Drastic Measures

I cannot tell you how many times I have spent a full day cleaning my five-year-old's bedroom only to have it messy again in a couple of days. Every time I clean it up he says, "I love it when my room's clean. I am never, ever going to mess it up again." I've heard those exact words at least 20 times from him. I've tried having him stick to the rule that only one toy can be out at a time. That lasts for about two days. He messes it up so fast that I can't stop him. His room can be totally clean. I will walk downstairs to change the laundry and by the time I get back it's a disaster. Every time he's told to go clean up his room he does nothing but whine. I've tried having him clean up small parts at a time but all he does is move the stuff from that area into another messy area instead of putting it away, even though he knows where everything goes.

I've had enough. I have decided to remove everything from his room except for furniture, decorations and clothes. There will be no more toys or books in his room. I started the process a few days ago and he finally noticed that things were looking sparce yesterday. He wanted to know if I was cleaning his room. I said that I was. He asked me if I was putting his stuff away. I told him that I wasn't. I told him I am taking all of his toys away until he can learn to pick up after himself. He cried. I have to admit that I didn't really feel all that bad. He wanted to know if I was throwing his toys away. I told him I'm not, I'm just taking them away until he can keep his room clean.

By the time he gets home from school today I plan on having his room completely empty of toys and books. I'm not quite sure where I'm going to put it all yet, but it won't be in his room. Maybe his brother and sister will temporarily get a bunch of new toys and books. Once his room is clean I will let him pick one toy and one book that he wants back. If, the next day, those two items are put away where they belong, he can pick another toy and another book. As long as he can keep those items put away when he's done using them, I will let him get more of his stuff back. It shouldn't be too hard for him to keep it picked up. He has drawers, a toybox and containers in his closet for his toys. Everything goes in a certain spot and he knows where they are supposed to go. When everything is put away his room is totally organized. Everything is where he can reach it to put it away. I don't know what else to do. If this doesn't work, nothing will.

Tackle It Tuesday

During the last week I finished tackling the kitchen and tackled the bathroom. Both of them are completely clean and completely organized. I have also written down lists for each room of tasks that need to be done daily, weekly and monthly to keep those rooms clean and organized. I think those two rooms are the most important to keep clean and probably the easiest to get dirty.

Some of the items on my list for the kitchen are:

Daily - do dishes, run dishwasher, unload dishwasher, wipe down table and counter tops, clean sink, put out a new towel and sponge every day

Weekly - clean all surfaces (counter tops, table, stove top), clean inside of microwave, sweep and mop floor

Monthly - clean out the fridge, clean the garbage can, take a quick look through all cabinets to make sure everything is staying organized

Some of the items on my list for the bathroom are:

Daily - wipe down toilet, floor around toilet and sink with anti-bacterial wipes, put out clean hand towel

Weekly - clean toilet, sink and bathtub, clean the floor, wash the window

Monthly - clean the garbage can, take a quick look through the cabinets to make sure everything is staying organized

I'm sure as the days go by I might think of more things to add, but I think I've pretty much covered everything. Right now I can say that my kitchen and bathroom are perfect, at least as perfect as they can be until I have tens of thousands of spare dollars to redo them.

I've already informed my husband that I'm going to be a nagging bitch for a while until he learns to put things away where they go and not make a mess on a daily basis. He has a very bad habit of just putting things wherever. As an example, the weekend before last we had a football party and we took a vegetable tray. He knows where the vegetable tray goes when it's clean, but for some reason after it was washed he set it on top of the fridge where it sat for over a week. The cupboard it goes it is about two feet away from where he put it. Why he didn't just put it away, I'll never know. Anyway, it's hard to keep organized when nobody else will cooperate, so getting my family to cooperate is going to be one of the biggest tackles I have this year.

I also started planning a chore chart. It's still in the planning stages so hopefully that will be done next week. If anyone has any great ideas for what's worked as a chore chart, I would appreciate hearing it.

No Princesses in Our House

Today Amaya watched Cinderella for the first time. She really liked it. During the second time watching it I asked her if she wants to be a princess. She said, "No." I asked her why not. She said, "Because I want to be a cook, and a doctor, and a baseball player, and a golf ball player, and a football player, and a soccer ball player. I want to be all those things." I guess you can tell that we watch a lot of sports in our house.

