can also see a post about it here)
salad spinner
seven expired cans of food
two food packets
Foreman grill
chip & dip dish
plastic bowl
mixer
paper plate holders
tea kettle
cookie jar
scent warmer thingy
lots miscellaneous items

From the master bedroom I purged (another post here)
at least...
four pair of pants
three shirts
five sweaters
three pair of shoes

From my daughter's room
two backpacks

From the office
4 Sesame street puzzles
1 Tinkerbell puzzle

From the basement
these two baskets (those were hard, I love baskets)
From the master bathroom (I haven't even written this post yet)
hair bands
yucky, old products
make up bag

Here is what I set out for the donation pick up:

This almost did me in:

Can you see who was peeking out at me? It is Ariel. Ariel was my daughter's favorite princess (and probably still is) but she is kind of over princesses now. It was hard enough to put the backpack in the donate pile as it was. Then, I saw this and almost took her back out.

I still want to get rid of a lot more this summer but I was pretty proud of myself for this much.

Now, to my April jobs.

As I was thinking about writing this post I was fully prepared to say I did none of my April jobs. Then, I looked at my April jobs calendar and saw that early in the month I had done several of the jobs. Also, the ones that are left are no big deal and I will easily be able to add those to May (or June:)

Hall bathroom-
door (yes)
light (yes)
baseboards (yes)

Master bathroom-
door (no)
vanity (no)
lights (no)
baseboards (no)

Lower bathroom-
light (yes)
picture (yes)
mirror (no)

Kids rooms-
headboard and footboard (no)
window (boy-yes, girl-no)
window sill (boy-yes, girl-no)

Ceiling fans-
family room (yes)
kitchen (yes)
dining area (yes)
master bedroom (yes)
office (no)

Not too bad considering I don't feel like I did anything this last week or two. I'm not exactly sure what the deal was. I guess it wasn't any one thing. Just lots of little things together.

I'm linking up to A Slob Comes Clean's April declutter update and i heart organizing.

Great cleaning & organizing advice

One of the best pieces of advice I have heard about cleaning and organizing is

"If it takes less than a minute or two, just do it."

I don't remember where I heard it first but I have heard it several times in a couple different forms. The first time I heard it I believe the advice was "If it takes less than 30 seconds, just do it." Well, I can convince myself that most things that I don't want to do are going to take more than 30 seconds (true or not.) Thirty seconds is only half a minute, that's nothing.

Then I heard the form I agree with, "If it takes less than a minute or two, just do it." While I can talk myself out of doing lots of things because they are going to take more than 30 seconds, most of them can be completed in less than two minutes.

Often, if I do the job right away (instead of putting it off) it will save me time overall. Even if it won't save me time, they are often things that I am glad to just be finished with.

Here are a few examples:

One of my monthly jobs is to vacuum the dust ruffle on my bed. (I have a black dog that likes to rub up against it.) I remember last month realizing I was supposed to vacuum the dust ruffle right after I got finished wrapping up the cord for the vacuum. I really didn't want to unwind the cord and plug it back in, just to vacuum that small piece of fabric. Those words "If it takes less than a minute or two, just do it." popped into my head. So, grudgingly, I did it. When I was finished, I was glad I did.

Another great example is washing plastic bags. Unless absolutely necessary, I try not to throw away plastic storage bags. I like to wash them out and reuse them. Unfortunately, I hate washing them out. So, I let them pile up until they look like this:


and this


Once they get to that stage it takes a lot longer to deal with them than if I would just wash them out as I use them. Last week, I finished cleaning up the dishes and there were two plastic bags sitting on the counter staring at me. I so wanted to walk away and just deal with them later. Again, "If it takes less than a minute or two, just do it." popped into may head. So, I did it (even though I wasn't happy about it.) I know that it took very little time to do then and I didn't have those bags on the counter constantly mocking me, making me feel bad for not dealing with them.

A last example just happened over the weekend. My husband was out of town so as a treat the kids got to sleep on the trundle bed in the office. I made the mistake of looking under the bed before I pushed the trundle back under. This is what I saw


what you can't really see is the extent of the dust. Look at this:


I so wanted to just push the bed back. I hadn't planned on cleaning under there. I didn't want to. I had other things I wanted to do. But, those words just wouldn't let me leave the mess. I timed myself and it took 3:14 to finish it. That is over a minute or two but my son was also in there "helping" me and that could've added time. Even if he didn't add time, 3:14 is still not very much time. While I'm not convinced cleaning under there at that moment saved me any time in the long run (like some other tasks might) it still gave me peace of mind. I felt better knowing I cleaned it up than I would have if I had left it.

