Entries Tagged as 'General Encouragement'

Friendly Spring Cleaning Encouragement

March 26th, 2009 11 Comments

retrochick.JPGIvy says:

Now’s a good time to get your spring cleaning started, particularly if you have minions children on spring break. I’m extra lucky, I have my mother here helping me clean my house over spring break. There’s nothing like having your mom standing on your porch at 8 AM with a bucket in hand to encourage you to stop lollygagging and get to work.

Since I can’t send my mom over to your houses for cleaning encouragement, I’ll have to do my best here. There’s something very spiritual and emotional with a good, all-over cleaning and decluttering. As much as I profess to hate clutter, I have to admit that mine’s gotten piled up a bit and sometimes it’s hard to purge.

So, we have to go back to my dear Auntie’s motto: Look one way and pitch the other. If it doesn’t have a place, it has to go. And by go, I mean go RIGHT AWAY. Once I’m finished cleaning for the day, I take myself down to the Convenience Center and trash and/or Goodwill stuff immediately. If you set it out in your garage or basement or whatever to “have a yard sale” or something, you might never get rid of it.

Clutter does have an extremely high reproduction rate, so do not let it get a foothold in your house! If it already has a foothold, make your mom come over and tell her to bring a bucket. Even if you already have a bucket, it’ll get things in gear. I happen to have two buckets, but my mom’s bucket is far better. It’s the bucket of authority or something. If you can’t get your mom to come over, make a friend come sit in and order you around.

It’s funny that I clean my house myself on a regular basis, yet when someone’s there cleaning with me, it’s far more satisfying and it gets done tons faster. Once you and your cleaning buddy are done with your house, go to their house and return the favor. It’s interesting to see what kind of junk your friends are piling up, anyway.

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How To Get Your Stubborn Kid To Clean Up

February 10th, 2009 16 Comments

Dear Home Ec 101,

My 4 year old son absolutely refuses to clean up his toys! I’ve tried making it a game, I’ve also tried taking his toys away when he doesn’t clean them up. He still refuses to clean. Any ideas for getting him to clean up after himself?

Signed,

Messy In Muncie

retrochick.JPGIvy says:

Some kids are harder to get cleaning than others. My oldest son likes order and hates chaos, so it was very easy to get him to clean up. My youngest son is the exact opposite- he apparently loves chaos and hates order, so getting him to clean practically takes an act of God.

With my youngest son, I’ve found that one of his problems is feeling overwhelmed when I ask him to pick up his toys. Even though it seems totally obvious to me what he should do, he doesn’t “get” what he needs to be doing, so I tell him to pick things up One. Thing. At. A. Time. It’s frustrating to me, because it is so slow, but it does get the job done and it makes it a lot harder for him to refuse, as I’m asking him to do one very simple task at a time. “Pick up your Spiderman doll. Now put him in the toybox.” “Pick up that piece of paper. Throw it in the trash can. No, the living room trash can. There’s no need to go all the way to the kitchen.” Like I said, it seems like an exercise in frustration, but it’s less frustration than telling him to pick up all his toys, and he totally ignores me.

Sometimes he gets cranky and flatly refuses to even do one thing at a time. In that case, I go to the thing he hates the most- being sent to bed. If it’s pre-dinner, it’s a nap. If it’s post-dinner, it’s bedtime. Even if that means I’m sending him to bed when it’s still light out. Now, you have to determine what your kid will dislike the most. For my son, it’s heading to bed- for your son, it might be something different, so experiment. But make sure it’s a punishment the kid considers to be pretty serious, otherwise you’ll be facing flat refusals all the time.

I’m not huge on punishments, but when it’s time to punish, like for clear refusals to obey, I do so. Don’t forget the positive side of things- when he’s doing a good job, praise him. I always tell Nate things like, “What a big boy you are, I’m so impressed!” I’m not big on bribing kids to do work- in our household we all pitch in and you shouldn’t have to expect a reward for that. The reward is not having to live in filth, as I tell the kids when they whine about their friends whose parents give them ponies and unicorns for not throwing trash on the floor.

Anyway, that is what works for me, I hope it works out for you too.

