Wednesday Wisdom - Housekeeping for Slobs in Maintenance Mode

I just thought I'd post all the wisdom I've acquired on keeping your sanity with many children when housekeeping really isn't your strong suit.

1)  Instead of trying to keep your whole house looking like House Beautiful, which is impossible and a perfectionistic standard that will only depress you if you suffer the delusion that that is how you should be living, try to keep one room presentable for any unexpected visitor.  Usually this is the living room.  Also, try to focus on keeping the approach to your front door neat.  Your backyard can look like the Clampitts live there, but you'll feel better about yourself if the approach to your front door and your living room are presentable to the average Joe.  If you live in a small space and the living room is also the play room (that is, your kids actually live in it):

2)  Have a basket or a toy box in there or some large container where you can quickly throw toys and such for a super quick tidy up.

3)  Don't have a lot of knick knacks or stuff you have to be careful of in the living room.  Simple is best.  It can still be a pretty room if you paint the walls your favorite color, hang a couple of pictures that are meaningful to you or lots of family photos, have a book shelf or case full of books and then keep everything else to a minimum.

4)  Carpeting is awful.  If you can, get rid of it!  It needs constant vacuuming, it is a pain to wash, pets have accidents on it, kids throw up and spill stuff and get bloody noses and have potty accidents.  If you can have wood or tile or linoleum, go for it.  So much easier to keep clean.

5) Mats, however, are great.  Mats by the doors to keep dogs and kids from tracking in mud, mats by the stove and the sink to making standing easier on your legs and to catch spills, etc.  You can shake these out, air them outside, some you can throw in the wash.  Easy to keep clean.

6)  Have one big basket to keep kids' shoes in so they won't be scattered all over the house.  You won't trip as much and you won't spend so much time looking for shoes.   Also, have a set place for kids to hang coats.  Hooks on the back of a door work well.

7)  Make your bed every day.  For me this is just pulling up the comforter and fluffing the pillow up.  Takes 2 seconds.  That way even if the rest of the house looks like a tornado went through it, you can collapse on your bed in the one place where chaos doesn't reign.

8)  Every time you walk through a room, straighten or tidy something.   This was my mother's adage and it really helps keep chaos at bay.  Toss that balled up tissue no one threw a way,  straighten that stack of books or CDs careening crazily,  Put pillows on the floor back on the couch, toss the back packs up on the corner chair instead of on the floor.

9)  Every time you use the bathroom, take 10 seconds to neaten or wipe something down.  Keep a rag handy in there for just this purpose.   If you get in this habit, you can do this mindlessly and every little bit really does help!  I've gotten so when I go into a public bathroom  I do this too and it is kind of a random act of kindness for the people who are coming after you to use the facilities.

10)  Cut down on the number of toys your kids have.  The more toys the less creative and grateful kids are.  And the more mess and broken stuff you have to deal with.

11)  Have one easy place to keep all your arts and crafts.  Don't get too crazy about making it look nice.  One drawer to dump crayons and such, one shelf for paper, etc.  It doesn't have to look pinterest perfect, it just has to be serviceable and easy to get and put stuff away.  Likewise with legos.  Have a designated lego room with a container to dump them all in.

12)  Have regular 10 minutes tidy up times a couple times a day tied to something you do every day.  Like right before lunch, put on a timer and race around tidying up with the kids.  Or right before story time at night, do the same thing.

13)  Have a junk room where you know you can toss stuff and close the door.  We are in maintenance mode!  Then at some point during the year, make sure you dedicate time to sort, give away and tidy it up.  This is a great special job to give older kids to do for money!  Do this also with the garage, if you have one.  One time a year deep clean works for maintenance mode!

14)  When you get ready to get out of the car, make sure everybody is taking out their trash or whatever they just brought in to the car:  toys, books, etc.  No one gets out of the car without something.  Make it the rule!

15)  To keep clean laundry from piling up, I dump the laundry I can't put away immediately, on my nicely made bed.  That way I have to put it away before I sleep.  Now sometimes I'll admit, I'm too tired and I wind up putting it back in a basket or even dumping on the floor!  But 95% of the time, I put it away.