So, my advice, if it takes less than a minute or two, just do it (especially if it is something you really don't want to do.)

I'm linking up to Works for Me Wednesday at We are THAT Famiy.

I love my cordless stick vac.

I recently wrote about my daily tasks. In that post, I talked about my Eureka cordless Quick-up stick vac. I vacuum every day. I absolutely could not do it without my vac.

Dog hair is a big reason I have to vacuum every day. I hate seeing dog hair sitting on the floor when there is a baby (or big kid) on the floor with it. I started vacuuming every day when my first child started spending time on the floor. Before she could move around, I could put down a clean mat or blanket. That period didn't last long and I knew I needed to do something about the dog hair.

I have hard floors on the main level of my house with a couple area rugs. I tried using my regular vacuum on the bare floor setting. The big vacuum has vents where air comes out, that blew the dog hair away. I tried the Swiffer. That worked pretty well but there would sometimes be a pile of stuff the Swiffer couldn't pick up that I would have to vacuum (or leave in a pile in an out of the way place;) I also wasn't crazy about all of the Swiffer pads I was going through. Both because of the expense and the waste. I had a stick vac that came with an old vacuum. I liked the way it picked everything up but the cord was too short. It was more aggravation than it was worth.

Then I found my Eureka. It was a stick vac (which I knew I liked) and it was cordless (which I wanted to try.) I think it was around $30. It was perfect. I'm on my second Eureka. They don't last forever (but I'm also on my second regular sized vacuum.) I use it a lot. I use it almost every single day. In addition to me using it, there is often a child that wants to use it when I'm finished. This thing has been dropped more times than I can count. I'm surprised this one is still running.

Here's my vac:


My original vac was grey. I found this one on clearance at Target. It's purple. Once my original one needed to be replaced I got rid of it but kept the battery (I should have kept the filter as well, I will next time) so now I have two batteries. That is useful because I have enough juice to use it on all the hard floors as well as the small rugs I have in the bathrooms and by the doors.



I'm linking up to Things I Love Thursdays at The Diaper Diaries

Dailies

I am working on my "Cleaning" page. I intend to (eventually) have all of my routines, tasks, calendars, and jobs on that page. My plan is to write a post each time I add to it. Today, I'm adding my dailies.

I call the tasks I do every single day my dailies or daily tasks. I have heard this called minimum maintenance. I consider my calendar of monthly tasks my minimum maintenance. Dailies are what I need to do each day just to get by. My monthly task calendar lists the tasks that need to be done every other day, once a week, once every other week, or once a month. Those are the tasks, in addition to may dailies, that need to be done to keep the house in decent shape. Not great, but good enough.

Each day I...
make my bed
vacuum
complete 1-2 loads of laundry
tidy the house
do the dishes
(I feel it's important to mention I also feed and care for between two and six kids.)

I can go a day without doing some (or even all of these) but much more than that and the house starts to look really bad.

Make my bed
This is a relatively new addition for me. I used to be one of those people who believed it was a waste of time to make my bed if I was just going to sleep in it and mess it up again that night. I must say, having my bed made just puts me in a different frame of mind. For the amount of time it takes (hardly any) compared to the effect it has on me (huge) it is totally worth it. I feel like it helps me start the day right. Plus, every time I walk in my room and see a made bed I get a little boost. It sounds silly but I am so proud of myself and then I feel like doing more.

Vacuum
My main floor is mostly a hard floor with some area rugs. I use a cordless stick vac (Eureka cordless Quick Up) to vacuum my hard floors and a vacuum cleaner to vacuum the area rugs. I have two large, black dogs and if I don't vacuum every day or two, the dog hair drives me crazy. I know this is one area some experts would say it wasn't necessary to do so often. I started this when my first child began spending a lot of time on the floor. Since then, there has barely been a time I haven't had someone who needs to spend tummy time or who is crawling. Even if I don't have a crawler, kids just naturally lay around on the floor and I feel better having them on the floor if it has been vacuumed.

The cordless part is important. I tried using a stick vac that was corded and it was too frustrating. The cord was super short. I felt like I was constantly plugging, unplugging, and re-plugging.

