My Own Medicine

I can't count how many times I've cleaned our playroom in the last month. At least 4- and not just 'quick pick ups'. We're talking HOURS long cleaning sessions with all three kids that include crying, frustration and throwing fits. The kids don't like them much either!

EVERY TIME I make the kids help so that they know how much work it is to clean up. EVERY TIME they promise me that this time they'll put their toys and games away before choosing another. EVERY TIME I believe them, and they don't come through.

This week I got fed up with it, stuck the three fighting, outdoor-starved kids in the playroom and shut the the door. When it was clean (cleaner) they could come out. They argued for the first three hours, then banded together to defeat me in the easiest way possible, without actually cleaning of course. What can I say... they are MY kids after all.

They sent Boo out since she's the baby. At just barely 3 she expressed the message (from her brother and sister) that they shouldn't have to clean their mess if I don't clean my mess. Damn, I knew that was going to catch up to me somehow! Fortunately she cited my messy bedroom instead of any other dreaded area. I calmly told her that I made that mess, so I will clean it. I won't clean HER mess in the playroom any longer.

Today I made good. I went down to the dungeon my bedroom and paced around confused about where to even start. I eventually decided to collect all the laundry since it's the biggest problem in there. I collected garbage, brought up dishes, kept the wash going, sorted clothes to donate, FINALLY put extra less used clothes in our new dressers, made the bed and vacuumed. It took me ALL morning, but I am SO glad that I did it. I never realized how much I avoided hanging out in there until it was clean again.

My bed was calling me to lie down with a good book and enjoy my work. Unfortunately I still had the three (arguing) amigos and a thrashed playroom to deal with. Every part of me wants to go in the playroom and just clean it myself. It would take an hour- tops. Then I won't have to stress about it anymore. But then they win. And I lose. And that sucks.

Do you think Maury Povich has a boot camp for unruly preschoolers who aren't smoking and drinking but could use a kick in the booty? Like a Bootcamp Lite? I'm SO checking into it...

A Thick Blue Line

File this under CRAP THAT COULD ONLY POSSIBLY HAPPEN TO ME.

It's been super rainy here for a while and the rainy weather causes my kids to fight and causes me to be extra lazy. Yesterday I got a whoosh of motivation and decided to rearrange the furniture in my living room. Who knows, maybe it will send me on a wild cleaning spree around my whole house! I even got the vacuum out which is impressive since we broke up two weeks ago...

Ok, step one. Move the recliner across the room to put the couch in its spot. Easy enough. Here we go... PULL!!! I drag the recliner ten feet across the room to it's new home. I stand up and see THIS... (make sure you click to blow up the photo so you can see it in all its glory!)



WTF!? The line was so perfect that at first I thought a marker must have been uncapped, upside-down, in the perfect position to draw a freaking line on my floor. Then I saw it. A blue crayon.

I dare you to go right now and draw a line that thick on your carpet with a crayon. Try it, go ahead. I'll wait.

*taps foot*

Are you back? It's next to impossible, right?! Unless you're really strong, and in that case I'm not responsible for damages. Sorry!

Apparently there was a crayon in the perfect spot under the foot of the chair, and as I dragged it across the living room it was caught in a perfect storm of crappy. A whole lot of scientific stuff went down with molecules and friction and equations and dog hair and the crayon MELTED into that nice blue line on my living room floor.

I freaked out and started running around like a crazy lady (not so unusual I suppose) trying to find ANYTHING that will erase this from my life. When all else fails pour water on it... or something like that. I sucked up the water with my carpet cleaner (it doesn't work well enough to use it like it's intended) and panicked. The blue color had just spread a few inches on either side and now I had a wider (but less blue) line on the floor. SHIZNIT!!

Ok, take 2... I came up with a cocktail of really hot water mixed with vinegar and doused the blue beast. I let it sit for a few minutes, and sucked up the water. Success!! Kinda...

I'm still not sure if there is blue residue left over on the teal carpet, or if the rest of the teal carpet is so dirty that the clean spot looks really bright, but I'm choosing to ignore either situation. I never thought I'd want to thank my 19 year old self for picking TEAL carpet, but I guess this is the one situation where teal seems like a good idea. Maybe I'll just put a couch over the spot and forget about it. Everyone loves a couch 2 feet from the tv, right!?

Another One Ignores The Dust

I woke up this morning, got the laundry going, and made my bed. I came upstairs, made breakfast, rinsed the dishes, started cleaning the counters, and cuddled my babies. I got out my chore box, made a new list of the stuff that needs to get done and washed the table.