Tackle It Tuesday

As of right now I am not linked up to 5 Minutes For Mom because their page is all screwed up on my screen so I can't link, but if and when it gets fixed, I'll link up.

This last week for my household goal I tackled the kitchen. We've almost got the kitchen completely clean and organized. I was going to stay up late last night so I could say it was totally done, but I'm not going to push myself. The kitchen was mostly organized because I did that during the summer. I just needed to go through and fix a few small things that had gotten out of place.

The main thing we did was make our kitchen table more usable. Our kitchen is small and our table takes up a lot of room in it. It is a round table and we had one leaf in it. The reason we needed the leaf in it is because our microwave was sitting on one end of it. That was the only place in the kitchen the microwave could fit because our old cabinets come down so low that the only appliances that can fit under them are the toaster and the crock pot. With the microwave on the table it made it hard for all five of us to sit there at the same time, and with the leaf in the table it made the table stick out too far so we were always bumping into the chairs when we would walk by.

We got rid of the microwave (well, we didn't get rid of it yet; it's sitting on our back porch) because it wasn't working right and it took up too much room on our table. We bought a new microwave that is much smaller and can fit on our counter. I tried to take a picture of it but it is stainless steel and black and I couldn't get a good picture without having a reflection of me in it, and it wasn't a pretty sight. Then we took the leaf out of the table to make it smaller and I bought some tablecloth-like material at the fabric store to put on the table to make it look better. Now we can all sit at the table for a meal at the same time. Carson thought that was great. He loves it when we can all eat together, and so do I, so now we can.

I also made up a blank calendar and am using it to schedule my work on. I work outside the home one or two days a week. On those days I'm fine because I have to be somewhere and I have to work while I'm there. It's the rest of the time that I have to do work at home that is a problem. I never feel like working so I put it off until I have to rush to get a job out. Now when I work outside the home, I come home and figure out how long it's going to take me to get the job done. Then I divide it up by a certain number of days and write it down on the calendar. That way I know I have to do a certain amount of work every day so I won't be rushing at the end. Doing it this way for the last week has eliminated a lot of stress for me. Now I can see what I need to do and I can get it done, instead of knowing what I have to do, not feeling like doing, but thinking about it and stressing about it anyway. At this point I only have to work about one to two hours a day and keep up with my work.

As far as my health-related goals I cut out Dr. Pepper and fast food last week. I really didn't miss either one too much. Okay, I missed the Dr. Pepper and I had a couple at a football party we had on Sunday, but at least it was better than having three or four a day all week. I'm not going to cut it out forever. I'll still have it once in a while on special occasions, like football parties, but it won't be a regular thing. I know how unhealthy soft drinks are so I just have to keep thinking about it and try to drink water instead.

I also thought about an exercise program. I've decided what I want to do and how often I want to do it. Thinking about it was enough for last week, though. I'll start doing it this week.

I also bought a new scale. It is really cool. My other scale was the kind with the dial and I would have to adjust it every time I weighed myself and then weigh myself about eight times and take an average because the weight was never the same twice. The new one is glass and has a digital readout. I can even weigh myself in the dark because it lights up. So now I can be depressed in the middle of the night, too.

Here is a picture of it. And, no, I will not take a picture of it with my real weight on it. I promise that if I get to the point where I'm actually happy about my body and not embarrassed, then I will post a picture with my weight on it.

I just have one question. Does it really seem like a good idea to make a scale out of glass, especially when fat people are going to be weighing themselves on it?

The Story Behind the Title of the Mailman Carrying a Man Purse

Yesterday Mike came home from work and told me our mailman carries a man purse. I thought that sounded like a funny title for a post. We have had several sightings of our mailman when he wasn't delivering our mail, and he seems kind of goofy.

Mike's work is across the street from our post office. One day, about a year ago, a mailman came to Mike's work for help because he had locked his keys in his car. I should say that Mike is a locksmith, for those of you that don't know. So Mike walked across the street to unlock the mailman's car. The mailman was very upset about the situation and was working hard to fight back tears. Mike came home and told me what had happened and he was making fun of the mailman for crying just because he locked his keys in his car. I told Mike to quit being so mean. The guy probably had a very bad day and who knows what was going on in his life to make him so upset. We eventually forgot about the whole mailman-locking-his-keys-in-his-car-and-crying situation.