Complete 1-2 loads of laundry
This is a relatively new way of doing laundry for me. I used to do all my laundry on one day. We have a laundry chute so I'd start by sorting the basket of laundry at the bottom of the chute. I'd make my piles all over the laundry room floor. As a load came out of the dryer I would take it to my family room to fold. After each load was folded, I put the clothes in the appropriate basket (each bedroom had it's own basket.) After the laundry was finished, the laundry room floor would be clear and there would be several baskets loaded with clothes to be put away. That is where I got stuck. I was good about washing and folding but then the clothes would often stay in the baskets. As things got busier around here, that method stopped working as well. For one, I wouldn't always get all the laundry finished. The piles would either sit there or I would have to put them back in the basket. Also, there might be something I wanted to wear (or wanted the kids to wear) and it didn't get washed. That meant they couldn't wear it on that day and it wasn't going to get washed until the next laundry day, maybe a week away.

I decided to try the 1-2 loads per day that many of the experts recommend. So far, it has worked very well for me. If I do 1-2 loads on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I often don't do any laundry Friday, Saturday or Sunday. The putting away of the clothes is more likely to happen because it doesn't take as long. (Although, I occasionally still find myself with clean, folded clothes left in a basket for several days. Especially towels. I'm getting better, though.) I also started having the kids empty their own baskets. Their drawers might not be as neat as they would be if I put the clothes away, but we are working on it.

I had to come up with a sorting system so the laundry room floor wouldn't constantly have piles of clothes on it. You can see a post on that here.

Tidy the house
This is something that doesn't take very long but has huge results. If the kids and I pick things up every night, we spend a small amount of time and avoid a huge mess. I try to have the kids take anything that is theirs to their rooms on their way to bed. I have tried a couple things to reinforce this. First, they both have what I call a "tidy basket." Their tidy baskets are small, canvas-like, handled baskets. They can load lots of little things in there and easily carry it to their room. I have also tried "fining" them for anything left out. They would have to complete an extra job for every item of theirs I find after bedtime. We have also tried doing a "10 minute tidy" before dinner instead of before bed. Sometimes when we are heading to bed, there is not time to spare to tidy. I'm going to have to reinstitute all of those.

Do the dishes
I clear the table and rinse the dishes after every meal. I try to have the dishwasher loaded as well but if that doesn't get completed during the day, I almost always make sure it is finished before I go to bed. If the dishwasher is too full I will leave some (rinsed) dishes in the sink overnight. I know there are people who would say I should just wash them by hand and put them away rather than leaving them in the sink. No. It's ok with me if they sit in the sink overnight waiting to be loaded into the dishwasher.

February jobs recap

Last week I posted (here) what my Februrary jobs were. I did that so I would be accountable for getting those jobs done in February. At the end of January, I was scrambling to get through my jobs and didn't get to a big one and I ended up being sorry I didn't get to it (see above post.) Again, this month I didn't get them all finished. This time they are minor jobs, though, and I got to some other big jobs because I was getting ready for a party we had here Saturday. I'll just add the ones I didn't complete to my March jobs.

Here are the February jobs and how I did.
Kitchen-
kitchen windows (done)
cabinet fronts (done)
vac curtains (not done)
wipe trash can (done)
clean under disposal cover (done)

Hall-
dust vents (done)
dust doors (done)
dust baseboards (done)

Entry-
dust entry light (done)

Master bedroom-
wash comforter(done)
turn mattress (not done)

Office-
dust baseboards (not done) I'll do this when I dust in there next

I don't feel so bad about not getting to all of the above jobs because of some of the extras I did get to. Like this one...

The vent above my microwave has never been cleaned. It's a job I never thought of. Actually, in all of my researching about cleaning I don't ever remember someone else suggesting it, either. I would wipe the outside but never be able to reach the dust inside. Here's what it looked like:



Look at the greasy dust on the edge. It looks like fur.

I unscrewed the cover and put it in the sink. I sprayed it with Shaklee H2 degreaser and let it sit for a few minutes. Then, I wiped it off. It really didn't take much scrubbing.

Here's what I ended up with:




I also cleaned above my stove (I guess I didn't take a picture.) I have wiped that area before but it is tough to get off all that grease. I used Shaklee H2 degreaser again. It looks much better. I had previously cleaned the fan covers (see here) but this time I also cleaned the light fixture cover (another area that had never been cleaned) and it is so much brighter.

