With our powers combined........

The house if full of noise again after the short break while Garrett napped. I have two loads of laundry rotating around either the washer or dryer. There are toys scattered around the back of the tv room and Garrett's crumbs from lunch are still on the floor just waiting to get cleaned up. I've ranked common household chores by way of which I find to be most appealing to me:
Vaccuming
Dishes
Cleaning Windows
Cleaning Kitchen/Appliances
Laundry

When I think of all that needs to be done in a day, it sometimes makes my head spin. John use to tell me that whatever needed to be done in the house was my job to take care of because he was the one making the money! I use to hate having to do any sort of cleaning because it seemed that to be the only one to cleaned the house but not the only one who lived in the house was unfair and unrealistic. I think that might have been selfish thinking on my part.I understand the logic behind, "you stay home, therefore you do the grunt of the work".

My friend, Tara, does the majority of her housecleaning on Mondays. So you can always count on the fact that she is unavailable on Mondays. I envy the fact that she is one of those scheduled people who has a set plan for the day. Everyday feels like a cleaning day to me.

Some things I need to get done to feel like I'm more on a schedule would be:
1. Get Garrett to sleep in his own bed at night
2. Making every meal at a set time (b:8, L:12, S: 2 D:5, etc)
3. Scheduled "quiet time" -- we already do nap time at 12:30 and lunch is usually a little before 12
4. Set Bath time
5. Set Bed time
6. Real free time activities

Our day usually looks like this: Garrett up by 7-7:30, Chelsea up by 7:30-8, Breakfast and cartoons around 8:30, free time, lunch at 11:30-12, nap time 12:30-2 (which I either do a workout or just work), 2-5 free time, Dinner around 6, when it's a bath day bath around 7:30 and kids in bed by 9 or 9:30. The worst part is that there are a lot of "or's" in that schedule. Even with things running like that most of the time I feel like I do my kids a huge injustice by allowing them to watch cartoons after naptime or make them do other things while I try to get some work in. My mom likes to tell me that I need to be more scheduled for the mental health of my kids but never offers me an example of how I could improve. I feel like if things aren't at the same time everyday than I am thrown off course.

I hope that I'm not the only one in this battle of the scheduling book! Christi, the best mother I know has set things to do everyday. Her daughter does arts and crafts, reading time, etc. My daughter can't stop squealing long enough to hear a word I say. I think I might force Christi to start a bootcamp and we'd lable it "learning time with Christi" or something. She could be a like a teacher just without the school setting!! I think I will propose this offer to her and see where we get. *EVIL FACE!*