How awesome am I?

You know how some days everything just clicks? You're efficient, you're energetic, you're getting stuff done, and then you write a blog post about how much you've accomplished and it looks really impressive and all your friends say how awesome you are?

Well my whole week has been the opposite of that.

Rule of three

* Keeping my kitchen clean makes me really happy. More happy than I could have realized during most of my life when I wasn't keeping it clean on a regular basis. However, knowing this, I should really make cleaning the kitchen more of a priority. Note to self: get on it.

* If you're the kind of a person who, at any given moment, can think of three things you need to do, three things you want to do, three things that would be really fun, and three things that you've been meaning to get to for a while, but haven't; then, seriously make a schedule. Otherwise you'll spend the whole day going around in circles.

* A friend of mine once told me that when she finds she's having trouble keeping her house clean, it's usually because she has too much stuff. While this is true, and even relevant in my case, I find that when I'm having trouble keeping my house clean, it's because I'm not in it enough. Something to keep in mind when I'm getting that kid-in-the-candystore feeling about the plethora of cool activities around here. On May 9, for example, there are a solid five mutually conflicting but very intriguing activities to choose from. Maybe I should just stay home.

Blogging the Aftermath: Day One

Here is a series I am beginning for my own enlightenment and edification. Having turned my house upside down and maybe even inside out, in order to accommodate a large group of children and their families, I am now faced with the prospect of returning things to normal. This is not a one-day process, and in fact some stuff that got thrown into distant corners of the house will probably remain there indefinitely (a good sign, I suppose, that I could even throw it away (gasp!)with few negative repercussions (not going to happen)) and actually, some of the furniture that got moved around actually works better for me in its new location.

Anyway.

On the food front, here is our menu for the day:

Breakfast:
Ziad and Maya had macaroni and cheese. I had chicken and potatoes. When Maya asked if that was all the macaroni and cheese that was left, I had to tell her, "No, that was all the macaroni and cheese I couldn't fit in the refrigerator." They will probably be eating it for breakfast all week.

Lunch:
Ziad and Maya had leftover rice and meatballs. I had chicken and potatoes. And leftover salad. I've been wondering whether there is someway to make broth out of leftover salad. Although I'm experimental by nature, for some reason I'm not willing to actually try this.

Dinner:
Well, we haven't had dinner yet, but I know what's on the menu. Leftover beans. Yumm. Really.

This morning I finished almost all of the dishes that I was in no condition to wash last night. We have cleaned all the stuff off the floor of the dining room and vacuumed it.

We have also decided that keeping the dining room table pushed up against the French windows is a good idea for now, since the dining room table is actually the school table. It turns out that three dining room chairs fit beautifully side by side along its length, and since the table is now up against a window we can look out over the valley when we need to pause and think.

Maya cleaned up all the costumes from her playhouse downstairs. We decided to put them into a suitcase, thereby emptying up the large drawer in her room where we had been keeping them up to now. So now she will move all her clothes out of Ziad's room, where they had been sharing a chest of drawers, which will make life much easier during Ziad's fits of temper when he decides that she is absolutely positively not allowed in his room ever. That floor, still festooned with the random pink feather, remains to be vacuumed.

We had to leave at 11 to get to guitar lessons in Santa Cruz. When we got home at 3:30 all of us were starving and exhausted. Piano practice and Latin are still on the agenda for today, so I don't know how much more energy we'll have for setting things to rights.

I am staring right now at a pile of periodicals and papers that was on the kitchen table that is going to have to at least be looked at, and some of them returned, no matter how much I like having the kitchen table empty. There are also several bags of school supplies in a corner in the dining room that need to be put out again, because we actually do use them. The garage has three tables with chess sets and assorted games that are going to need to be put away before we can park there again.

More tomorrow.

Late again

and still feeling inadequate.

Lesley came by, though, and gave us the conditional thumbs up. We're making progress! If we can just avoid backsliding too far before spring break, I think we'll be doing well. When my schedule opens up a little I can focus more on tidying and organizing, and if in the interim things don't get too dirty, we'll have taken a big step forward.