16)  Once a year go through your closets and get rid of stuff.  My church has a once a year clothing drive on Thanksgiving weekend.  For years now, the week before Thanksgiving has been dedicated to this in my household.

17)  In the morning when I get the kids up, I walk through all the bedrooms and collect any cups or dishes that have migrated to their rooms.  Sometimes they remember to bring them down themselves, but sometimes not so much.

18)  I am terrible at sorting mail.  This is always a problem.  The ideal is to sort mail right over your recycling and dump any you don't want in the mixed paper bin, what you do need to keep put in the same place you know you/your spouse will see it again and deal with it.

19)  Stop getting newspapers, magazines etc unless you absolutely have to subscribe to something.  This stuff wastes paper and just contributes to clutter.

20)  For laundry - have a hamper in each bedroom and then an auxiliary one in your laundry room.  Just do loads by bedroom.   Have kids keep their towels on hooks in the bedrooms too.  That way you can dedicate the laundry that day to the clothes, the sheets and towels of all residents of that room.  Next day do the next bedroom.  I never could handle doing all the laundry in one day, but I could handle doing it this way.  Also, as soon as the kids are old enough, have them do their own laundry!!!!  The auxiliary hamper is for dish towels and other stuff that doesn't make it into a bedroom hamper.

21) Each child had their own cup that gets rinsed and stored on the counter after meals.  They can use this cup to get themselves water when they are thirsty.    At the end of the day, load up the dishwasher so they are ready for the next day.

22)  Even if you are a big family you can run your dishwasher just once a day, usually.  Have extra smaller dessert or sandwich plates.  Have extra bowls too for cereal and lunch.  If you cut down on the number of glasses and cups, you'll have room to stack small plates and bowls on the top rack as well as the bottom rack.  Then the big dinner plates go on the bottom rack.  I'm always too tired to finish dishes at night and my kids may or may not help.  A lot of times we are doing something in the evening and dishes get short shrift or I'm just too tired to police things.  So I fill the sink with soapy water and put pots and pans in to soak (I try to clean up as a I go along when I am cooking dinner), as well as any serving dishes and any sundry leftover plates, etc and deal with it in the morning.  I'm more of a morning person so I've got the energy to tackle it then.  Plus they've soaked over night.

23)  Don't forget to run the dishwasher before you go to bed!

24)  Spot cleaning works well for longer than you think!  Just wipe up that spot on the floor if you don't have time to clean the whole thing.    A quick sweep, or swipe or mop targeting dirty or high volume areas goes a long, long way towards making the house look nice.

25)  Pick a cluttered surface, put on a timer for 3 to 5 to 10 minutes (whatever you've got to spare) and just work at top speed.  Flylady calls these hot spots.  Her system didn't work so well for me, but this particular thing did.  If on most days you tackle a hot spot for a few minutes, you can keep afloat! It's like treading water.  It keeps your head up!

26)  Remember to get your recycling and trash to the curb every week.  You'd think this was simple but a lot of times life, weather, the flu, etc can interfere with this and then you've got stuff overflowing, which is always depressing.

27)  If you really want your kids to clean their rooms, you have to pitch in and help them.  Make it a special event for you to work together.  (I do not focus on this much except for a few times a year.  As long as the laundry's being done and I get any food related stuff out of there, I don't care how bad it might get).  Even if it is just having tea together afterwards or splurging in ice cream to reward yourself for a job well done, it can actually build the relationship instead of you fuming that they aren't doing it right or are being lazy or something.

28)  Chores you can pay your kids to help with:  weeding, breaking down lots of boxes for recycling, sweeping the porches and walkways, helping with the junk room and the garage, deep cleaning the house in preparation for Christmas,  special organizational things like sorting and organizing the family bookshelves, etc.

29)  I never had a regular chore chart.  I just don't work that way, but the kids did have regular chores:  setting the table for dinner, taking out trash, changing the kitty litter, doing their own laundry, helping to carry in groceries.

30)  Invite people over for parties and get togethers!  This will spur you to keep up on cleaning!

