Feelings of Accomplishment

I am feeling rather accomplished and proud today. I have finally gotten through to my husband that I need help around here, and it is going to happen whether he likes it or not. I got all the dishes cleaned and caught up on, and I refuse to let them get behind again. If my husband fills any with water, I stand over him until he washes them himself. I have demonstrated to him my concept of rinsing dishes with hot water instead of "soaking" them and how much more effective it is. Needless to say, he finally saw my point of view. (Now if only I can get rid of that nasty smell coming up from the sink drain.)

I have also finalized (for now) the chore list and system that hubby, Mack, and I are going to follow daily from now on. I spent an entire night deciding on the chores, frequency needed, and who can do what. I know I talked about using Chore Buster awhile ago, but that will only work if you already have everyone pitching in with the chores. No one was before, so I had to get a system in place first.

After a whole night of debating, categorizing, and analyzing I have come up with a solution.

This is a picture of the Family Chore list I posted on our fridge. Each person has their own set of chores, and even a few days off. I had to create it in a way that was fitting to their activity spans now, so as you can see my husband only has one chore a day and one day off completely. Then Mack has between 1 and 3 chores a day with the weekends off (because she spends time at her Grandma's). I know you can see that I got the sh** end, because I have at least one chore everyday and a few days I have 4 chores. However it's easy because I like dishes done a certain way, and everyone has to wash their own dishes anyways. So, really my chore of "washing dishes" entails my own dishes and any meal dishes (pots, pans, etc.). Having it written like this though and already having everyone trained to follow through and wash their own plates and stuff, they don't notice my little loophole *wink* So don't tell them.

Do you have a chore list for your family? Does it work? How is it set up?

My Struggle With Depression Goes On

This is an old post that I never published.

I am still struggling through my feelings of daily depression. I thought that moving to a newer, cleaner, better apartment would have ended most of my troubles. Unfortunately, it hasn't and I am beginning to see that most of my troubles are actually stemming from something besides my environment and money issues. I am discovering that my husband is behind a lot of my woes.

Not to bash him 100% here, but he does try and help me around the house once in awhile. However it is his lackadaisical habits that have me ripping my hair out right now. We have gotten through our money talks and he has agreed to give me all income and let me sort it out, which is a giant step for him and his 'spending issues.' Now if only I can get him to either not touch my kitchen, or clean up after himself in there, I would be all set.

Of course, every woman's dream man, right?

But honestly, how hard is it to clean up after yourself, guys? Since moving into this new apartment, I have busted my butt to keep up on the dishes each and every day. Then my one night that I talked about a little while ago, where I felt like doing nothing, resulted in a pile of dishes filled with gross water in the sink.

My husband's philosophy on dishes is that if you fill them up with water to "soak" then they are easier to wash. Ok, this may be true if the dishes are days old, with lots of caked on food. However if they are less then 2 hours old, all you have to do is blast them with hot water for about 30 seconds and the scrub with a sponge. Voila. Simple, done, finito.

But no, not him. And I have an issue (and he knows this) about touching dishes that are filled with gross, cold water and been sitting for awhile. However I have still been keeping up on any and all dishes that I use personally, plus I will wash one or two that I am not so grossed out about at the same time.

Unfortunately, any effort I make is not enough, and is always cut shorter when my husband steps into the kitchen. (For example, I had washed a bowl I used for lunch today, and he dropped some chocolate syrup on it while it was drying on the counter. Instead of quickly washing it or rinsing it, he dumps it in the sick and fills it with water! Why?)

Is anyone out there in the same boat as me? Have you and your husband gotten through something like this? If so, please let me know of some pointers. I am at a loss.

Decluttering ~ Day 4

If you saw me on Twitter today, then you should know about most of my progress. Oh and I have to share my ChoreBuster chores for the day:

1. Cook Breakfast & Lunch
2. Declutter House
3. Wash dishes

"Declutter house" is set to occur every 7 days, and I did not choose a start date but ironically it randomly chose today's date and me to start with. LOL.

Anywho... I had an hour of energy this morning and was able to downsize 1 giant box and 3 laundry baskets of random clothes that came over last night from the old apartment to only 2 laundry baskets (small ones) of clothes to keep. The rest will be going over to Salvation Army first thing tomorrow (they are closed today, and we just had a snow storm last night so we didn't want to leave it outside overnight).

I am also purging a small tupperware container filled with old McDonald's toys I collected as a kid (Barbies and Pokemon), two purses, and all my old Halloween outfits (yes, I kept all of them for years).

Now we are off to have dinner at a friend's house tonight. They have been helping us move, and still offer more. Once we get the house, food, etc in order over here, we will be inviting them over. Also, I am going to write a thank you note to the wife's work, Wild Side Florist. They so generously offered up the services of their delivery van and gas yesterday to help us do a day's worth of moving!

Decluttering ~ Day 3

I didn't post anything yesterday on my decluttering efforts simply because my camera died, so I could not take a pic of my efforts. However, I would like to post saying that I did end up purging two large black trashbags filled with old clothes from myself, my son, and my daughter. (The hubs barely has any clothes to begin with.)

So, keeping that in mind here I am at Day 3 and this is what has gone on today.

Hubby dragged over some more things from the old apartment, and put most of them in the kitchen instead of in the basement as per our plan. So, now I have 2 large bins, 2 large boxes, 2 boxes of baby clothes and 3 laundry baskets worth of things to go through.

I tackled the smallest and quickest thing first, the baby clothes. Hubby found these, I guess, in one of the closets at the old apartment and they contain lots of things given to me while I was still pregnant and working by an ex-coworker. I never even opened up the boxes! Needless to say, some of the items were too small for my son, however I was surprised to come across quite a few that actually did fit him.