Go, team!

A day late

We lost our phone service, and our internet connection, for a while there. Then we kind of got phone service back, but with such a nasty buzz on the line I couldn't stand to use the phone. It was also not possible to establish a dial-up connection with the interference on the line, and then even when the DSL line got fixed, for some reason the service was sporadic anyway, so what with one thing and another I've been denied my internet access. Yikes!

So here it is Thursday, not Wednesday, when I am thinking about how we did with the house this week. And I am coming to the conclusion -- not bad. Wednesday was hectic, as it so often is, but we still managed to get some floors clean. We've been putting in a lot of time trying to organize, but still did most of the necessary chores as well. We're tinkering with a system that will help Ziad and Maya stay on top of keeping their rooms clean. I'm dreading going back to our full schedule, because I really would like to get things more under control first, but if we can maintain things at this level till we break again in the summer, we'll have taken a giant stride forward.

If the next five weeks are like this one, then I will definitely think we'll have earned ourselves some positive reinforcement in the form of material goods. Hanne Falkenberg, here I come!

Midweek muddle

Well, the Wednesday chore day hit a new low today, as a day that seemed open turned out as crazy and chaotic as any other. This time, however, the fault can clearly be traced to late sleeping and foot dragging, as Ziad and Maya took a full hour to eat lunch (they didn't like it) and a full hour and a half to only partially wash the dishes (there were a lot, but still ...). That used up all the time between piano classes and their dental appointments. We got a little bit done between our arrival at home and dinner time, but it's the least we've done so far. At least I didn't have to do it, is all I have to say.

Am I beating a dead horse here? Are we, in fact, not yet ready to make that commitment to a clean and orderly house? I hope that it turns out we ARE ready. One reason I keep writing about it is to keep the focus, to keep looking forward to the next week, to remember that this is a long-term project. (Changing our habits, I mean. I understand that actually keeping the house clean is a never-ending project.)

As for next week -- Boxing Day. We'll have to have some time for cleaning then.

Midweek Housecleaning

Well, this may be the week that begins our decline.

Wednesday chores? I did as many of them today as I could, because this is what tomorrow looks like:
before 8: try to finish midweek housecleaning
8-9 AM: breakfast, pet care, general morning stuff
9-10 AM: get ready for piano class, try to squeeze in guitar practice
10-11:15 AM: one child has class, the other does schoolwork with me
11:15-12:30 PM: errands & lunch, maybe finish guitar practice?
1-3 PM: Brownie Meeting
3:30-4:30 PM: Friend's house
5-6:30 PM: chorus rehearsal
??? dinner?
7:30 PM: book club

Doing chores by myself on Tuesday while my children practice their instruments is not a good thing. Thankfully next week we will probably have time for a real group effort.

However, I'm a little concerned about the clutter. We're still kind of recovering from a party this weekend, and I'm trying to sort through and organize some stuff, with the result that the house is looking pretty messy. This is where the whole housecleaning adventure could founder, and this is exactly why I'm blogging about it. If I can get the time to sort and organize and put things away, all will be well. If not, we can kiss our clean house goodbye. We have a busy few days ahead, so next week will be a good time to check back in and see how things are going. Wish me luck!

Our house

is a very, very, very fine house.

Too bad it's not a very, very clean house.

But it's still in the running for my clean house countdown! We live in this house, and we do activities that use lots of stuff (guitars with their cases, music stands and music, books, workbooks, notebooks, pens, pencils, the CD player and CDs ....) so the only way we are going to achieve that pared-down elegant look is to move out.

Cleaning on Wednesday went pretty well this week. Wednesday is turning into a crazy day, and I was very concerned we wouldn't get our work done. So I did half of it myself before the kids got up. The beauty part of this for me, though, is that it was so clear: I am doing them a favor! This is not my job here! They owe me!