Tuesday Topics - 6/13/17

Well, it's primary voting today in Virginia.  I've got to run vote at some point this morning and then this afternoon, I'm going out in the heat down to Prince William county to garner more signatures for Mitzi Hellmer's ballot access petition.  All the signatures are due tonight by 7 p.m.  Right now we've got almost 120 signatures and we need 125.  However, they must be verified signatures, meaning that all the signers must be eligible to vote in District 50.  So usually you want to go way over the 125, because so many signatures can be tossed out.

But that's not what I want to talk about.  I've been thinking about consumer culture and how the free market has helped so much with distribution of goods and gradually bringing most people's standard of living up.  This is good.  Poverty today in the USA (and many other places) is different from what it was in years past.  Poor people today have indoor plumbing, A/C, cars, cell phones, TVs.  I know so many families that technically live at or below the poverty line.  I know one family in particular.  Seven kids.  The dad works from home on the computer.  They live in a big house way, way out in the country.  They only have one van and they drive the hour into a small town once a week.  They are very frugal about food and clothing.  They have tons of books they've acquired over the years, mostly used.  They love where they live.  Lots of beauty and nature.  I imagine there is a level of contentment there that isn't present in a lot of wealthier families.  Intentional poverty is actually a blessed thing in many ways.  The one problem is that if one has a financial set back, loss of job, a sick child, a medical emergency, a house fire, whatever, you can swiftly go from intentionally poor to destitute.

I've been watching a lot of homesteading videos lately.  I'm fascinated by them.  I'll never been a homesteader.  I simply don't have the physical stamina it takes. I never did and now I'm too old.  And my husband would never truly go for it.  He is too tied to his job which is a very fulfilling career for him personally.  He loves what he does and is good at it, in spite of the high pressure and exhausting hours that go with it.  The closest I can get to the homesteading lifestyle, in the 1% neighborhood I'm in, is to be a conscientious consumer.  I can choose to spend my money carefully to help those who are trying to make a difference.  I can buy local from nearby farmers.  I can try to be as zero waste as possible.  I can try to solarize my home.  I can try to buy fair trade.  That sort of thing.

But these videos fascinate me.  Going off grid, building your own home with your own hands, choosing to use a composting toilet, raising chickens and goats, all is very appealing to me, even though I could never do it.  I like the idea of deliberately leaving the rat race, being self-reliant, living in the moment not for material things but for a sense of freedom and accomplishment, getting back to a simpler lifestyle where one's values are in proper priority.  This is good!

These homesteaders have small homes with things like rainwater catchment.  They make their videos on the small amount of electricity they get from a generator or solar panel.

So while I've been on this homesteading kick, we received in the mail information from Food for The Poor.  If you aren't familar with this excellent organization, Food for the Poor builds houses and otherwise helps the poorest of the poor in Caribbean and Central America. They've really been focusing on Haiti since the terrible earthquake and hurricanes have hit that poor country in the last ten years.  Food for the Poor has built over 500 homes.  The way they described the homes, a move up for these people living in dangerous housing is on the same level as these American homesteaders!  I was struck by their similarity.  They are very small.  The ones in Haiti are built of concrete instead of logs because Haiti has earthquakes.  They use rainwater catchment.  They are off grid so their ovens are built so that the Haitian owners can scrap the wood ashes out of the ovens from outside the house. They don't have running water but they have a nearby clean water supply, which is a huge step up.  They build the houses so there is room to have a garden and keep chickens.  They even give each family a solar panel so that they can have enough electricity to charge their cell phones!

I think the impulse that drives the homesteader is a good one.  'Not too much, just enough' is the best way to live.  Maybe by people in the developed world realizing this, they will voluntarily choose to live more simply and in the meantime, with their disposable income, can help fund things so that the destitute can live simply but not miserably or under dangerous conditions.  And slowly these two levels of society can move closer to each in other in terms of how it is best for humans to live.

Out of the Silent Planet - Book 20

Out of the Silent Planet by C. S. Lewis is the first book in his Space Trilogy.  It was written back in 1938 so I found Lewis' fanciful dealing with the physics of space interesting and entertaining.    This book fulfills the 'outer space' square in my Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks Bingo Challenge.

The main character in the book is a English philologist named Dr. Ransom.  Lewis has fun with this, developing another language system for the creatures he peoples Malacandra with.  Ransom uses his expertise to learn to speak to the natives.