About six months later on a Saturday we were getting ready to go somewhere when our mailman came and delivered our mail. After he walked away Mike proceeded to tell me that our mailman was the mailman that had locked his keys in his car and then cried. Even though we'd had the same mailman for years, Mike had never seen him before. I had to hear the whole story about the keys locked in the car and the crying again.

Since that time we've seen our mailman at different school events because his kids go to the same school as our kids. Every time we see him Mike has to remind me of the time he locked his keys in his car and cried. The story is getting pretty old by now since I've heard it several hundred times now.

Yesterday our mailman came into Mike's work to get some keys made and he was carrying a man purse. He was complaining to Mike that his man purse is always so unorganized that he can never find anything in it. He went on to explain how his wife's purse is bigger than his but that hers is so organized she can find anything in it very quickly. I do have to say that the mailman is the one who called it a man purse, so even though Mike might have made fun of the mailman for crying, he isn't the one who accused the mailman of carrying a man purse. The mailman admitted that on his own.

Another funny fact is that a few years back Mike bought what he called a briefcase to carry to and from work. He would carry his wallet, his sunglasses, his keys and any magazines or books he was reading at the time. Even though he called it a briefcase, I called it what it really was: a man purse.

Our Mailman Carries A Man Purse...

...and he cries when he locks his keys in his car. He does admit that his wife's purse is bigger than his, and hers is more organized. At least he does a good job delivering our mail.

Works For Me Wednesday: Backwards Edition

It's another edition of Works For Me Wednesday: Backwards Edition where, instead of giving a tip, we are supposed to ask for tips.

Since I am in a year-long quest to get my life organized, I am going to ask for organizing advice. I live in a small house, which makes storage space limited. I would like your best organizational tips for small spaces. If you happen to be lucky and live in a huge house and don't have the problem of no storage space, then let me know your best organizational tip for any space. I need all the help I can get.

Head on over to Rocks In My Dryer and give out some of your brilliant advice to other people. You may just find someone that has a question you've been wondering about and you can find out what great advice is being given out.

Tackle It Tuesday

I haven't participated in Tackle It Tuesday for a while because, frankly, I haven't been tackling too much. Since I've decided that 2008 is going to be the year I tackle everything that needs tackling, I'm going to keep track of my towards accomplishing my New Year's Resolution. So every Tuesday I'm going to write about my accomplishments for the past week so I can see my progress in writing.

This past week I started working on daily habits that I need to incorporate into my life to get things running smoother. I started all of these habits on January 2nd and will make these part of my daily routine forever to keep things under control and to start working on my health-related goals.

First I started doing one load of laundry a day. I can't believe what a difference this has made. I used to set aside one day a week for laundry, but something would usually come up that would make it so I couldn't finish and then I would be behind. Once I got behind I could never get caught up. I would be so rushed trying to get a load washed so my kids would have something to wear to school that I would wash and dry them and them dump them in a pile because I didn't have time to fold and put everything away. I have a laundry sorter by my washer and dryer and in the morning I will empty one hamper into it. We have five hampers in our house so I have an order that I empty them in. One day I empty one hamper, the next day the next hamper and so on until each hamper has been emptied. On the sixth day I start over with the first hamper. Then I do the loads in order, too. One day I do dark colors, the next day I do whites and the third day I do light colors. Then I start over with dark colors on day four. First thing in the morning I put the laundry in the washer, and then sometime during the day when I think about it I put it in the dryer, and then later when I think about it again I fold it and put it away. There are no more huge piles of laundry in my bedroom and there is no stress when we are trying to find clothes to wear.

The other habit I've implemented is to comb our dog every day to try to eliminate shedding and dog hair all over my house. So far this has worked great. I've already noticed much less dog hair on my clothes and the floor. I can even pet him without getting hair all over my hand.

As far as health-related goals, I've started to eat breakfast every day, which is something I normally avoid, and I'm not eating after 7:00 p.m. Supposedly breakfast is the most important meal of the day, even though I think dessert is really the most important meal of the day, but I guess I'll defer to the experts on that one. By not eating after 7:00 p.m. hopefully that will help me lose a few pounds and also sleep better. I have acid reflux and eating late is not good for that.

