See ya Martha....you're outa here.

               Good-bye Martha. I'm waving the white flag. Not because I give up because I can't accomplish it but because I just don't want to. I don't have time for all that! I have a pretty clean house outside of this challenge, and i enjoy keeping my house clean. I think it teaches my kids something to have the house clean and I think it show respect to my husband who works long hours to provide everything for us. It shows him that I  appreciate what he does for us enough to take care of it. So I do clean every week. I clean every room every week. I just wasn't cleaning things to Martha's standards. But I do have five kids. All rooms aren't clean at the same time ever. Ever. And it was getting hard and frustrating to keep it up. Add laundry for seven people and yard work and life was kinda sucking in my house...for me anyway.

             So now that I have stopped cleaning to such high standards  the mom guilt starts. We all have that mom guilt. At least us moms do. I'm sure dads have their own set of guilt, but this is a blog by a mom so it's mom guilt. Your mom guilt may not show up in the form of a not spotless house but it's there somewhere else.  So here I sit, thinking should I care that my trash cans aren't wiped out every week, or should I care if my base boards are always clean or if every cabinets aren't totally organized? I probably shouldn't care. But for whatever reason I equate how clean my house is to how good of a wife/mom I am. Crazy. I'm pretty sure I am crazy!

        I shouldn't care because every week my house is clean. I clean the bathrooms, all of them. I clean the kitchen and I mop. I dust and vacuum everyday. I'm pretty sure that should be good enough. I have spent a lot of time cleaning these few weeks and I have heard from my kids several times about it. They wondered why I was cleaning again, because nothing seemed dirty, or wondering of I could play a game  with them or something else. I was so tired from cleaning that I didn't want to do much when I was done! Plus I'm gonna be honest and tell you that I hate board games. There, I said it. I hate them.

       So I am going to give up my rigorous cleaning and hopefully my crazy mom guilt and just get back to my basically clean cleaning schedule. You will still be able to eat off my kitchen floors, but you may only have a 10 minute window to do it. But if you are like me and you have lots of kids then you have learned to eat fast and you could probably eat a 5 course meal off my floor in that 10 minutes...and I would be happy to join you!

       

A case of the Mondays

   


      Well today is Monday. Monday in my house is a big cleaning and laundry day. It's an even bigger cleaning day since I decided to clean by the book...the Martha Stewart homemaking book. But it's also my first real day home from my mini vacation with Ray and to say I had no motivation to clean anything is an understatement.

             
              I spent Thursday through Sunday in Boulder, Colorado with Ray. I'm sure I could just end it there and you all would nod in understanding, thinking to yourselves....of course she doesn't want to clean, she just left one of the most beautiful places and came home to Oklahoma. So you're right. That was my mind set all morning.

             I loved Boulder, truly loved it and I could have stayed. Forever. I loved the mountains, the food, the people, the shopping and taffy. Yep, I bought an unreal amount of taffy and ate all of it. All except 12 pieces that I shared with my kids. Pretty generous huh.


           So that brings me back to today and back to reality. Yuck. Ray is still in Boulder so I'm still cleaning without anyone telling me I'm awesome. That sucks. So because I was gone for several days my house needed to be cleaned. My mom was here with the kids while I was gone and she did a great job watching her grand kids, but for some reason she didn't scrub my toilets. I guess it slipped her mind.

   
           That meant that today was a bathroom cleaning, toilet scrubbing, laundry doing, garden weeding kind of day and I was not excited about any of it. But in the end I did it. Not because I wanted to, but because I had to. I said I would and dang it I'm gonna do it. I also started getting ready for Lizzie's birthday sleep over today. The party is tomorrow. Tomorrow. What? I am usually unprepared for parties and this one is no exception. So of course that meant the Pinterest searching started today for the planning of the party that starts tomorrow. It's ok, I got this and I'll blog about it. Because that's how I roll.

What day is it...

            So I haven't been not blogging, I just haven't been blogging. Makes sense right? Ray is out of town but I am still marching on with my cleaning. I am cleaning and spanking misbehaving kids and crying to Ray all at the same time. That is what multitasking is all about.

           I didn't realize how much I need someone to tell me I have done a great job. Ray is really good at telling me the house looks nice or that I have been doing a great job. I need that. That is my love language. That and gifts! So with Ray not home to tell me how great the house looks after all my hard work I'm wondering if its really even worth it. Is my house really clean if no one is there to complement me? My kids don't care, that for darn sure. They are just messing up my hard work, so they aren't going to think about sending a complement my way. In fact with Ray gone, the most I am getting from my kids is lots of whining and telling me how much they miss him!

         So that leaves me with my problem. Do I keep cleaning like a crazy woman everyday  or do I wait until the night before he gets home and then clean like a crazy woman. Unfortunately for me I like a clean house so I will continue to clean....don't worry Ray, your house is clean!