So out of 2 diaper boxes stuffed full of baby things, I have resorted and will be keeping barely one box worth of it all. The rest will be brought over to Salvation Army first thing in the morning.

Chores Made Fair

Last night, I worked real hard on coming up with a chore list for the new apartment, so that hubby and I can keep up on all the in's and out's and keep this place looking spic and span. I didn't want it to be too complex and as fair as possible, so we alternated most chores and each had our own chores (i.e. he empties the cat box because I am pregnant and can't, while I pay the bills because I don't trust him too LOL).

Then I sat down with him (while he was playing one of his video games, so I didn't really have his full attention), and asked what he thought and if it was fair enough. I got a quick read through and an 'Uh hmm,' as if that was supposed to really give me the feedback I needed. Then I tried to ask if he thought I had forgotten anything, but the answer to that was a very simple and quick 'Nope.' But of course, after thinking for a few minutes and looking around the house some more, I had forgotten some things and proceeded to add them.

Then this morning, I woke really early (4:00 AM) and could not get back to sleep, so after some quick cleaning and toy pickup, I decided to do some Internet surfing. With the chore list still fresh in my mind from last night, I decided to read up on some household organization tips and such. Throughout my searching, I came across a wonderful review from Money Saving Pro about a unique and free website that helps organize family chore lists online! Hmm... that got my attention.

The website is called Chore Buster, and it is designed to help families or couples fairly assign the chores of the household. And yes it is 100% free. Although there are a few nice features that can be used if you donate to the site.

Even so, without paying anything, a user is able to enter the names of as many family members as they have, customize each member's chore settings (i.e. No chores on Sunday or 75% less chores for kids), and set a list of chores. This service is so helpful that it can email each member their chore lists on a weekly or even daily basis. Or you can simply print a master one out and hang it on the fridge for all.

It also lets you customize the frequency and desirability of each chore. Desirability? Yes, you can set things like pick up toys to 1 for easy and cleaning the bathroom to 6 for medium and then cleaning the gutters to 10 for extreme. You can also set certain chores as not being assigned to certain members, such as I won't let my daughter clean the cat boxes or the oven, and my hubby won't be paying the bills or folding/putting away the laundry (he can never tell who's is who's). Also, since I cannot clean the cat boxes because I am pregnant, that is all hubby's job.

You can also set rewards for each chore (dollar amounts only), and then there is a checklist that you can tally up the rewards for each person. I have this set for simple dollar amounts from $1 to $10 for each chore. Then instead of giving each person the exact amount they earned, I am using it as a percentage from our allowance fund. I am not sure about the nitty gritty just yet, but I will work it out once we get this more underway.

Some examples of my amounts are $1 for picking up and vacuuming a room, $2 for taking out the trash, $5 for cleaning the whole bathroom, and $10 for 'Surprise husband/wife with something nice.' (That last "chore" I found in the preset list, and just had to use it for us). That is another nice feature, you can search through a list of popular chores or look at other member's lists entirely. This helped me to find some things I was missing in my list.

Then after all that nitty gritty, Chore Buster will divide up the chores based on your settings for each (frequency, members, and desirability) so that each member will have a fair amount of 'points' for chores to do each day. *It even has an option to set a random quality for surprises.* The points are the ones you assign as desirability and difficulty. I set my daughter's chores to 75% less, because she is only 6 and has school. She also gets the weekends off from any chores.

You then have the option to create a chore list for 1, 2, or 3 weeks (and by member if you donate), and view it in web page, Word, or Excel form to print. There are many more unique and awesome features that are available if you donate to the site.

You can take a look at my chore schedule here, and sign up for your very own free account here. They have some advanced features, such as viewing chores via mobile or RSS feed, and also a dektop widget you can download. They also mention that soon they will be integrating Facebook with Chore Buster soon, so stay tuned on that.

Do you use Chore Buster? If so, what features do you like? If not, are you going to give it a go?

I'm back. Did you miss me?

Of course, I have to start with a cute for the day.

Above is a pic of my son being his adorable self, playing with my cell phone.

How can you not love those eyes?

Now onto my update... we are here, we are getting settled, and the Internet is back on. *Angels singing* Very poor planning on our part, however with a 1 year old, winter storms brewing, and living in a poorly heated/insulated apartment, can you really blame us for up and leaving as soon as we signed the lease to our new place? All I needed for motivation was to wake up the next morning, realize the heat was cranked to 90, but we were all still bundled up and freezing, and to feel my son's ice cold hands that I can never keep covered.

By that night, we had the two kids beds, the couch, the spare mattress, and all of our electronics moved into the new apartment. I could barely get out a post saying that we had signed the lease. However my family's health was so much more important than any of that. I can sort of relate it to a fire, only much much colder and none of our stuff was burnt.

So now, we are here with the good majority of our things moved over, and just some more of the clutter to pack up and move over here. Yes, we are taking our clutter with us. However, we have a plan in place for getting through it all.

My Plan to Declutter Our New Place

1. Everything that is not 100% essential to our everyday survival is being moved into the basement here.
2. Each day, I will bring up one bag at a time and go through it.
3. I will only keep things that are essential, and not keep things simply for material or sentimental reasons.

I have many tools and advantages at my disposal now to help me keep up with this new plan. First, as I mentioned in my previous post, Salvation Army is right across the street! A declutterer and frugal shopper's dream, right? Also, this apartment comes equipped with a dumpster right in the complex. But of course, I think it is all possible, because of the basement storage space we have. No one else uses it right now, so we are free to store as much as we need to for now. But of course my goal is to tone it down to practically nothing within the next few months.

If you want to see some pictures of our new place, click here. So far they are all of the place empty before we moved anything in. I have a few as we started moving things in, but my flickr upload limit is practically reached just with these. So, I will wait to post better ones instead.