Those are my tackles for the week. Next week I should have some that I can actually take pictures of.

Now I've got to go read what everyone else tackled this week and maybe get some ideas of what to do this next week.

Sleeping is Boring

At least according to Hayden it is. I quite like sleeping myself. I wish I could sleep 12 hours a day.

I Hate Dog Hair

A little over a year ago when we decided we wanted to get a dog for the kids, we planned on getting a small dog that wouldn't shed. When Mike and I went to the animal shelter to find a dog we came across the cutest puppy. He was a Dalmatian/Pointer mix. Of course at the time he was small and cuddly and calm. As we were holding him and checking him out I could tell that he was a shedder, but he was so cute that I fooled myself into thinking it wouldn't be that bad. Boy was I wrong.

For the past year I have been driven nuts by dog hair. Spot is only allowed in certain parts of our house because of his tendency to leave black and white hair everywhere. That doesn't really matter, though, because his hair ends up in areas of the house where he doesn't go. Last week we went to my mom's house for dinner. After dinner we decided to play Yahtzee. When we opened up my mom's Yahtzee game, there were a few of Spot's hairs in it. Like I said, his hair gets everywhere.

A while back at a pet store I saw a comb for animals that cost $60. I thought that was a bit expensive for a comb. We didn't buy it. After a few more months of being overrun with dog hair, I decided to find out if the $60 comb was really worth it, so I went on the internet to the pet store's website and read the reviews on it. The praise for the comb was overwhelming, so the next day we went and bought it. It did happen to be on sale so we only paid $54 for it, but it was still hard to fork over that much money for a comb.

We brought it home and tried it out. The thing is amazing! It gets so much hair off of Spot with each pass I can't believe it. The first time I used it I filled up a small shopping bag with his hair. He loves being combed by it. Every time he sees it he gets all excited and just can't contain himself. I've been combing him every day with it and I can actually pet him now without my hand getting covered with hair. Now my house might actually stay clean more than five minutes after I vacuum.



By the way, the miracle comb is called The Furminator.

My New Year's Resolution

I figure it's time to put my New Year's Resolution down in writing. I've been thinking about it for a few weeks. I am like most people who make New Year's Resolutions in that I make my resolutions with the idea of being perfect on January 1st (or 2nd if I'm easy on myself) and then not being perfect at them and giving them up within the first week. This time I have a different method of actually accomplishing my resolution. I am not trying to be perfect at it from the first day; I am giving myself until December 31, 2008, to have it accomplished. That way I don't have the pressure to be perfect. I am giving myself a whole year to get it down. I only have one resolution for the year, too.
It is to:

GET MY SHIT ACT TOGETHER

Now, to be honest, that does include quite a bit of stuff that I need to work on. Basically, by December 31, 2008, I just want my life to run smoother and less stressful than it does now. The year 2007 was the most hectic and unorganized year of my life, and I can't take it anymore. I normally am a very low stress person, but during 2007 I had a lot of stress due to a variety of things, but mostly just from being disorganized. When I talk about being unorganized I'm talking about my house and my time. It takes me forever to find things. We are always late to everything, except work and school, because it is just so hard to get out of the house with everything everybody needs. My schedule is non-existent. I just fly by the seat of my pants and it's not working for me. There are three main areas I'm going to work on:

• Getting my house and my schedule organized
• Getting my health under control
• Having more fun with my kids

As far as getting my house and my schedule organized some of the things I'm going to do are:

• Each day I'm going to do at least one project in my house, whether it be as simple as organize a drawer or replace a light bulb that has been out too long, or a larger project that may take several days, like painting a room.
• Use the calendar on the wall and the calendar in my Daytimer faithfully so we're not surprised by anything.
• Put a schedule in place for cleaning so the house stays in order easily.

As far as getting my health under control some of the things I'm going to do are:

• Make healthy choices when I'm eating.
• Do a menu plan each week so I'm not tempted to go eat out.
• Start exercising.