        On Thursday of this week I get to take a break from cleaning and from kids and from Oklahoma and I get to fly to Boulder without kids to spend the weekend with Ray. At this point I am living for Thursday. I miss Ray and truthfully my kids are making me crazy. I love them. So at least hear that. But without the rule enforcer at home, and the spanking hander-outer, life is a little harder with these little monsters that live in my house. Plus I miss Ray because he makes me laugh and hello, tells me how great my house looks!

Today is over!!

           Day one done is done. Day one out of 15 that it will just be me. Me and five kids and no Ray. Today was not about cleaning. Today was about survival! The first day of anytime time that Ray travels is terrible! It's a hard day because first the kids are sad, and then they stop being sad and they start having a misbehaving, chasing them around the house with a wooden spoon behavior. The transformation is amazing, and happens every time. Really.

           So I tried to keep the kids busy today. After I helped, or I guess I should say "helped" my sister with a garage sale I took the kids to the library and the splash pad. What. Has anyone ever been to the splash pad, on a Saturday, when its a million degrees outside? I never had until today, and I will never do it again. There was a birthday party at every picnic table. In fact a group of people asked me to move so they could have their party. Sure people. Ask the lady with all the kids to move. That's awesome.


        I told the kids we could do pizza and a movie for dinner. I was going to go to the red box and get a movie, but by the time it was time to do that it just seemed more reasonable to pay $5 for it on demand then $1 at the red box. Rays gone people. He's the brains behind the money. Enough said.

     
         So it's 8:30 as I'm typing this and Molly has been in bed since 6:00 and the little boys, who will probably be called "the little boys" even when they are married, went to bed at 7:00. It's a shame that Timothy knows how to tell time because he went upstairs protesting saying something about he needed to be outside riding his bike. No honey, you need to be in bed. Mommy is done. So tomorrow to avoid this problem I am going to set the clocks ahead and give them all Benadryl. I'm kidding...who wants to mess with changing all the clocks.

Its Friday ya'll....

      Hello Friday. SO cleaning the way I have been this week has been interesting. It has been a lot of hard work, but in the end actually worth all the effort. Because my house is clean and I haven't really stressed out about how I am going to get it all done and the million other things that I have to do....like make cookies and play with my kiddos and check Facebook....

      Yesterday and today where my easy cleaning days. According to Martha's lists, I had three rooms left to clean for the week. The living room, dinning room and the library. We don't have a library. We do have bookshelves with books on them, so I am now calling that our library. I have made library cards for all the kids and I have already started to collect fines....Anyway  in order to clean these room I had to dust everything. And then mop everything mop-able and then vacuum everything vacuumable. Not so difficult right? It took me almost two hours to do all those things in those rooms and I'm not really sure why. It could be that I was watching a show, or trashy reality tv, or whatever and that made my cleaning take a little longer. Could be.


       Then today all I really did was laundry for the millionth time this week and dusted and vacuumed. Why is that all I did....because miracle of miracles, my house was clean from all my hard work during the other days of the week.


      So I know Ray is just as excited as he could be over the this new cleaning schedule. He may or may not be a little bit more tidy then I am.  And as much as I hate to admit when he is right about something, he may actually be right about cleaning things on a schedule and keeping a list. And as strange as it sounds, working harder during the week turned out to be easier in the end. Now I'm not going overboard here. Martha has a list for weekly maintenance to do on your air-conditioner. I'm not going to do that. I could spend every minute of my day cleaning something and checking something off a list. But I'm not going to.

   
   

I need a maid

       Day three is over. I am tired. I am sitting here writing this with my hand in a bag of cheddar jalapeño Cheetos and its  not a single serving size bag. It's the big one. I'm not usually this worn out on a Wednesday from just a few days of cleaning.

        Today I cleaned the kitchen. I had been dreading this day. Let me just say that my kitchen wasn't filthy before this either.  Molly could eat off my kitchen floor and I didn't give it much thought, truthfully I may have picked candy up from that floor and eaten it, but come on. Its candy. But my kitchen has never been Martha Stewart clean. Never. Ever.

        On different days of the week some part of my kitchen was always clean. Like maybe my microwave was clean but my oven was a little dirty. Or the counter tops were sparkling but my floor needed to be mopped. Not today. Today every last thing in that kitchen has been cleaned. In fact, I didn't let anyone go in the kitchen today after I cleaned it. Usually the kids make their own lunches. Well, I make Molly's  and the older kids each make their own lunch and lunch for one of the younger boys. Not today. We had tacos for dinner and usually my kids make their own. Not today.  No one was allowed in.

         Today I cleaned my dishwasher, oven, microwave, stovetop, refrigerator and freezer and wiped all my cabinets down and swept and mopped. After typing all that out I have decided that the kitchen will forever be off limits.

       I think cleaning this way wouldn't be that bad, if that was all I did, but I still have my  regular stuff that needs to be done. Or stuff that's regular to me, like weeding my garden or doing at least two loads of laundry a day...seven people live here, need I say more? I also dust and vacuum everyday. Every.single.day. But I do that because we have a very large dog that sheds a very large amount and it makes me crazy to have dog hair everywhere.

