When the cats away the mice will clean?

First I need to describe my husband in a nut shell. He's brilliant, smart, independent, motivated, focused and a It's good money and I couldn't be more proud. With that said I need to also explain 5 children in this "work" environment is not a match.Six hours a day the 3rd and 4th grade kids are at school. Good! Eleven hours a day my 22 month old and 3 1/2 year old are at daycare/preschool. Good!? I'm at work plus commute those eleven hours. :( OK we have nice cars and kid supplies coming our our ears. A modest home in a good neighborhood where the 7 of us live together. The house while my writer is writing needs to have a consistent level of quiet. For the most part we have that part in check as well. Sounds perfect. HA!

I commute. He works and then 3 independent dependants come home. They snack, the food gets left out and spills aren't cleaned. They do their homework and the pencils, glue, scissors, etc come out and don't get put away. They change their clothes and the dirty ones fall where ever and lay. Their shoes come off by the front door and jackets and back packs crowd our entry way. Oh and ideas for worm mazes and kitchen experiments come alive. Then there is restless destruction, rolling on the couch, chair or floor tossing throw pillows and blankets all over the place. Then I come home with the "Hi Guys!" boys. Who run and kick the block towers down, pull diapers of and run naked, jump on unmade beds pushing what they can on the floor. Then we eat dinner and dishes already in the sink get combined with the new dinner dishes. There could be soccer and this part could start 13 to 14 hours after I left that morning. Then we have baths. Towels, uniforms and dirty clothes added get added to the piles . Melt downs about not watching their favorite shows, forgetting homework at school and not wanting to read happen and some times tempers flare throwing something more on to my floors. Oh yeah and 3 of the 5 still have bed wetting accidents. Two of the five you can never get to bed and are capable to adding more to the work every minute their eyes remain open.

I usually try to pick up as much as I can enlisting the help of who ever I can grab. Laundry gets run every morning and night . Dishes unloaded and loaded in the dish washers every night and ran. Not ever enough. There is so much to do. I can usually get a few loads of clothes folded. Needless to say we need to vacuum, mop, dust clean bathrooms, kitchens and bed rooms. ELIMINATE CLUTTER! and still have time for a bike ride, trip to the park , birthday parties and play dates. Walk the dog? Soccer games and volunteering.

All has to be done quietly. LOL If your guessed it only a fraction ever is complete. Not because we're lazy. Warren with his work and me with the kids and a full-time job our calendars are full and I don't sit much at all.

My window has opened for a major catch up and I'm working it. HARD!!!! Tanner is scared of her room so in addition to the over due I need to flip flop her's and Marysa's room with Joey's.

Warren left to Atlanta on Sunday and will be home Wednesday. In this time I have gone to 2 parent-teacher conferences, had my carpets cleaned, moved 3 beds, 3 dressers, 2 toy boxes, cleaned my main bathroom clean enough to eat in including replacing the old toilet seat, washed 8 loads of laundry and put away, bagged items for goodwill, cleaned the dog house, decorated the yard with ghosts, learned new 4th grade math, sprayed the weeds in the yard with weed killer, trimmed the front bushes, blogged 3 times, replaced knobs in the kitchen. I still have to deep clean the master bathroom and replace the toilet seat, thin out the toys, clean the room Joey moved into from left over girl trash, go to a job interview, move the crib out of my room and put in Joey's, clean my room and relax unless I forgot something. Oh yeah and the kids get out early every day this week. Lucky me. I can do this because I'm not working and who cares how loud the kids get. HA! My sweetheart will come home to a house he can renew some pride in. It's the least I can do.

Crowded house

No this is not about the band Crowded House from the 80s but about the house I live in. Our home is close to 1200 square feet. We have three bedroom, two bathrooms, a living room and a kitchen, dinning room combo. There are 7 people and a dog living in this space. Three of the people are elementary school kids that feel they should still have mom pick up after them and two are still small enough that I still do pick up after them. Then there is my own messes and my husbands messes. You can add 7 peoples laundry plus cloth diapers and dog poop to my check list of things to do. My son Joey does a fairly decent job keeping his room clean with a steady stream of nagging. Asking the girls to clean often falls on deaf ears and the battle takes many twists and turns to finally achieve a clean home. To be perfectly honest that never happens. A few weeks ago I got mean. I took the girls who have been sharing the master bedroom and gave them their brothers room and Joey became master of space. In the process we got rid of everything the two princesses didn't play with and just became junk on their floor. I still had no plan how keeping these new room assignments clean. There is always a silver lining to every cloud. I had e-mail a catch up letter to my friend Ryan who in turn gave me the link to his wife's blog he was very proud of. The blog was amazing and I found exactly what I needed to tame my little ones in to keeping their own spaces neat and tidy.

http://moreofamom.com/2008/12/07/here-comes-the-room-inspector/

Here comes the room inspector complete with a point chart. I presented the new rule to our kids last Thursday and told them the first inspection would not be until Saturday March 7th at 10 am. Marysa jumped on it. Tanner went back to her Mom's house and Joey did nothing. Marysa left Friday for a 5 day stay with her dad. Thursday evening I did her inspection. The kid got it. Nice clean floor, bed made, clothes and toys put away. She made her Mama proud and herself as well with a $10 bill. Tanner came back from her Mom's house Friday after school. I gave her the heads up in case she had forgotten the room inspector was coming 10am Saturday. She jumped on it. She made her bed, put her clothes, books and toys away and tidied her drawers.

This morning I was on the edge of my seat waiting on this inspection. 10 am on the dot I walked into Joey's room with him. Even with him doing nothing to his room all week the kid was clean enough to get a 90% on his points earning him a $10 bill, then it was Tanner's turn. She was still putting clothes away but also had a passing score of 99%. I think this may be the answer to all my prayers. Our kids may just have motivation enough to keep their rooms clean.