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Getting Started On Your Messy House

January 22nd, 2009 11 Comments

retrochick.JPGIvy says:

Dangit all, have a few days of confusion, sickness, meetings, and general disarray, and you wake up to what I woke up to this morning: a house that would undoubtedly earn the Home Ec 101 Seal Of Disapproval. Yes, my darling Home Eccers, while I do generally keep my home in some semblance of order, sometimes it gets away from me and I end up with dishes in the sink, sand on the floor*, a puppy playpen in the middle of the living room, overflowing trash cans, and the remnants of some long sessions with the Xbox 360**. Yes, this is what I walked into this morning when I came out of my bedroom.

Now, the easy thing to do would be to retreat to my “writing studio” (aka my garage) and not look at the mess. It would also be easy to think to myself, “I’ll make them clean it up, since it is largely their mess.” The problem with this is, mess multiplies like Tribbles. You’ve got to get hold of the mess before it becomes overwhelming and you really don’t wanna clean it all up.

Does this mean you have to slave after the Xbox sessions? No way. The important part here is to get a foothold into the mess, so when Mr. All-Xbox-All-The-Time gets home, he’ll be able to clean his fair share. The hard part, I’ve always found, is getting started, so let’s take a look at where to start.

First, you need to identify where the mess needs to be cleaned up most- what is the priority? In my house, this was the sand on the floor. Not only is it extremely irritating to end up with sandy feet, but the longer you leave it, the more it gets tracked around and into places where it will be harder to clean up. I first grabbed my broom and swept the sand out of the way of my major walkways and then took care of all the needs of all the living beings in my house. I fed my youngest son, the dog, the puppy, and the kitties. I ran the dog outside. Then I went to work on cleaning up the sand.

A helpful hint, by the way, for people having to deal with sand- get the majority up with your broom and dust pan and then use your vacuum cleaner to get the rest. You could spend all day sweeping with a broom and still not pick up every grain of sand. Sand, I’ve found, is like glitter. Both are insidious and will show up in your house 3 years after you’ve had either in your house. I don’t know how it manages this, but it does.

The next priority is to take care of the overflowing trash cans. You can’t clean house without empty trash cans, so I took all the trash in (and next to) the trash cans out to the dumpster. While I was at it, I also emptied the trash cans from the bathrooms and bedrooms. Might as well make a clean sweep of it while you’re at it.

Once you have the priority items out of the way- and naturally, yours will differ from mine, but go with the things that are bugging you the worst- go for things that are low on the labor scale. For example, I can rinse dishes and put them in the dishwasher and then walk away and let the dishwasher do the work. Same with laundry. Then, if you like, you can take a break. Set yourself a certain amount of time that you will break, otherwise it’s easy to sit forever and let the mess go on. I like to use my timer on my oven to make sure I take the break for the length of time I intend.

From there, clean as normal. Don’t forget the maid’s creed of “top to bottom, left to right.” Now, you might be wondering what I’m leaving for the errant Xboxers to do. No worries. I’m cleaning up their trash and mess, but what I’m leaving for them is other chores. Things they hate to do, but aren’t as obvious as the giant mess they left for me. They’ll be putting away laundry. Scooping cat boxes. (Muahahahahaha!) Cleaning toilets. If they complain, I simply remind them of the mess they left for me to clean up. “Next time,” I’ll say, “perhaps you will remember to clean up your mess from the Xbox sessions.” Will they? Sure, for a couple of weeks, and then I’ll have to do it all over again. But for a few weeks of peace, it’s worth it.

*No, I don’t live by a beach, as much as I’d like to wish I did. Mr. Ivy decided it would be a good idea to buy my youngest son a mini-sandbox, despite my best efforts to dissuade him from this.

**For those who aren’t, ahem, lucky enough to have a teenage boy and a husband who love them some video games, let me tell you what this is like. Picture your couch and end tables covered with half-eaten snacks, soda cans, printed out bits of GameFAQS, blankets strewn everywhere (can’t be cold while we’re killing zombies), popcorn bowls laying on the floor, pillows everywhere…you get the idea.

