Job Lists for Kids

Incentives & Ulterior Motives

The struggles and frustrations of coping with adult ADD are very real.  Step into my house, and you will immediately see what I mean.  If you took the time to follow the preceding link, you may have read the checklist and thought each of the items fits.  That may be true, but in those of us with ADD, the occurrences and severity is magnified tremendously – sometimes to a debilitating degree!

As I came down the stairs this morning to make my coffee, once again I was immediately irritated by the condition of my kitchen.  When things have to be cleaned up or moved before I can get to the coffee maker or get the coffee pot under the faucet, it really detracts from my morning beauty. <grin>

So today I shoved everything out of my way and got that coffee started.  While the coffee brewed, I unloaded the dishwasher, so I could then unload the sink.  I am not without blame by any stretch, and I admit that.  Half of the table clutter that I tackled next was mine.  I am notorious for piles!  I stopped at the table this time, though.

From there, I grabbed my cup of coffee and headed for my laptop to create job lists.  There are daily and weekly expectations for everyone, as there should be in every house.  These are things that I will not pay them to do.  Then there are the job lists, which include amounts paid for each task on the list.  There is a list for the kitchen, the lower level (family room & bathroom), and the main level (dining room & living room).  There is one amount paid if the tasks are done on Friday or Saturday, and half the amount is paid if the tasks are done on Sunday or later.  The hope here is to create an incentive not only to pitch in and help but also to get the work done early in case we have company.  I will give them the opportunity to do the work on Friday and Saturday, but Sunday is fair game.  If I get to it first, my initials go by the task thereby eliminating the chance for them to earn the money for that task!

The ulterior motive here is for them to realize why I get so cranky when doing housework.  I believe this is already working because as the girls started working in the kitchen, I could hear them getting huffy with each other!  YES!

I love it when my brain quiets down enough to allow me to get creative like this!

Home Improvement

My goal yesterday was to steam clean the high traffic area and some old spill stains in the family room. Once I had an end table and the love seat moved to the center of the room, I thought it would be a good time to paint. So I said that out loud, and before I knew it, we were at Lowe’s picking out a color. By the end of the day, the family room and hallway were painted and the furniture was rearranged a bit to open up the room. Now it still has a cozy feeling because of the warm color, but it also has an airy feeling. I really like it! It still needs a couple finishing touches, including something for the wall above the couch, which is what I’m going out to look for today. There are three recent photos to the right, and you can click to see more below those three.

Pure and True Happiness

That’s some serious laughter!

It warms your heart to see such pure and true happiness in person, but to capture it and relive it over and over is really special.  This is only one of the reasons I love photography so much.

I am determined to learn all that I can about exposure.  I’ve read the same thing several times from a few different sources.  I think it’s finally sinking in.  I played and practiced and experimented all day.  Thank goodness my camera will display all the settings used for each photo taken because I took close to 300 today!  I loaded them on my computer then and looked at them on the big monitor.  Much better quality today.  I had some “ah-ha!” moments, too.  With a little more practice, I think I’m going to be ready to tackle senior portraits!

The weeds are still happily blowing in the breeze in my rose garden, and the house is still a mess … but I took a day to lose myself in a passion.   Seeing that happiness in my daughter made it all worth it!  I’ve got a load of laundry to fold, and one more in the dryer as I type.  I’ll just squeeze in some power cleaning during my breaks tomorrow.  Maybe I need to make this a normal 40-hour work week so I can focus on some neglected areas in my life.

The Big Move

Still a work in progress that should be done later today – except for the painting and window treatments.

Busy Saturday Schedule

I can check off the first thing on my list for today: work 2 hours (a total of 50 hours this week).

Next on the agenda: clean out and reorganize my kitchen pantry. That will probably take me the better part of an hour, if not more! Oh! I also have to pay bills.

Then I have to get ready and shop for a wedding shower gift. I have no idea what to get. The theme is “Room Service” but no color schemes were given for any of the rooms. Hmmm! I chose living room to be different (and difficult) because people usually give kitchen or bath items. I’m seriously leaning towards a nice larger frame with a promise of a free 11×14 photo from the wedding shots. This is one of the weddings I’m scheduled to shoot! I also have to write down three of my favorite recipes on index cards they provided in the invitation.

If I find something quick enough, I may have time for some personal shopping as well. The shower isn’t until 7pm, but I’d also like to tackle one more item on my house “to do” list before I go. If I had to choose between a little “me” time and jumping right into more projects on the list after working a 50-hour week, I’m going for the “me” time! That still sounds so selfish to me, but it does make me more pleasant to be around once I’ve relaxed and recharged in my own ways.

Many people don’t understand how I can go shopping and even out to eat by myself. Why not? Why do others have to have someone with them all the time? I actually enjoy going out alone, and I always have! I get more done that way because I only hit the stores or sections of stores that I want or need. I find what I want, and I get out. Done!

I think tomorrow will be my lazy day.