So I feel comfortable saying that we haven't lost it yet. Lesley has been a cheerleader and well-wisher, and I'm so grateful for that. I feel as though I'm accepting her good vibes under false pretenses, though, because I was only ever trying to keep the two downstairs levels clean. That means five (or six, if you think the breakfast nook is it's own room) rooms and an entry way get maintained, while upstairs six rooms and a hallway steadily deteriorate. But this way I don't cringe when people come to the door! That's a good thing, right?

So, for the record, this house has been officially clean for (drum roll) 14 days!

More about my house

I bet you're just dying to hear how our day of chores went. Well, it was actually never supposed to be more than an hour of chores; the main thing was deciding to do them on a specific day and then following through.

Well, today was not the best day. It was one of those days where everything took longer than I expected it to, leaving playdates in the dust and children disgruntled, finally making us late for Maya's 4PM chorus class. That's bad, when you can't get someplace by 4.

The cleaning part wasn't bad, though. Right now we're just doing the middle level of our split-level house. Best-case scenario will be that we incorporate cleaning the lower level, too. Middle ground is where we just maintain the middle level, worst-case (sadly, still all too likely in my opinion) sees us abandoning the whole project. I keep telling myself that if we can keep it clean for a month we'll be changed people. I only hope it's true.

So, anyway, a measly hour and a half or so of cleaning this afternoon and I feel comfortable saying that our countdown (or is it a countup?) has reached day 5.

CHC II

Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday: 4 days clean

I have co-opted* enlisted the kids with the housekeeping effort – we have promised ourselves lavish rewards if we can keep the house clean until New Years. The question that continues to haunt me, though, is, "Is the house actually clean?" I don't want to start lying to myself so early in the game, but neither do I want to throw up my hands in despair after less than a week. I believe it serves the greater good to count the house as clean and keep on trying, but still, I wonder -- is it OK to have the sweater I'm starting out on the coffee table? Are the newspapers on the kitchen table permissible? I guess it actually helps to keep the bar pretty low, and not let ourselves off the hook.

Our first chore day falls tomorrow -- I wrote a little schedule that we will rotate through, each person taking a different job from one week to the next. It will be interesting to see how these days go. My expectation is that our enthusiasm will diminish over time, and that we'll gradually abandon these tasks, but who knows? Maybe we'll find a way to keep it going and still get some school work done as well. Ziad is working for some Legos, Maya a Bitty Baby, and I have promised myself a Hanne Falkenberg kit from eBay. I am playing around with a system of bonus points for completing tasks with acceptable quality in a minimum amount of time. Obviously we can't expect this level of reward on an ongoing basis, but maybe after a while it will become second nature. Or perhaps the feeling of a job well done, or the enjoyment of a house where you can actually find things, will become our reward. It's a whole new world out there. I hope we can find our way to it.

*THANK YOU, Zelda

Clean House Countdown

Well, as I was under the impression that the house was more or less clean (I was wrong, by the way), I thought, why not invite Nabil's family over for Ziad's birthday? Well, we made the invitation, and they made their counter invitation (no, we're not available for dinner, how about lunch?) and the race was on. Approximately 12 hours of frantic housecleaning, involving the entire family, ensued. And now the house really is clean. At least the downstairs part.

Now, I've had the downstairs clean before. And once it gets like that, I always think, OK, the hard part is over, now it never needs to get messy again. And yet, alas, it always does. Why? I don't really know. My hope is that now that the children are older, they can more actively participate in avoiding the mess (i.e., both pick up after themselves and do some cleaning). Sad experience has left me skeptical, I have to say, but hope springs eternal. Maybe this time!

I kind of think we're a flighty bunch (Nabil excepted) who tend to chase our enthusiasms, butterfly-like, without noticing that the chaos is encroaching. Can a regular cleaning schedule come to our aid? Probably not, since I don't even seem to be able to get them to make their beds when they get up in the morning. (How hard should that be?)

Anyway, in an effort to understand, and maybe fix, this problem, I am hereby instituting the clean house countdown: 1 day clean.

Maybe, if the house is still clean downstairs by the end of the week, we could actually get their rooms clean at the same time. Except I think if that happened the universe might explode.