Good-bye Un-Motivated Mom!

Our house is a mess. Not just right now. 95% of the time. The only time it really gets clean is if we have company coming and even then its nowhere near perfect. Honestly the only things I stay on top of is cleaning the kitchen regularly (almost every day) and laundry. There are some things in the house such as cleaning the toilets that don't get done unless someone is coming. But I'm tired of it. I'm tired of not being able to have friends visit. I'm tired of being embarrassed to have someone like the exterminator stop by unexpectedly and see our mess. I'm tired of not knowing where anything is. I'm just done.

Growing up I was one of those oddball kids that actually kept my room clean and had a place for everything. Even in college I kept my dorm room pretty tidy. Somewhere around the time I had Corbin though it seems like my cleaning motivation went way downhill. It made a brief appearance again after moving into our townhouse three years ago. Everything was brand new and shiny and I loved keeping it clean...for the first few months. Then the newness wore off and I got pregnant with Alora and things started to slide again and its just been a bad cycle ever since. I clean like a crazy person for the day or two before company comes and can even usually recruit help from Pat and Corbin on those days but then a few days later its back to being a mess.

The problem is I tend to clean in spurts. One day I'll wake up, look around the house and think "Yuck." I get too motivated and clean and clean and clean until I can't clean anymore. Literally. I get burnt out. And then I look around the house and see that despite cleaning all day the house is still nowhere near clean because it was in such bad shape when I started. So then I feel frustrated and overwhelmed and don't clean pretty much anything for a couple days. Rinse. Repeat. Over and over. I'm also not the most effective cleaner even when I do clean because I completely lack focus. I'll start to clean the office an then find some toys from Corbin's room so I take them in there and start tidying up his room until I find something else that belongs in another room. At the end of the day, even though I made some progress, nothing actually got finished because I just bounce from one thing to another.

I really want to get a handle on this though because I'm going to have to find a new job soon and I'm not sure how it will change my schedule so I'm hoping to get into some better routines before that happens. Last night while reading on some parenting forums I happened to come across a program called Motivated Moms. I had never heard of it before but after reading a bunch of reviews about it I decided to give it a go. It's basically a daily chore list set up like a to do list with boxes to check beside each thing as you finish it. I like boxes. I like that little sense of accomplishment I get each time I check one off. I actually tend to get a decent amount done if I make to do lists for myself but I rarely remember to make the lists. Now I don't have to!You pay $8, download a PDF file and print out the chore lists for each day of the year.

I started today and so far it seems great. There's a list of things you're supposed to do every day like empty the dishwasher, clean the kitchen counters, do a load of laundry, sweep the kitchen floor, wipe out the bathroom sinks, etc. I like that they included some reminders like "take your vitamins" or "lay out tomorrow's clothes" that I have trouble remembering to do every day on my own and that they put "read to your children" on the daily list. I read to my kids every day anyhow but there's one box I can always check without feeling like I actually had to do any work. Aside from the list you're supposed to do every day there are extra chores for each day. Some of them are on a rotation. For example cleaning the toilets and vacuuming the living room on Monday, cleaning bathrooms mirrors and vacuuming the bedrooms on Tuesday, etc and other things just pop up every once in a while like cleaning crumbs out of the toaster or cleaning light fixtures. You know, things I would never think to do.

I actually did everything on the list today (ok, not everything, I'm waiting to sweep the kitchen until after dinner since the kids drop food everywhere). From what I read most people seem to spend an hour or two each day cleaning with this system. It took me longer than that today which I expected. Tomorrow will be easier already. Today something simple like "wipe the bathroom sink and counter" took longer than it should have because there was all kinds of stuff sitting all over our bathroom counters that I had to put away first. But if I stick with the system I wouldn't have so much clutter to deal with on a daily basis. My big news for today is that I dusted the office. Of course I had to clean up the monumental stacks of papers, books and toys all over the room first but I did and then I actually dusted. I really don't think I've dusted any room in the house in months so that's pretty darn big news in my book! Even though it took a little longer today I feel like I've actually accomplished something for once and I still had lots of time to play with the kids, read to them, take Alora out for a walk/ride with the new scooter Daddy just got her, help Corbin with homework, etc.

It was hard for me to resist the urge to clean some extra things honestly. While in the bathroom cleaning the toilets and counters I thought about just cleaning the whole thing at once but then I remembered that's what got me into this mess in the first place, trying to overdo on some days and do nothing on others. So for the first couple weeks I'm really going to stick pretty much exclusively to the lists and see how clean our house starts looking. After that I'll start tweaking it to include things that need more work, like the areas that need decluttering. I know its not going to be a perfect system but it does give me a good foundation to start from.

So that's my plan and I'm sticking to it. Hopefully. I will check back in with you in a couple weeks to let everyone know if I'm still liking the program or not. Now on to more important stuff, Playdoh play until dinner... :-)