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The importance of scheduling

January 14th, 2009 6 Comments

retrochick.JPGIvy says:

It’s interesting how many people I know that had problems with their house getting piley over the holidays and now they’re scrambling to catch up on their household chores and routines. I’m included in that group- I’ve been doing a ton of laundry since this weekend and I still have laundry to do. Oy.

Many times when my house mess gets out of control, I try to identify the root cause of it. Sometimes there’s a fairly legitimate reason, like when I was pregnant and on bedrest and Mr. Ivy was working 90 hour weeks. Sometimes there’s no good reason at all- it’s just plain laziness. Most of the time,  it’s because we have gotten away from our routines and scheduling.

I remember back to the fabulous time in my life when my schedule was very loose. In college, I could do anything I wanted on the spur of the moment, mostly because I didn’t have the overwhelming responsibility I do now. Nowadays, I still am able to do things on the spur of the moment, but not on as grand of a scale as before. Once upon a time, I took off to Florida because I needed to see the beach. Now, my grand adventures are an unplanned lunch out with a friend.

It’s just terribly important to stick to a schedule, especially when kids are involved. I’m no longer working around my own schedule; I’m working around the schedule of four other people- my husband’s work schedule, my kids’ school and activity schedules, and the hordes of appointments we always seem to have.

With that in mind, I jam all the household chores we need to do between all the other stuff we have to do. It’s very easy to let the household chores go by the wayside in favor of all the other stuff. There’s not much advice here, because I think this is something we all deal with on some level. Some people are better than others at squeezing a ton of stuff into their day. Don’t get downhearted if you sometimes get behind and are overwhelmed with things you need to do. We all have this problem.

If you’re behind and overwhelmed, make a list. Prioritize that list and then jump in. This is what I’ve been doing since the holidays to catch up on my housework. I like to start with cleaning the areas where we spend the most time. It’s easy to get discouraged if you spend a lot of time in a mess, which just makes the situation worse. So, I always start with the place I spend the most time. Then I move on from there.

Hang in there, Home Eccers! If you’re struggling and need a cheerleader, don’t forget that I’m just an email away.

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Mess begets mess, so try the vice versa

May 7th, 2008 10 Comments

Ivy says:

Yesterday, my mom came over because she had a little time to kill before going to work. There wasn’t any time to clean up because she called me as she turned onto my street. Thanks, mom. “Ah, Ivy,” she said, “Your home is a bastion of cleanliness.” We both laughed because, to be honest, my house has been quite a disaster lately. I would undoubtedly receive the Home Ec 101 Seal of Disapproval if we were handing out seals.

When my grandmother died, my uncle started giving me her stuff.  I have a small garage that was nearly full of our own things.  Grandma’s stuff has spilled into my living room and now in the space of less than 6 months, my house has reached full on disaster status. Let this be a lesson, the minute you let the mess creep in, the mess multiplies like Tribbles and the next thing you know, you have a messy house. The irritating part is, I already knew this, but depression over losing my grandma and the sheer amount of stuff I got went a long way to helping me ignore my own advice.

I’m telling you this not because I think it’s fun to tell y’all about my house being a disaster, but because I suspect at least some of you are in the same boat. Your house is cluttered. If it’s anything like mine, it’s fairly sanitary (pay no attention to those cat boxes behind the curtain!), but clutter has set in, it’s overwhelming, and you’re not even really sure how to get started.

Never fear! Mess and chaos spread, but so does clean. The key is to leverage the momentum. Normally, when cleaning, I like to set a timer. But with remedial cleaning, I like to do this “by the job.” For example, this morning I cleaned off the top of the kids’ toy cabinet. I had to be ruthless- did I really want to keep all 8,447 pictures my daughter had drawn? I picked my 2 favorites and hung them up.

Make a plan for your remedial cleaning. Now that the top of the kids’ toy cabinet is cleaned off, the next job is to clean the inside of it. Someone hold me, I’m scared. Make a list and enjoy crossing off each task!  A sense of accomplishment helps move things along.  Eventually, your house will be the “bastion of cleanliness” it once was. And so will mine.

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