The story begins while on a walking vacation through the English countryside.  Ransom stumbles on an old unlikeable classmate of his and another fellow, Dr. Weston, in the middle of a dark secret.  He winds up getting kidnapped to go along with them as they fly to what we realize later is Mars.  The whole technological aspect of how they take off is deftly ignored by Lewis.  The description of the flight and then the actual topography and biology of Malacandra (Mars) is really interesting.

Once on the planet, Ransom escapes and is succored by one of the three species of intelligent life on the planet.  It's a complex story with all sorts of implications and observations on good and evil.  The creatures of Malacandra never experienced a fall from grace.  Even though they know their planet is dying, they have no fear.  Earth is the only place in the universe where people are 'bent,' the Malacandrian way of saying 'sinful.'  

Ransom is not as bent as the other two men: Devine who is full of greed for the gold found on Malacandra, and Weston who has some sort of delusional monomania for discovering a new home to save the humans of the earth.  Ransom thus can see clearly where the others can not.  They impute danger and ideas to the creatures of Malacandra that aren't there.  Weston, the supposedly smarter of the two, is actually the worst at never overcoming his prejudices, so convinced is he that he is right in everything.

There's a whole category of beings that I never figured out if they were actually angels or just angel-like.  I found this very insightful analysis of the book.  I disagree about the meaningless of the suspense during the ride back to Earth.  I thought it showed Ransom's changed response to his possibly impending death and how the other two men, so deformed by sin, so bent, didn't change at all.

For many years, I'd been wanting to read at least some of Lewis' trilogy because I'd heard it was a play on The Divine Comedy of Dante.  Alas, I don't think I know enough of Dante's great work to get the allusion.  Maybe it becomes more obvious in the later two books.  Lewis was such a wonderful writer, that even though I don't usually enjoy science fiction, I did enjoy this story.

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Friday Photos - 6/9/17 - a day late

Amazing Becky went out with me to collect signatures for a ballot access petition.  She rocked it.   She is good at this kind of stuff.

She never wants me to take her picture.  And once again I got my hand in the way of the frame.

We are trying to figure out how to get Viviane working and Dylan good child care.  There is a Montessori school near us that has an opening in his age group.  What's nice about it is they also teach the children French, which, of course is Viviane's native tongue.  And they may be looking for a teacher's aide.  That means that Viviane could work there, get 50% off tuition and Dylan would be learning to be bilingual.  We are praying that it works out!

The school seems so perfect.  All the children were happy.  It was nice and multicultural.  Dylan loved this rug and laid right down on it and starting rolling around.

I successfully made granola again.   Everyone loves it.  It is so rare that I have a true hit with everybody.  Hooray for homemade granola!  I need to make more at one time.  It only lasts for a couple days.

Notice the two plastic bags behind these jars.  I had such a bad plastic free week this week.  Sometimes I feel like no matter how hard I try and I can't avoid it, even the stuff that is supposed to be easy to avoid.  The bag directly behind the jars I brought home.  I went to the pharmacy to pick up Rick's medicine.  Usually they give it to you in a little white and red striped paper bag.  Sometimes if you have more than one item, they'll put it in either a paper bag or a plastic bag.  It is sort of hit or miss what they use.  But this time I had little Dylan in tow and I was so busy holding him and keeping him from running around the store, that I completely didn't notice the lady had put the one paper bag into a plastic bag until I got outside.  Sigh.  It was a completely extraneous plastic bag.  The other bag behind the empty napkin holder was brought home by Josh.  He picked up some dog food on the way home from work and he never, ever, ever remembers my admonishments to please keep a bag in his car or at least ask for paper at the store.  So, yeah, it was cans of dog food so double bagged.  Those are only two of my failures this week to keep plastic free.

Gratuitous photo of my handsome cat, Clover, looking very regal.

Wednesday Wisdom - 6/7/17

I am still plugging through City of God.  It's probably going to take me months just to finish the book.  Apparently, I really needed the structure of the twitter reading group to read this.  But I still am enjoying it.  It is just going to be my morning meditation book, I've decided.  In Book XX Augustine explores the last judgement.  This is not something I think about a lot.  He's really been examining the book of Revelation.  But this morning I read his thoughts on evidence in the Bible for purgatory.  He quotes Malachi 3, 1-6; here's the first part:

See, he comes, says the Lord Almighty!  And who will withstand the day of his coming, and who will be able to endure to look him in the face?  For he comes like a refiner's fire and like a fuller's herb; and he will sit, refining and purifying as it were gold and silver.  Then they will offer to the Lord sacrifices in righteousness, and the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in the days of old and in years gone by.