As far as having more fun with my kids some of the things I'm going to do are:

• When I see some event in the community that I want to go to with the kids write it on my calendar and actually do it instead of just thinking how fun it would be and never doing it. This doesn't mean we'll be spending a lot of money because there are tons of fun free events to go to.
• Go to the library more. The kids love going there. I love going there. We just kind of go through spurts of going a lot and then spurts of not going a lot. We need to set aside maybe one day a week and just go.
• Start buying some more craft supplies so when my kids come to me with a project they want to do instead of saying, "Maybe we can go to the store on the weekend and get the stuff to do it," and then never doing it, we will have more things on hand to do fun stuff.

I really think as the year goes on and I become more organized everything will slowly fall into place.

I really feel like I can be successful with my resolution this year because I'm approaching it with a different attitude. I know I'm not going to be perfect, and that's fine. Okay, that was really hard for me to say. I do know that it takes time to develop new habits so by implementing new things every week throughout the year they will become good habits by the end of the year.

I'm not even stressed out that I am almost a week behind on starting. I've been sick this week and couldn't do a lot. Normally, since I would have already blown it, I would quit, but I'm just getting started.

I did implement two habits this week having to do with the healthy part of my resolution. I am eating breakfast every day and I am not eating past 7:00 p.m. It has been really easy so far. I've also implemented one household habit. I'm doing one load of laundry a day, which means washing it, drying it, folding it and putting it away instead of washing it, drying it and dumping it in my bedroom in a big pile. It was so nice this week for the kids to have easily findable clothes for school instead of my putting a load of laundry in at 11:00 at night so they would have something to wear.

I hope everybody else who has resolutions has success with them, and if not, don't be too hard on yourself. If you mess up, don't quit, just start over. It's never too late.

Happy New Year!

I survived the holiday season. I think the only reason I survived is because I was extremely lazy. Normally I bake a ton of cookies and some chocolate banana peanut bread. I didn't bake anything, except for the cookies for Santa, and I used an extremely easy recipe. If it wasn't for the kids I wouldn't have done that. Normally for all the different parties we go to I make really nice food dishes to take that will impress people. This year I made the easiest recipes I could find, and they still impressed people. Normally I start right around December 1st and get out numerous boxes of decorations and decorate everything. This year I looked in a couple of boxes and picked out a few of my favorite things and put them out. Normally we go buy our Christmas tree, always real, put the lights on it and decorate it with so many ornaments you can barely see the tree. This year we got our tree and set it up. A week later we put the lights on it. As I was out shopping I bought a few new ornaments. As I bought new ornaments I put them on the tree. As the kids brought home things they made at school we put them on the tree. That was it. Our tree, which is still up as I write this, has less than 20 ornaments on it. I didn't get out our advent calendars and have the kids do them as they do every year. I planned on making a gingerbread house with the kids but we didn't get around to it.

Now it might sound like I'm depressed about everything, but I'm not. Actually it was one of the most stress-free holidays I've ever had. We went to a lot of fun parties. We drove around and looked at Christmas lights. We went and saw Santa and then went to lunch at our favorite restaurant. We lit candles that smelled like candy canes and Christmas trees. We visited neighbors and took them presents. We watched Christmas shows on TV. We had a lot of fun.

I've realized that I need to go through all my Christmas decorations and get rid of the ones I really don't like. (I just had to take a quick break and kiss Amaya's big toe because she hurt it.) I liked having less decorations up; although I normally want more than we put up this year. I need to go through the Christmas tree ornaments and get rid of the ones I don't like. There aren't many because over the years I only buy ones I like, but I do have some that were handed down that I've never liked but I keep them anyway because I would feel guilty getting rid of them. Not anymore. I just want to get rid of anything I don't like.

We went to a few different family Christmas parties and had a great time hanging out with everyone. Some people we haven't seen since last year, and some people we have never seen before, like Mike's cousin's daughter's mother, who was/is, I'm not sure which, a prostitute. She seemed like a very nice lady, and her daughter, who is being raised by grandparents, was very excited to have her there. Even though everyone that was there knows that she was/is a prostitute, everybody treated her like a part of the family, even though she's never really been part of the family before. That's what Christmas is all about. You get together with family and friends and don't judge each other, just have a great time and eat some great food.

We had a get together at my Mom's house about two weeks before Christmas because my brother and his wife were in town. We had a great time and the kids love seeing them. Unfortunately, my sister-in-law's grandpa died so they had to leave a few days early so she could make arrangements to fly to Mexico for the funeral. He was very old and had lived a good life.

