Chore Master

Romeo at work

My house is - generally - a mess.

Now, my mother is probably one of the few readers of this blog, and I would hate to make her choke to death. So, Mom, if you are reading, please do not eat or drink for a moment. Let me just make a statement.

I hate a mess.

Go ahead and laugh, Mom. You just really cannot say things like that to people who knew you when  you were 13.

It is true. I hate messes, but I live in a perpetual one. And I mean "MESS". I can handle the daily mess, usually. But living with five males.....well....mess just comes with the territory.

I cannot keep up with the cleaning, and it spirals downwards periodically in the school year, with brief periods of "rescue cleaning" in between closing my eyes to dust, dirt, and ick!
I have tried Fly Lady, The Queen of Clean, Better Homes and Garden's "Clean Your House in a Year", and many more. I have not been able to make them work (admitting that it is due to ME,  not to these fine programs!).


So, last week I instituted the Family Cleaning Plan.

Every day the boys have to clean their rooms in the morning, take out trash and recycling, clean the cat's litter box, and feed pets. They are used to that. Now we also have daily "special" chores. It looks like this:

Monday - dusting
Tuesday - vacuuming
Wednesday - clean bathrooms (They were already doing this one)
Thursday - misc. chores
Friday - Mom vacuums again, while boys empty trash throughout house

The aim is not "Sparkly House", but "livable, controlled chaos". I mean, the whole plan sounds great, but 13, 11, and 9 year old boys are responsible for executing the chores, so I am not exactly expecting perfection.

It was a little scary today. I cannot remember exactly, so thankfully I do not have to lie in order to avoid telling you how long it has been since my living room was dusted. I did have to convince the boys that the dust balls did NOT have teeth, and would not hurt them....I think.

Almost anything will be an improvement!

The Young Adult, flexing his dusting muscles.

Boys Are Gross

Boys are gross.

I just don't know how else to say it.

Wednesdays are bathroom cleaning days in my house. Everyone has a job. I clean my bathroom, the Young Adult cleans his (which is also the downstairs restroom visitors use), and Cookie Boy and Romeo clean the bathroom they share with the Mad Toddler. All was well, until I went to check Cookie Boy's progress in his bathroom. Despite the fact he had already given everything a going-over (Romeo was on the couch, sick), I could not ignore the smell of....well, unclean bathroom emanating from the smallish space. (Notice I am sparing everyone pictures of said grossness.)

I thought about a lecture on how to clean the bathroom (one I have given countless times), but I reconsidered. The sheer magnitude of that smell was not something Cookie Boy could tackle. So, I grabbed bleach, an old cheap toothbrush to be used in cleaning, some paper towels, and a lot of elbow grease.

One word - "EEEUUUUUUWWWWWW"!

After several minutes of cleaning around the toilet, I called Cookie Boy in and showed him the evidence. The pile of yellowish paper towels in the trash, the crud on the toothbrush, the color of the toilet hinges ("they are supposed to be white? Who knew!") - the only thing that gives me any hope at all is that Cookie Boy at least felt disgusted by what he saw.

Then I DID proceed to give a helpful lesson on how to clean the toilet area (including the floor behind the toilet). I also explained that if this were to be done every week, the problem would not get so bad.

It isn't entirely their fault this time, I guess. Since I host the First Lego League meeting with 10 boys running around, that bathroom has had a lot of visitors in recent weeks. ArtGuy calls one "The Mad Flusher". Every week, we have to unclog a toilet after the meeting. "Uh oh," ArtGuy will announce, "looks like the Mad Flusher has been at it again!" This week, the group will get a kindly, firm lecture on the proper amount of toilet paper to use in a single sitting.

Yesterday was a rough day in my house. I had a mini-meltdown, and part of it resulted in a lecture that went something like this:
"I know I am the only girl in this house, and all the rest of you would probably be happy rooting around like pigs, but I am not! Most girls would not be happy like that. If you ever have a hope of having a girlfriend or a wife, or you even want to be friends with a girl, then you had better learn to pick up after yourselves, or you will all end up sad, lonely, single guys when you are grown up."

This was followed by my downing three brownies - and they were worth every single Weight Watchers point!

Poor, poor pitiful me, 
Poor, poor pitiful me!
Oh these boys won't let me be
Lord have mercy on me..
Woe, woe is me!  

(Terri Clark's song Poor, Poor Pitiful Me)


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School Prep

Two days until school starts, and I am not ready!

Today is a cleaning day - clean the school room, put away last year's work (which I was only too grateful to ignore during our summer break), and get this year's books and supplies out and waiting.

I always loved the first day of school. New pencils and pens, new books, new classes, new promise. The beginning of school always held that note of promise, that this year I would shine, this year I would find my way, this year would be full of fun and growth. Well, I was always a nerd!

I hope my kids get that same experience, in spite of homeschooling in classes of one! They always seem excited about the new supplies, and they greet each new package of new books with sequels. I know they are excited about the start of our homeschool coop, about a month away. They love those classes, and being with their friends for a while.