Augustine extrapolates from this that there must be some kind of purgation that takes place and once it does, the purged person is able to 'offer sacrifices in righteousness'  meaning they are worthy of being in the presence of the Lord.

The other bit of the quote that jumped out at me, is this:

I shall come in judgement, and I shall be a swift witness against sorcerers and against adulterers and against those who swear in my name falsely, and against those who defraud the worker of his wages, and use their power to oppress the widows and maltreat the orphans and pervert judgement against the stranger, and have no fear of me, says the Lord Almighty.  For I am the Lord your God; and I do not change.

Right there it explicitly states:  no dabbling  in the occult, no adultery, no swearing in God's name, no exploiting the worker, no oppressing vulnerable people like widows and orphans, no treating the stranger unjustly, and you'd better respect the Lord!  And he doesn't change.  These things hold throughout eternity.  We don't get to rewrite them in our own image, whether we be liberal or conservative politically.  

Tuesday Topics - 6/6/17- I'm in love with the American Solidarity Party!

I've been really busy lately volunteering with the American Solidarity Party.  I've got several things going on.  First, I've been doing some administrative support for them.  I hope to finish that up today.  I also volunteered a bit to gather signatures for a ballot access petition for a potential delegate candidate in a nearby district.  That was humiliating.  I am shy and don't like going up to complete strangers trying to get them to sign and give me their address!  I had no luck at all.  But I think I might try again later this week.  We'll see.  Here's the link to the facebook page for the campaign  

Then the ASP had a mammoth survey for the party members to revise our platform.  I've never thought about exactly what I think on so many different issues in such detail.  I realized I am powerfully ignorant on things like finance and the economy.   And healthcare is just a massive issue.  The funny thing is that people in the party were clamoring for such a survey but then everybody admitted it was a honking bear to respond to!  It took days!  Kudos to those on the survey subcommittee.  They did some awesome, awesome work!

Finally, (this is the craziest thing of all), I am working on starting a podcast for the ASP.  I, who have zip, zilch, zero experience or capacity for technology, am going to try to crack this baby and see how things go.  I am in the process of percolating and planning it out.  It is complicated!!!!  I tried out my radio voice by recording myself on Garageband (had to get S to show me how).  I sounded ok.  I am relying on my nephew who runs a sound studio nearby to help with initially learn the ropes.  I'm starting to line up people to interview.  This a.m. I woke up with a bunch of ideas for it!  Oh my goodness, life is an adventure!

And now I must go get dressed before the A/C guy gets here to give us a brand new air conditioner because the old one is dying.

Monday Meals - 6/5/17

I'm still feeling burned out on meals!  But the CSA started up yesterday.  I got lots of lovely stuff.  One thing I got was a big bunch of basil.  They had so much they were telling everyone to just take some with their regular order. I don't know what to do with it though. The truth is no one around here much likes pesto.  Well the jarred kind.  Maybe I could try to make some homemade???  That's a thought.

I looked around for the lowest sodium bbq sauce I could find that also came in a glass jar and Rick basted two chickens he roasted on the rotisserie grill yesterday (with hickory wood chips).  DELICIOUS!  Oh my goodness was it good!

Today - deal with left over chicken.  Also, I must make guac today as the avocados are very ripe!

I also am still planning to make more yogurt and granola.  Hopefully so we have both together to make yogurt parfaits.

Becky had a friend stay over with her because the friend's parents had to go out of town for the night.  As a thank you gift, the mom made THE BEST CAKE EVER and gave it to us.  It has sherry in it, I hear.  I'd never think to make a cake from scratch with sherry in it.  I don't even buy sherry.  I just ate some for breakfast, sherry and all.  Wow.  Really good cake!

Sherry cake, where have you been all my life?

I haven't gotten any farther than that in meal planning.  Must go food shopping tomorrow.  Better get hopping!