With those HUGE jobs being finished, I don't fee so bad about not getting to the kitchen curtains or office baseboards.

February jobs

Last year I created a list of jobs that periodically need to be completed around the house. I then divided them into jobs that need to be completed every other month, once a season (four times a year), twice a year, and once a year. I printed out a calendar page for every month and placed those jobs in the months I want to complete them.

At the end of last month I had to scramble to do my January jobs and still didn't get to all of them. The only job I didn't complete was vacuum the fridge coils. I figured that one would be easy enough to do in February. I did start pulling the fridge out and it was a lot more hassle than I expected so I stopped and planned to get back to it. Then, last night, the sweet tea fell out of the fridge, the top fell off and the spill started seeping under the fridge. I couldn't get my towel far enough under the fridge to get it all, so I pulled it out. Had I completed my January jobs I would not have seen (and had to deal with) this last night:
or thisor thisor thisJust for the record, yes, I think this is disgusting.

The top picture doesn't look near as bad as it could have because I wiped up the spill (and some dried up crust) before I thought of taking a picture.

Clearly, there have been other spills that I haven't pulled out the fridge to clean.

I'm guessing people who are naturally tidy don't have this behind their fridge. This is exactly why I created my calendar of jobs. This is the type of job I just don't think of doing and then never get to (obviously.) We bought this fridge when my son was a newborn and he is almost five. I probably haven't moved the fridge since it was installed.

I'm not exactly sure what the blue round things are in the bottom picture, maybe M&Ms?

I hope it isn't necessary to say that I made sure the floor looked like thisbefore I moved the fridge back.

I also vacuumed the back of the fridge.

While the fridge was out I saw this

Just so you can tell what you are looking at
It looks like there is five years of dust.

There is one positive. If you look close to the baskets you'll see there isn't dust there. That's because wiping the top of the fridge is a monthly job and I did do that last month. I just couldn't get to this part of the fridge. (Before my venture into tidiness, wiping the top of my fridge would only have gotten done if I happened to look up there, which rarely happens.)

So, I want to be sure to get to my February jobs in the next week. I hope by doing my cleaning by the calendar, I can avoid finding other messes like this in other areas of the house. Plus, I can take care of things on my time, instead of having to deal with it unexpectedly. I did not want to clean behind the fridge last night, but I had to.

In order to make myself accountable I am putting my jobs here and plan on writing an update at the end of the month.

February jobs:
Kitchen-
kitchen windows (done)
cabinet fronts (today?)
vac curtains
wipe trash can
clean under disposal cover

Hall-
dust vents (done)
dust doors (done)
dust baseboards (sorta done, daughter did, will try to do again)

Entry-
dust entry light

Master bedroom-
wash comforter
turn mattress

Office-
dust baseboards

Good luck to me!

Back to zones.

Last year, while I was doing all my information gathering about cleaning, decluttering, and organizing, I learned about zones. Several successful organizing systems recommend you work in zones. That meant I chose an area of my house to work in for a short period of time deculttering or organizing every day. It worked very well. I got rid of soooo much stuff. I have room in my closets and drawers. It makes me so happy to see empty space in those areas. Problem is, stuff gathers and quickly becomes clutter. I need to get back to my zones. I'm not in near the situation I was last year. My laundry/storage room has become bad. Every time I walk in I just feel yucky. I haven't done anything about it because it is such a HUGE job. It's going to take a lot of time. I keep thinking I'll get to it one Saturday or Sunday or maybe one day this summer. Then, I remembered the zones. All I have to do is work on it a little bit each day. I started yesterday and am going to try to work in there for 15 or 20 minutes a day. It seems so much easier to tackle this way. Plus, yesterday after only 15 minutes I could see a difference.