So now, it is tidy and organize! At the moment our school room is a mess, as I have dragged the Mad Toddler's toys out of his bin. It is time to put away the little baby stuff and face the fact that it is no longer links and rattles, but trains, cars, and blocks that amuse him! At just over two, I will need to come up with some items to occupy him during school time. He is not quite ready for the preschool "While I Wait" box I assembled for Romeo when he was 3 and 4. I have kept back some special art supplies for him, among a few other things.

ArtGuy has all the boys at the community pool for the moment. I am blasting some cool music while I try to tame the mess around me. The air is heavy with the scent of cleaners as I scrub shelves and windowsills. It is blissful!

Now, back to work!

Thursday

I am already losing count of where we are in the week, since we have not been doing school.

Yes, despite all my intentions to keep going with school, we have ground to a halt here. The 10 year old is sick, the 12 year old and I are butting heads, and the Mad Toddler is such a force to be reckoned with this week, I have not the strength to be creative-and-fun-while-teaching-[fill in the subject] this week! Maybe by next week I will have recovered my energy and re-doscovered my sense of humor (although at this moment, I am not sure I have ever had one).

I am in the middle of re-organizing the house. Last week it was my bedroom. This week is the school closet. One of the reasons we loved this house when we bought it last year is that it has a ginormous linen closet. It has plenty of rooms for towels, sheets, blankets, board games, and still an entire section for school books - 4 whole shelves of them! But like everything else, by the end o' the school year it is looking a little abused.

At the moment I have six or seven decks of cards spread over my bedroom floor, trying to figure out it any of them is a complete set. Yup - this might take a while!

Promises

I

Remember this little gem of a picture from earlier this week? And I promised that by the end of the week it would not look the same?
Well, drum roll please......

Do I hear the Hallelujah Chorus right now? I think so!

Oh yeah, baby!

Before......

...after!   Well, okay, we need to actually get curtain rods and not thumb tacks to hang the curtains with. Baby steps, people, baby steps!

Before.....eeeuuuuw!

 Well, it is a work in progress! Those two boxes on the left have remnants of this and that. ArtGuy and I are going through it.

My reading nook! I love it! On the walls to the left are prints of St. Francis and St. Clare we brought home from Assisi. On the wall to the right is a framed print of P. Buckley Moss, an artist we discovered on our honeymoon in the Shenendoah Valley. Someday, when I have time, I may actually read here!

Something has been bugging me lately. I am scattered and frazzled and rarely have time to comb my hair, much less pray. Yes, pray. I decided to use this small corner of my room for a prayer corner. A prie Dieus, if you will. I may not have a lot of time to kneel there, but even a few minutes help me get my day centered and off to the right start. You know, 'cause there is nothing like chanting a Chaplet of Divine Mercy while your two year old dumps out a box of 250 craft sticks on the floor. Yup, nothing more centering and relaxing than that....

To Clean or Not to Clean

Have I mentioned I am the sole female in a house with 5 males? "Clean" becomes a relative term.

I talk about cleaning and needing to clean so much, my friends and acquaintances might think I walk around obsessed with dusting baseboards and polishing light fixtures.  Not so, dear readers, not so. In truth, my house usually looks like a tornado has hit it. Five tornados to be exact! ArtGuy is an artist, which he claims causes his brain to be so engaged with its creative side so that there is no room for the "practicalities" of life (in spite of the fact that he is now mainly a graphic artist, which is more technical and uses math skills frequently. While my math skills tend towards "creativity", that is usually frowned upon in math, so I am not buying the whole creative brain=messy life story, ArtGuy!).
The four little men in the house, in spite of intensive training in the fine art of scrubbing toilets and how to place books on a bookshelf, tend to imitate their father's cleaning styles. It is like trying to fight a rising tide. I do not think I ask for too much, really. I do not expect spotless rooms. All I want is respect for belongings and a clear path to the door.

Two days ago I took the Mad Toddler to the  boys bathroom to brush his teeth, and almost passed out. I called the offenders to the room. Cookie Boy and Romeo came with dewy innocence in their eyes. "Look", I shouted, pointing to the toilet. They looked, worried because my tone clearly said "mom is about to rage about something again", but confused as to what it could be. The toilet in question had such a large, aggressive  ring of black junk growing in it, I would personally be afraid it would bite my butt if I sat down there.  "Have you noticed this lately," I asked. Two heads nodded in the negative. How? Why? ICK!

Here is another good example - either my walls spontaneously grow buggers or my children think the words "walls" and "tissues" are interchangeable.

There may be an Ancient Egypt history project, art supplies, and a tadpole-that-is-determined-to-stay-a-tadpole-and-not-a-frog in the kitchen, but I swear it is clean in there! I clean the kitchen and living room every day, but five minutes later, you cannot tell. 

After the Hairy Black Toilet Incident the other day, I walked through my home, with the dismal realization that there is not one room that feels good, that feels clean and neat and orderly and comforting. It gets that way around here. I have decided that it is time to pay attention to my room. If I can get my room neat and put together, I will have at least one oasis in this house. We have lived here just under a year, and I have been healthy enough for the past six months. No more excuses! 

So in the interest of honest accounting, here is what my room looks now:

ArtGuy's Creatively Messy Side of the Room

A little bit of this and a little bit of that - things just get thrown in here!

 It will not look like this at the end of the week. That is a promise.