This - N - That

Today I finished the third week of my household schedule. I'm absolutely thrilled with how the house is shaping up.

It's been slower going than I'd hoped. But considering the time invested, it's amazing. I find that I'm always tempted to not do a certain chore this week, and work on something else. Like a certain clutter pile. Or some drawer or cabinet that needs attention. But I've stuck to the schedule pretty well. And then done a little bit on extra stuff here and there most days. And it's feeling like a habit now. Instead of the organized chaos of the past.

Also, the work is much harder than I'd anticipated. Not the physical work, though it's hard, but the amount of time that I'm spending. My days have been full for so long that I've forgotten what leisure feels like.

I homeschool (more on this in another post), drive the girls to their various activities, bargain shop, cook meals, pay (meaning "write out and mail", or click on billpay if possible) the bills (it's my husbands choice that I do this, I'd gladly turn it over to him.), garden (a little), and take care of my husband, 3 daughters, and 2 big lovable dogs.

Add to this a cleaning schedule.

When something needed to be dropped, guess what got dropped first?

The cleaning schedule.

So I'm trying to make it a habit in the lazy (ha) days of summer. What's the saying? If you do something for 21 days, it's a habit, right?

I am finding that this particular cleaning schedule doesn't work exactly for me. A couple of things that I've found that need to be changed:

• Vacuuming definitely needs to be done more than once a week in the den.
• I need a day for administrative duties (bills, filing, straightening the computer room, etc)

So I'm somehow going to have to add work, but do it all in less days. I've got to see what days I can mix. And then we've got all the fall activities starting , but I think I've got all that scheduled pretty well. I suppose only time will tell.

I hear women here (blogland) all the time talking about how they get their housework done in 45 minutes. It take me between 1 1/2 - 2 hours to get mine done. I thought this might become less after the first couple of time, but it doesn't seem to be so. At least not so far.

But...my days are full. And my house is clean. And I wouldn't have it any other way.