First zone, laundry room.

laundry

Every day I try to do a load or two of laundry. (I'm not sure where I heard the idea first flylady, sidetracked home executives, messies manual?) I used to have a laundry day but that doesn't work for my family anymore. I rarely have an entire day to spend washing, folding, and putting away laundry. So, the one to two loads a day works for me. That means I always have some dirty laundry. The way I used to do laundry meant all the clothes would pile up in a basket at the bottom of the laundry chute. I'd then sort the clothes in piles according to color and when my laundry was finished the floor would be clear until next laundry day. When I switched to doing laundry (almost) every day I would have piles of dirty clothes all over the floor in my storage/laundry room all the time. I looked into the fancy laundry sorters but none that I found worked for me. Some were too expensive, some were too small. None were just right. This is what I came up with:





The small wicker baskets are for undies (dark & white), the three plastic baskets are for our clothes and the blue bins are for towels (dark and light.) The plastic baskets are sorted by color category. Blue is for darks. White is for jeans and pants (really most things with a zipper.) Grey is for greys and lights. (Maybe it's because I used to teach PE but we have a lot of grey.) The plastic bins can stack together, the wicker baskets can stack together and the towel bins collapse. I got everything at Deal's (a dollar store) and the most expensive piece was $5. It is not pretty but it works for me.

I'm going to link to Works for Me Wednesday over We are THAT Family for the first time today.

Fridge clean-out

One of my January jobs was to clean out the fridge. I started on this last week after reading a tip on another blog. (Maybe Organizing Made Fun or clean mama, I'm not sure and couldn't find it again.) This mom said she cleaned one shelf at a time. That worked really well for a couple of shelves. Then I ran out of days in January and had to bust my tail yesterday to finish it.

I'm a little embarrassed to post the before pictures but my purpose in creating this blog is to show an honest picture of family life. So, here goes.

Before:

It doesn't look as bad in the picture as it did in person. The door bins were jammed. All the shelves were crusty. The drawers were gross. It needed to be cleaned bad.

Here's one of my first shelves.


Disgusting spills.

That blue is the tape that comes on the fridge when it is brand new. There was also tape on the drawers. I think we've had this fridge six years.

These are all the things I got off the door that were expired.

There are 13 bottles. They took up a lot of space in the door. I am always struggling for door space. We don't really drink here. Two of the beers are from 2008. See the three bottles of chili sauce? I make a dip with it that uses less than a bottle. I make the dip maybe once a year.

Here is the after:

You can't tell as much from the picture as you can in person but this is a clean fridge.

There was one problem with my fridge clean out. I gouged the side at some point.


I don't even know how it happened. I guess it was one of the drawers. Grr.

I moved my shelves around when I put them back in. Before I began, I think they were in exactly the same spots they were in when I got the fridge. When I was checking out other fridge clean out blog posts, I saw one that had the milk on top. I switched mine and liked the way the space worked out. I remember why I don't do that. My top shelf doesn't stay cold enough. My bottom shelf stays in the safe zone on my fridge thermometer while the top shelf sometimes hovers just above it. That's probably not good for any of the food but I feel much more comfortable having the milk where it's always the correct temperature. I'm going to fiddle with the temperature control again and see if I can fix it. But for now, the milk is back on the bottom.

January Jobs

Here is a list of my January jobs and how I did with them. These are seasonal (4x/year), biannual (2x/year), or annual (1x/year.)
Family room
clean sliding glass door-no
vac door curtain-yes
vac under couch and chair-yes
vac lamp shade-yes

Kitchen
clean burner pans-yes
kitchen walls-sort of (kids did)
wipe fridge top-yes
clean baseboards-sort of (kids did)
clean light fixtures-yes
vac fridge coils-no (but I will)
clean fridge-yes

Entry
wipe door-sort of (daughter did)
clean floor-yes

Even though I have a couple nos, I'm pretty proud of myself. These are all jobs that would never get done. Some never have been done. I've lived in this house for ten years and this is the first time I cleaned the oven. I must say that yesterday I was scrambling to finish the fridge because I knew it was the last day of the month. I'm ok with that because it still got cleaned out and looks good.

In addition to my January jobs I also cleaned out under my kitchen sink. I gave my mom all of my less green cleaners (she's going to use them anyway so I may as well give her mine instead of disposing of them.) I was able to get rid of seven large bottles from under my sink.

I'm linking up to A Slob Comes Clean for her January declutter update.

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.

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.

Thursdays

Thursdays are my bathrooms day. Every Thursday I swish & swipe and change the bathroom towels. Once a month I make sure I wipe down the shelves and pictures in each bathroom. Once a month is probably not enough for most people but for me it's an improvement. If I feel I need to (or can) add another day I have that option.

