Category Archives: household managment

Clothesline

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I have been using a clothesline for a few months now. PIC hung it in our unfinished basement. I used it to dry our Levi’s, and I have really liked it. I figure that any electricity I wasn’t using was a few pennies saved on our electric bill, and that is always a good thing.

With the beautiful spring weather and warm days I was anxious to put my clothesline outside in the back yard so I could really use it. I have visions of crisp sheets waving in the summer breeze. On Saturday PIC moved the clothes line outside and I could hardly wait to use it for my Monday washing day.

Monday dawned cold and cloudy

not great weather for drying clothes!

The rain was wonderful for my flowers and veggies.

There is something that is so beautiful and refreshing about a spring rain storm

Although, the rain drops were the only thing that hung from my clothes line that day.

Oh well, there will always be another day

and so many more loads of laundry!

The Spring Clean

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I am finally back to my SPRING clean. It has been a wet, rainy day around here, so my flowers and gardens weren’t calling to me and things were really quiet around here for a few hours, so I decide to TACKLE a couple of cupboards.
Here are a couple of before shots. I am famous for just shoving things into cupboards. Each item has a specific cupboard they belong in, and each cupboard has a theme, I am just not so good at put things away neatly!

I also DECIDED that I wanted to participate for the first time in “Making your Home a Haven Monday” over at http://www.biblicalwomanhoodonline.com/blog.htm so I needed to take some before and after pictures.

Here are the “before pictures”

When we moved in 7 years ago this shelf (picture below) was never installed. I finally got around to alerting PIC of the problem and he had it fixed in about 30 minutes I really should have had him do that sooner…hmmmm.


TAAADAAA!!!
Here are the after pictures. I threw away some stuff, but mainly I just put things in a proper order. The trick will be keeping it that way! HA!


 For more ideas and pictures of what other ladies have done head over to Biblical Womanhood http://www.biblicalwomanhoodonline.com/blog.htm

Oh the Joys

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There is something about the breath of fresh spring air that whispers to me “clean your house”. Isn’t that funny, I think most people do some type of spring cleaning. For me it varies from year to year on how much and what I do. Last year I did no spring cleaning, I had a very small baby and just getting the daily dishes done was chore enough for me! I had also just done a major cleaning in January (with the help of my wonderful husband and two brothers) right before the baby came.
There is just something about finally opening the windows after being hunkered down all winter that makes me want to knock down the cob webs and scrub the base boards.
So this week I started my project of spring cleaning my house! I have decided that I am not going to rush myself, I don’t want to try to do it all in one or two exhausting days, I am going to do it slowly in the next few weeks. That way I won’t skimp trying to get it done. I have first started on the kitchen, it gets a lot of traffic, so I felt it needed it the most. So far I have scrubbed all the base boards with a small scrub brush, to get the yuckies out of the tiny corners. It is amazing to me how just the act of cleaning base boards makes the whole room look better. I washed the wall in the dining area, a one year old in a high chair surely does a number on walls. Four active little girls, makes for a lot of dirty finger prints. I washed my table really, really well with wood soap. I got all the cracks and little hidden places. I really need to oil and wax it, a lot of the wood doesn’t have a finish on it, but I will save that for another day. I washed the back patio door and dusted the walls and ceiling. I did the base boards in the kitchen too, washing the cabinet doors as I went a long, I got the corners with a tooth brush, I didn’t realise how dirty they get until my eyes were right there! I also did under the stove. That was my first days work, and the kitchen already looks so much nicer and cleaner. I swear it is starting to sparkle.

Yesterday I worked on my kitchen cabinets, the top ones anyway. I took everything out a cabinet at a time and wiped the shelves out and rearranged things a bit. I packed away all my baby bottles (cry) to give to the next person in my family that has their first baby. I threw away or gave away a lot of dishes that I haven’t’ used and got rid of a lot of little odds and ends. I wiped off the fronts of the cabinets, they weren’t too dirty, mainly dusty, the wood soap gave them all a nice sheen.

Today I took a break from the kitchen, the rest of the house was feeling neglected! On Monday I will be back working on the kitchen. I will be cleaning out the lower cabinets.
I love the feeling of a clean house.

Wish me luck in the next month as I plow through this house one job at a time!!!

I Have a Confession

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So I am not perfect. I like to think I am trying, and that I am getting nearer to perfect. Last week I think I took several steps away from perfect. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I was so tired, I think I could have slept all day long! I had NO motivation, and it was so hard to get myself to do anything!

Here is a perfect example:

I am a very structured person, I have a hard time when my routine is interrupted, and if I get “off schedule” it is very extremely hard to get me back to where I need to be. I don’t do well with surprises. I am not a very spontaneous person. Kind of boring really.

On Monday, I do laundry, I get it all done and folded. On Tuesday I get it all put away and ironed. I do this almost every week. I dedicate my Mondays to laundry, it works for me, and it gets done.

See that big pile of laundry. That is what my living room looked like on Friday afternoon. I have all of my whites, socks, underwear, Levis and misc laundry to fold, it is Friday. I have all those hanging clothes of my girls to hang up, it is Friday. I have done zero, zip, nada, ziltch iorning…again…it is Friday.

Sigh, I just didn’t have the energy!

Oh and I dyed ALL of mine and PIC’s white “underwear” a very bright beautiful pink color! THAT is another story…!!

Running a Household

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I read once that a 7 year old girl should be able to run a household. When I first read that I thought “yeah, right!” It did set me to thinking that maybe my girls can do more than I think they can. Maybe not a fast or as well as I do, but they can do it, and if I don’t give them chances to try how will they ever learn.

On Monday night we had a little escape incident with some “pets”. My Partner in Crime collects and keeps scorpions. He has just finished building and moving his little pets into a new enclosure (http://biohazard-blog.blogspot.com/2008/02/tropical-scorpion-enclosure.html) and when I went down stairs Monday afternoon I realized that two were missing. (AAAAAAA) I closed the door to his office and didn’t say anything to the little girls (none of them are deathly poisonous, they just give you a nice sting and look scary). When PIC got home that night he took apart his enclosure looking for any small space that the buggies could have gotten into.

I ate dinner with the kids while PIC was attending to his pets and told the girls I was going to go help Dad, and to be good!

I went downstairs and helped for about an hour, when I was done helping I came upstairs to a wonderful surprise. My #2 punk decided to “play mom”. This is what she did. She bathed the three little kids, including the baby, got them in their pajamas and had them brush their teeth. She read with the 5 year old, and tucked the two little girls in bed, after saying prayers with them. She rocked and sang to the baby, kissed him, and put him to bed. She picked up the living room, putting everybody’s personal items on the chair “just like you do mom” so we could all put our “stuff” away. She cleared the dinner table, wiped it off, and put the center piece back on. She stopped at the dishes telling me “I didn’t want to play washing dishes”. I was blown away! She really did run the house! She is almost 8 (on Saturday) and she did almost everything I did, maybe things were a little rough around the edges, details come with practice, but she did a wonderful job! S I guess maybe I am teaching my daughters the art of running a home.

We did find the bugs by the way. One had fallen into the water at the bottom of the terrarium and lived (they are strange animals) the other was found back in a corner of the office closet. Mike has since changed the buggy set up.