Anal retentive stay at home mother’s idea of the day

I make CT’s lunch the night before he goes to school. Last night I made ALL the kids lunches.

By making two more sandwiches last night I saved myself 17 minutes of work today.

I call that brilliant. Sick…but brilliant.

33 ¾ inches

KP bonked his head the other day as he was walking down the stairs. As he was crying I walked over, sat on the stairs, kissed his boo-boo and gave him a big hug. While I hugged him I noticed the wall, the portion of the wall that is between the hand rail and the floor. And it was disgusting!

I couldn’t believe I had never noticed it before. It has taken me a good week to get back to that same spot to wipe it down.

And in the process of cleaning it, this is what I found:
• Several young artist pencil renderings
• One long snotty dried booger
• Peanut butter and jelly smudges
• Some sort of other tanish something or other that came right off but I have no idea what the hell it is
• Several dusty hand prints of different sizes
• 14 unidentifiable black dots of varying smallness that won’t come off
• two shoe tread scuff mark (yes on the wall!)
• a circular indentation from the baby gate (that is my doing)
• and a sort of thin dark greasy film that covered almost the whole 33 and ¾ inches

I can only imagine what else I could find around the house if I was three feet tall.

Wondering why I did that

In the past five minutes I have done the following, in this order:
1. vacuumed the TV room
2. started a movie for the kids
3. gave the kids a bowl of popcorn

Does anyone else find that extremely stupid?

Purge

Do you have any of those things on your list that just never seem to get checked off? Mine is the organization of the toys. I love how it feels to have the toys organized, but after three kids in six years and too many holidays that added too many toys, it all of a sudden become an overwhelming task.

I have had several strategies for keeping our toys in check. Most were really just a shuffling game between shelves in order to keep the kids interested. Then we started putting things in the basement and rotating them up every so often. Then, when that became too much, I just bagged the ones that were not getting picked up when “clean-up” time ended and they went into a white trash bag and found a new home in the basement. Needless to say, none of these approaches really ever seemed to work in the long run.

And then last week, my friend Jen came over. My dear, sweet, anally retentive, very organized friend Jen came over and kicked some serious toy ass. She has a way about her that let’s her easily sift through the crap and end up with only the things your kids really need. Or should I say, only the things that can easily be put in a bin and categorized. If it didn’t have a category and if it couldn’t fit in a bin, it was GONE.

Three and a half hours, two 90 gallon garbage bins, and a car full of toys to donate later, it was done. Now EVERYTHING has a home and a bin with its own name on it. No, it doesn’t matter that the kids can’t read yet, they’ll get the idea soon enough.

Oh and by the way…if any of you people tell my kids I just threw out half their toys and then gave another quarter of them to my husband’s Administrative Assistant, I will hunt you down and KILL you.

You see, they think ALL their toys are still in the basement, somewhere.

Suck-it-up

I just got an email from my friend Sara regarding the fact that she thought I was “a craaaazy lady” for buying an $800 vacuum (two years ago). And that yesterday, she also fell to the temptation of purchasing a new and very expensive piece of essential household equipment…a new vacuum.

To be truthful, I got it for our 10th Anniversary. Maybe that makes it even worse or maybe better…you see every time I plug it in I can think of my wonderful husband who loves me so much that we bought a house together, had three kids together and now own a fabulous red vacuum together.

I have owned and operated my fare share of SHITY vacuums in my life. Vacuums, that when you plug them in, make noise but don’t pick anything up or ones that were hand-me-downs from my mother-in-law that are so old they don’t even make the replacement bags for anymore or the one that Adam owned in college, I’m not sure that one was ever used but if it was you do not want to know what went into the bag.

You may be wondering…is it really worth it? My answer is, YES, YES, YES. And if I am ever faced with the buying decision again, I will absolutely save all the imaginary pennies I am making as the CEO of the household and buy another one.

I so have a hard-on…

For my new dust buster that is mounted on the garage wall, fully devoted to cleaning only the mini-van. Whenever the kids spill, drop or throw something in the car, I can clean it up right when we pull into the garage.

Oh, it is so OCD, but I love it.

Me thinks it needs a name, thoughts?

On your mark, get set…

I have my summer girl coming over this afternoon. For two hours. I know, I know, you can’t get shit done in two hours, but I’m going to try. I like looking at it as a weekly case study of how many things I can get accomplished in how little period of time. Hmmm, maybe I should start an excel spread sheet and then graph myself. Wouldn’t that be well worth my valuable time?

On the days she comes, I get this little nervous energy just before I take off out of the house. When I only had CT, I would get that same feeling when I would put him down for a nap. I knew I had X number of minutes to get X number of tasks completed and I was going to do it by god. I would go flying around the house, multitasking my way through my projects, my head spinning along with the twelve plates in the air.

Today, instead of running franticly to the bank, grocery store and pet store, maybe I should take my two hours and run to the coffee shop to read my book. Now that is something I can get done in two hours!

Bathroom up-date

So, the baby went back to sleep and I thought I better do what my cleaning calendar says, and go clean the bathrooms. I know, I know

Wednesday = Bathroom Day

I am a sick woman. I am the first to admit it. Part of my sickness is a neurosis to keep the house clean. Since I do not have the time to clean the whole house all at once, I have broken tasks down by day. It goes a little something like this:

Monday = Dusting & Laundry
Tuesday = Vacuuming & Putting away of laundry
Wednesday = Bathrooms & Kitchen
Thursday = Wood Floors
Friday = OFF

In theory this system works really well. I only need to spend about an hour a day to get my tasks done. However, I hit Wednesday, and I sure as hell don