Today I did my dailies and Thursday tasks. I was finished by around 10. The baby was sleeping and the two bigger boys were playing quietly downstairs. I was feeling all proud of my self and like the house was in pretty good shape. There is some paperwork stuff I need to work on so I figured I'd do that during afternoon naps. I needed to finish today's laundry so I walked downstairs. This is what I saw:





I know they are just little boys and this is what they do. The two year old especially likes to just take things out and leave them out. But I was a little deflated when I first saw it. Plus, what I don't understand is why the chair is upside down. Oh well. I guess it's two steps forward, one step back.

Wednesdays

Wednesdays are my family room day. On Wednesdays I dust the family room. My family room is connected to the kitchen/dining area in what I guess could be called the "great room" though that's a little deceptive. It's a little small to call it "great." So, when I say family room I also mean the kitchen/dining area. The other activities of the day determine how thoroughly I dust. Last week, I didn't do such a great job, so I made up for it today. I also clean the floors every other Wednesday. Today was one of the floor cleaning Wednesdays. We have laminate floors through the upper level (we have a split level.) I use a Shark floor steamer--I LOVE it.

Today I did my dailies & Wednesday tasks and still had a little time and energy left so I added a couple January jobs. Today's January jobs were cleaning the light fixture above the sink, cleaning the ceiling fan in the kitchen and wiping off the top of the fridge. All three of those jobs are ones I would never get to until I happened to see how gross they were, or someone else saw how gross they were. I much prefer to do it this way to avoid embarrassment (because someone else saw it) or disappointment in myself.

Tuesdays

Every Tuesday I swish & swipe. I don't know where I heard of that first, flylady, sidetracked home executives (shes), or the messies manual, but the name is perfect. I also disinfect the kitchen and empty the trash. I have a spray bottle with vinegar and tea tree oil for disinfecting. I spray and wipe the kitchen table, placemats, counters, sink and trash can. I also empty all the trash cans around the house because tomorrow is trash day. Tuesdays are also my kitchen day. That means I can either organize or deep clean some part of the kitchen.

Today I did my dailies and my Tuesday tasks. Looking at the list I don't feel super productive. Then I realize in addition to those things I fed two kids breakfast, got one ready for school, got one of my kids and a spare on the bus, took four kids (ages 4, 4, 2 & 6 months--one of my own and three spares) up to the school with me to get my daughter (with pink eye), fed three kids snack and lunch, fed the baby twice, cleaned up the lunch dishes, changed five diapers and one outfit, got the spare off the bus, fed four kids afternoon snack, carried the baby around in the sling for about an hour, made dinner, cleaned the dinner dishes, gave one shower, one bath, dried one little girl's hair and got two kids ready for bed. Whew. No wonder I'm wiped out at the end of the day. I know as a mom I forget that all the childcare things I do are my most important work. Sometimes I feel if I don't get very much done around the house I haven't been productive. I have to remind myself that those are not the most important things. The little people around here are. (And they are A LOT of work!)

Mondays

Mondays are my catch-up day. I did my daily tasks (vacuum, dishes, made my bed, one load of laundry--though I didn't put the laundry away) and the weekly task of washing sheets (though I only did my daughter's sheets, I never believed I would wash all of our sheets each week.) I didn't need to catch up on any tasks from last week so today I was able to do some of my January tasks. Today I worked in the kitchen. I cleaned the stove top, drip pans, inside the oven (just a bit), and front of the fridge. I need to work on the oven a little more, okay a lot more, and the stove isn't perfect but it will keep getting better and better. If I didn't have my January calendar I would never have done those things at all. The stove would continue to get more disgusting and I would be embarrassed if anyone ever looked in my oven. We have lived here ten years and I don't think I have ever cleaned inside my oven. I waited so long that the self cleaning feature on my oven no longer works. I also cleaned the screens in the range hood. That I am sure I never did and they were gross. They are not on my list, but I will add them.

Here is the before:




In my defense, I never see these. The only reason I noticed them today is I was cleaning the underside of the hood and felt something sticky. It was the rubbery tabs used to pull them out. I'm trying to be greener so I used vinegar first and scrubbed like crazy with a plastic scrubby and my Pampered Chef kitchen brush. Not such a good idea because the gunk that came off the screens needed to be picked off the brush. Then I used orange glo and an old toothbrush. I was really happy with the results:




Sometimes I feel pathetic that I am so proud of something like this. It would seem insignificant to some people but to me it's something I would not have normally done. It's just another step in getting this house to where I would like it to be.