Inside the Lives of Hoarders

I don’t normally watch Oprah, so I missed part one of today’s show.  Peter, from Clean Sweep (one of my favorite shows), helped an older couple clear out their house.  They filled enough rental crates (about 20×20x30 inches) to fill three semi moving trucks of stuff from a 3,000 square foot house.  I couldn’t help but feel that if we don’t tackle the multitude of items in our 1,800 square foot house, we could easily end up this way.  OK, so their’s was a bit extreme, but the fact remains that we have entirely too much stuff in this house.

With home values down by 11%, which I just saw on the news today, moving to a bigger house is out of the question.  It would be the perfect solution for many other reasons as well, though!  It’s just not going to happen any time soon.  So this family of six has got to make 1,800 square feet of living space work for all of us.

I don’t consider us hoarders, though.  We just never get around to clearing out our closets of things that don’t fit or we just don’t want anymore.  We put off getting rid of old toys and household items that never get used. Storage solutions are great to a point.  Miranda’s closet is just about to burst with all the Rubbermaid and Steralite containers filled with toys and who knows what else that they have shoved in there.

Let’s take the closet situation a little further.  Whoever designed this master bedroom should be executed and suffer a slow and painful death!  The bedroom part is long, and on the other side of that line is a “walk-in” (more like squeeze-in) closet, the vanity area in the open, and the toilet and garden tub in a room with a door but very little ceiling.  Our ceiling is vaulted, and there’s a ledge that goes across the closet/vanity/bathroom side providing a bit of an overhang for a ceiling.  The rest is open to the vaulted ceiling – up and over the aromas waft from the bathroom.  Our closet has an L layout, but one crosses over and under the other, rendering about a foot of the upper and lower racks practically useless.  It’s pathetic!  Then there’s my son down the hall who doesn’t even use his closet, which is a nice long, double sliding-door closet.  My plan is to claim half of that closet when we switch Ali into that room and Josh into her room.

The condition of my house is a source of depression for me.  I’m embarrassed to have anyone come over, which is why I never invite anyone.  I also don’t try to organize social gatherings regardless of the condition of my house because I’ve had bad past experiences with trying to do just that.  Few if any people show up.  So I figure if I don’t plan things, I can avoid that let down when no one can come.

As if the clutter weren’t enough, there’s the kitchen!  We started taking the crappy tile off the kitchen walls that the Vietnamese people before us put up and did a horrible job.  They must have used concrete to put it up because the only way to get it off is to go through the drywall, too.  That means we (I mean Greg) has to re-drywall everything that gets destroyed.  This is going to be an ugly project.  In the meantime, part of the wall is naked drywall, then there’s a spot with a hole and the 2×4 showing beyond it, and the rest is crappy tile job still.  You can’t even remove switch plates and outlet covers because they’re embedded into the tile and grouted in!

How am I supposed to have people over when this is what my kitchen looks like???  And how is any of this supposed to get done when we’re both working about 50 hours per week?

Drowning in a Sea of Clutter

Seriously! Can someone please just donate a huge dumpster for us? We have so much we can get rid of. I have two bags ready for a charity pickup schedule for this Thursday already. Every time one of those organizations calls to say they’ll have a truck in our neighborhood, I have something for them.

While straightening up part of the basement today, I found wasted space. There’s an old dinette set (well a table and its one remaining chair) that really needs to go. It’s taking up the whole center of the room. Along one wall, I can have a table set up with Steralite storage drawers underneath filled with all my paper crafting supplies. The wall is completely bare, which is a huge waste of vertical space – something we do plenty of in this house.

The amount of hours I’ve been working lately hasn’t helped at all. I now use Microsoft Outlook for my e-mail, and the calendar on that has become my friend. I want everything done right now, but maybe it’s best that I can only spare an hour (sometimes minutes) at a time trying to tame the beast. I tend to overdo it and end up quickly burnt out, overwhelmed, and exhausted. So I’m actually scheduling small tasks daily on my calendar. I went into overdrive this evening and worked for three hours, but that won’t be the norm.

What a way to spend my birthday evening! The whole day was nothing special, which is what happens when you’re older I suppose. I started working at 6AM, took Miranda to school and Greg to pick up a rental car for his work trip to Wyoming at 7:45, was back to work by 8:45, and took a lunch break from 12:15-1:00 (splurge: Olive Garden to go!) . I finished working at 5PM (9-hours today), grabbed something to eat on this free-for-all night, then worked my but off for three hours on part of the basement, washing towels, the kitchen, a bathroom, and vacuumed three rooms.

My first load of towels used the last of the detergent, so I sent Jason to buy some more and to pick up some frozen custard from Good Times as my birthday treat. As luck would have it, my favorite was the flavor of the day today: Cherry Valentine! It’s cherry flavored with chocolate, cherry syrup-filled hearts in it. Frozen custard craving satisfied, I put the second load of towels into the washer and the first into the dryer. By now, I have a feeling the first load is tossed onto the floor (don’t worry, it’s carpeted and freshly vacuumed!) or table because I heard Josh putting some of his clothes into the washer. <sigh>

That’s enough of this slightly incoherent, very ADD-ish post. I’m going to stuff those towels into laundry bags and leave them on the couch to fold tomorrow. I’m going to bed!