I'm not sure what happened after that since I must have blacked out, but 5 hours later I'm sitting on my couch with an empty Pringles can watching TV in my jammies.

Shiznit. Better luck tomorrow I guess!

Do's and Don'ts of Dishes

I just read this article that was on the Yahoo home page about how 'pre-rinsing' dishes before running them through the dishwasher was a waste of water and time.

You have NO idea how much I wish that to be true, but I just don't buy it. I've tried all the time occasionally to stick yucky dishes in the dishwasher in the hope that my life would be changed by my magically clean dishes, and I could shout from the rooftops "Kenmore CHANGED MY LIFE!!". It hasn't happened yet. Instead I open the dishwasher to newly cemented crusties where last night's dinner was before. Then I get the extra special chore of jackhammering the crap off with a butter knife just to pre-rinse, then wash again. How much water does THAT waste "experts"??

The whole thing makes me want to take some nasty dishes to Lowes and make them run me a sample load before I buy a new dishwasher. Or maybe I want an excuse to make someone else wash my dishes... you decide! Why should I need a new dishwasher anyway!? Our dishwasher is a mere 6 years old, and again, according to the "experts" it shouldn't matter if my dishwasher is run by a hand crank- I still shouldn't have to pre-rinse.

I'm still VERY grateful to even have a dishwasher since it decided to take a vacation a few months ago, but for Yahoo to get me all excited with a "Dishes Habit To Avoid" headline is just mean... or maybe my head read it as "Dishes IS A Habit To Avoid". In that case I would have printed it out for Mr. Wright when he wondered why the house smelled like dinner from Tuesday!

What's your dishes policy? Pre-rinse? No pre-rinse? Come to my house and pre-rinse?

Let me know!

Dirty Little Secrets

My first dirty little secret is that I JUST realized it's Friday- whoops! Mr. Wright has his days off during the week so I never know what day it is during the summer.

I've gained 3 pounds this week from eating mass amounts of broccoli and rice... smothered in cheese... prepackaged... and swimming in sodium. What? They're REALLY good!

I filled up half of my new DVR with movies from Starz that I recorded just to watch over and over.

There are 10 loads of unfolded laundry on Mr. Wright's poker table. I should probably be folding them right now... hmmm, maybe later.

Our 50 inch plasma TV exploded this morning and I'm PRAYING that it wasn't all the dust all over it that did it in. And I'm scared that Mr. Wright is never going to be complete again without his baby.

I still don't have any desire to dust anything else as a precautionary measure.

We're spending the night at my parent's house in 2 hours and I haven't packed anything. And I can't pack because I haven't folded the laundry. And I haven't folded the laundry because I'm watching the movies on my DVR. See how I just spiral myself into laziness!?

What's your dirty little secret? I promise I won't tell!

Procrastination

I should be doing dishes, calling Dish Network, folding laundry, washing more laundry, clearing off the table, bringing in the trash can, putting my kids down for a nap, de-cluttering, blogging about something useful, cleaning off the counters, brushing the dog, mowing the lawn and a few other things.

Instead I'm sitting on the couch, in my jammies, watching the US Open. (Also known as Annual Bor-Fest 2010) I did get 250 pieces of a 300 piece Hannah Montana puzzle done with Sweetie Pie this morning, so that's something. That thing was harder than it looked!

Before & After!

I'm so lame today that I'm posting an OLD before and after... maybe it will inspire me to clean something. Doubt it, but it could happen! I was really inspired to clean today when it was sunny- I even made my bed today! Now the clouds have rolled in and my motivation has packed up its crap with the sun.

These photos are from the end of May right after this post. Sorry, no exciting photos of the garbage collection or phone calls!

Here's my entryway a few weeks ago before cleaning:
(It's like an I spy! I spy a clorox mop, backpack, 239843 shoes...)


And here's my entryway a few weeks ago after cleaning:
(Ahhh! The same amount of light is coming in, but it just looks lighter and brighter!)


The entryway currently is in between the two, but thankfully closer to the second than the first.

Wait... maybe I'm starting to feel a little inspired. Maybe? Yes!...uh...maybe?...nope. It's gone now- Whew! That was close!

Paint Party

Ok, so I have another Dirty Little Secret... I hate paint. My poor kids rarely get to paint, and when they do we stick to watercolors. Even that takes DAYS to totally clean off every single surface that they touched. Sooooo.... I don't allow paint in the house. You know, because it's always spotless anyway! Uh, yeah. Moving on!

I saw this great idea at Little Hands, Big Work to put some paint in a sealed ziplock bag and 'draw' letters in it. I really wanted to try it, but due to my selective OCD I don't own any paint.