We went to Mike's family's Christmas party and had a great time. We bring white elephants to that party and it is always fun. I know that white elephants are supposed to be goofy presents, so I don't understand when people bring really nice things and are disappointed when they get a dumb present. It's really funny, though. In years past some of the presents we've brought were: burnt cookies, a coconut head from Mexico, skin that Mike's snake shed and a fruitcake that was a few years old. This year I ended up getting a really nice tool set but Mike's mom's cousin took it from me. Then some cousin of some kind took it from Mike's cousin. I got stuck with some candy that was in a little box that was supposed to be a tackle box and the candy looked like bait and sinkers and other fishing-related items. I wasn't sure whether to be excited because I got candy or be disappointed because the candy was five years old. Luckily it was new so I ate the chocolate and threw the rest away. But, in keeping with my new organizing mindset, I saved the box they came in and now I use it to keep Amaya's hair accessories sorted out, so that was a bonus.

We went to my mom's on Christmas Eve and had dinner and let the kids open a few presents. My sister and her family were there and the kids had a great time and played together great.

Christmas morning the kids got up and opened their presents. My mom came over early so she could see them open their presents from Santa and then she went to my sister's house for a while to see her kids.

At about noon we went to Mike's mom and dad's and ate brunch and opened some presents and hung out with his brother's family and his other brother, who is about 35 but acts like a 12-year-old. The good thing about him is he has a ton of toys that my 3-, 5- and 8-year-old kids love, so he's got that going for him. That's about the only he has going for him, but that's a whole other story.

Around 5:00 on Christmas Day we went to my mom's for a party with friends. We don't have any family that live near us so it's a good thing we have a lot of friends. We had a lot of fun visiting with people and eating and playing games with the kids and eating and visiting some more and eating some more.

On New Year's Eve we stayed home. For about 10-15 years we went to New Year's Eve party that was really fun. There was a lot of good food and we could bring our kids and there were other kids there to keep them entertained. Years ago Mike and I would drive to my mom and dad's house and pick them up and go to the party. After the party we would drive back to my mom and dad's house (I'm always the designated driver) and then we would sleep there because (1) I was too tired to drive all the way home, and (2) the less amount of time we were on the road with drunk people the better. One year as we were driving home we saw that a car had been hit by a train. The police and ambulances were there. We wondered what had happened as we drove home. I woke up fairly early the next morning, since I was the only one that didn't drink and didn't have a hangover, and the phone rang. It was a friend of my mom's who told me that a neighbor's daughter had been killed in the train accident. She was 19 years old and two boys were killed along with her. I used to babysit her when she was young. It was very sad. The strange thing about it is that there was no alcohol involved. These were very good kids who had gone to a party with friends and had decided to go somewhere else. They were en route to their next destination. There was a car load of their friends in front of them and none of them saw the train. The road ran parallel to the tracks, had a sharp turn to the right where it crossed the tracks and then had a sharp turn to the left and ran parallel to the tracks again. There was only a stop sign at the stop, no lights and no arms that came down. The first car didn't see the train and they passed right in front of it. The second car didn't see the train and drove in front of it and was hit. After that the road was closed. Years earlier, something like 50 years or more, a school bus full of kids pulled in front of a train at that very spot and a bunch of them were killed. Very sad. Sorry, I got sidetracked for a minute. Anyway, the people who have always had the New Year's Eve party decided not to do it anymore last year so we just stayed home with the kids last year and this year. This year my mom came over for a while and we had a delicious dinner of stuffed salmon and crab legs. It was so good. Then we played games with the kids for a while. At about 10:30 I drove my mom home. Yes, I'm still the designated drive even when I'm at my own house and could drink if I wanted to. I guess someone's got to be the responsible one. Amaya went to bed at about 11:00 and Carson almost did, too, but I talked him into eating a yummy dessert to wake him up. We all made it to midnight and then we promptly went to bed. We had a good time and it was nice not having to drive home so late at night.

I hope everyone had a good holiday season and a fun New Year's Eve. I am looking forward to the new year because I have a lot of plans, goals, resolutions, whatever you want to call them, but I'll talk about that later.