Luckily my mom and I has some free time to hit some yard sales on Saturday and while they were super disappointing in general I did come across this ONE thing- 6 big bottles of paint for a whole dollar.



They were so excited to see the paint, and even more excited when I started filling gallon bags with their favorite colors. I'm still me so I skipped the colored paper beneath it that she had on the blog, but they still thought it was really fun!

Little Man loves green, so he practiced his letters with the green bag.



Boo wanted blue and yellow and was more into feeling the paint squish between her hands than drawing letters.



And Sweetie Pie wanted to make purple, but took her time marbling the colors together slowly.



They played with them for 20-ish minutes this morning when we made them, but have picked them up and played for a few minutes at least 10 times already today. And the best part? NO clean up!!

Dirty Little Secrets

Welcome to this week's edition of my Dirty Little Secrets! Don't tell anyone... mmmkay!?

I've been letting my kids stay up WAY too late just because I haven't had the energy to do the bedtime routine.

I bought those crappy cheesy peanut butter sandwich crackers for my kids and ate most of them.

I'm addicted to entertainment headlines. I check People.com at least twice a day like a stalker.

We've eaten macaroni and cheese from a box two nights this week.

I haven't cleaned the kids' bathtub in months.

I watched Hannah Montana: The Movie this morning and cried at one part. I'm such a freaking baby!

I had 200 photos printed in the hopes that I would feel like scrapbooking, but I still don't.

Uhhh, I think that's it. I don't have as many when I keep up with the dishes & laundry! :D

What's your dirty little secret? Share in the comments!

A Whole Lot Of Random

I've been SOOOOO busy and I have so much going on at once that I just haven't had time to even play Facebook games! I'm not sure if it's related or not but I did see this when I logged onto Yahoo today:



Coincidence!?

It's good to know that Farm Town, Social City and Restaurant City are missing me as much as I miss them! I have gotten a few things done off my never ending to do list though. I finally got the play room TOTALLY clean, and have checked it every hour since then to make sure it stays clean. I got 8 2-liter soda bottles cleaned out and filled with emergency water. I almost kept up with the laundry and I have been relatively keeping up with the dishes. Oh, and I threw a tiny party for Boo's 3rd birthday.

Now that I type it out it seems pretty pathetic for a whole week's worth of stuff, but I felt like I've been trying hard. I'm going to link this post up to a whole bunch of stuff to hopefully get some new readers and re-inspire me to get off my butt and get blogging again. I have easily 15 posts in my head that I need to get written but just haven't had the motivation. Soooo, welcome if you haven't been here before, and look forward to some new posts if you're a regular reader!

I'm going for a record of participating in the most blog carnivals in one day EVER, lol!









Thanks for stopping by!

Seeing Red

Yesterday I was busy cooking dinner with Mr. Wright while the kids played outside. They play outside ALL THE TIME with no incident, but this time the 10 year old neighbor girl was playing with them.

I would normally assume that having a 10 year old with them was a good thing, but this time it turned out to be not so good. I don't want to blame anything on her since my kids were also covered in red spray paint, but some of the "art" was a bit too accurate for my 6 year old to have created. I checked on them periodically while I was making dinner and they were happily playing in the water table.

Little did I know that they were so enthused with the water table because they were trying to get the fire engine red paint off their hands. They had gotten the spray paint from our paint shelf in the garage (that's been there since they were babies and they have NEVER even given it a second look) and decided to decorate my house, their playhouse, their water table and a folding chair that was outside. WITH RED FREAKING SPRAY PAINT!

Luckily there was only one small spot on my green house, and I faded it a lot with a Magic Eraser, but they still used spray paint at 5 & 6 years old. I flew outside like the house was on fire and immediately sent them to their rooms. I glared at the neighbor girl for not mentioning this little activity to me and stormed into my house.

The kids ate dinner and had to sit on their beds until bedtime, which of course is the worst thing that I could possibly EVER do to them. I lectured them on making good choices, knowing right from wrong, yada, yada, yada. Then today happened...

I'll skip the details so this isn't a 12 page novel, but I found out that they stole 3 Hershey's bars from my in-laws motor home and hid them in Sweetie Pie's sweatshirt until they could get home and eat them in secrecy. It's SO stupid because if they had asked they would have gotten 12 candy bars, I'm sure, but since they had to take them they got in tons of trouble.

I'm SICK of punishing, and I'm sick of my kids being the hellions that I dreaded having before I had kids.

They don't make enough Butterfingers to get me through this week...