      But I do love that so far this week all the bathrooms, bedrooms and my kitchen are clean and I won't have to do to much to them until next week. So all the hard work is so far worth it. So far.  On Friday I might have a completely different attitude.

      And now I'm wondering if Martha has an efficient way to kill flys in her ginormous book. It's either get rid of the flys or get rid of the little people that keep letting them in. And those little folks don't seem to be leaving anytime soon.

     And are you wondering about the bag Cheetos I mentioned in the second sentence? Its gone.

And day two went like this....

          So I seem to be learning more about my family throughout all this cleaning more then I am learning about cleaning while I am doing all this cleaning. Today I learned my children are hoarders. The whole mess of them, just a bunch of hoarders. And they don't hoard cool stuff, nope. My kids hoard trash. Real trash, real throw in the trash can trash. Trash.

         On day two of cleaning I chose off Martha's weekly list to do bedrooms.  We have a five bedroom house. Holy cow. I loved all this space when we were looking at this house and I loved the idea of five bedrooms. Today I hate all five bedrooms.

         On the what needs to be done in the bedroom list, I had to launder all sheets and pillow cases, dust every surface in the entire room, every surface. Everything, that included fans and light fixtures. On a weekly list? Who does that every week? If I did that every week there would be no dust to dust off.  And I had to empty trash cans. But like I said in the very first part my children are trash hoarders so instead of emptying trash cans I carried around a giant trash bag and through mountains of crap away. And then I had to vacuum all the bedrooms.

      So because I am also following her monthly list and wash all bedspreads and blankets  is on the monthly list I thought I might as well tackle that since I had to strip all the beds and wash all that stuff anyway. A million...no joke....a million hours later I have decided that our next house will have one bedroom and we will have a family bed.  And one set of sheets and a blanket. And while I am at it, one set of clothes each.

Martha and her bathrooms....

             As I sat down this morning to look at my cleaning lists...yes, lists...I was slightly overwhelmed! Like I said yesterday, there is a list for everything. Daily, weekly, monthly. There is even a list for a cleaning kit! And on her list for a cleaning kit was a bucket. I don't have bucket, so I went to the store and bought a purple bucket this morning. Just because I thought purple would be more fun. I was right. Anyway... So I decided to do this, of course everything on the daily list, then one thing from the weekly list and then on thing from the monthly list a day.

            The weekly list is not to different from my normal weekly list, just way more in-depth! Today from the weekly list I choose bathrooms, because I haven't cleaning the bathrooms since Saturday morning because we had company that afternoon. And I'l be honest, by cleaning I really mean a fast wipe down with cleaning wipes. But seriously, I have three full baths and one half bath in this house. Sometimes a cleaning wipe is all there is time for. But alas, there is no use of cleaning wipes in the "how to" of cleaning bathrooms by Martha. So I will not sure cleaning wipes.


        A few things I have noticed today...

1-I'm sure that Martha doesn't have a little boy go number two in the a freshly cleaned toilet.

2-Martha doesn't have five kids and two adults to do laundry for as well as everything on her daily and weekly and monthly list.

         So I completed all my tasks today in a Marthaesc way. I cleaned all the bathrooms in my house exactly like she said. That's three and half bathrooms people, three.and.a.half.bathrooms. I did things I have never done before. Like she has you clean the inside and the outside of every bathroom trash can. What??? I have to stick my hand inside my kids bathroom trash cans and clean them?? Yes, yes I do. To be honest I actually thought about skipping this step when I got to the boys bathroom trash can. First, what the heck do boys put in their trash cans that stick to the bottom and won't come off and second, it seems there may be some aiming problems when they are using the restroom. All things leading to gross in that trash can. But I am sticking to my word and sticking my hand it that nasty trash can once a week for a month. I might have a big heart to heart with the three boys that use that bathroom before i have to clean it again next week though!

      Not only did I do the bathrooms, which is a task on her weekly list, I also did her daily list. That list consists of things like make beds, which I do anyway because I hate, HATE and unmade bed and manage clutter and sort mail and sweep kitchen floor. Check, check and check, that list was easy to do.

     Then it was the end of the day and I remembered about her stupid monthly list. I double checked it to see what I could do real fast and here are a few things....scrub grout, vacuum window treatments, wipe inside and outside of trash and recycling bins...ok, that one is never, NEVER going to happen. I just described the kids trash cans, like I am going to be cleaning our gigantic trash and recycling bins so if you want to call me a failure and stop reading now, be my guest. Seriously, because I'm not doing it. But I did have to pick one thing to do and on the list I found this little gem...wipe off phones. Done. My phone is officially wiped off.


      Day one is done and I even found time to fix dinner for my family....tuna cakes. Thats a fancy word for canned tuna mixed with other things formed into patties and cooked. But no one starved and I don't have to clean bathrooms for another week....

       

Martha and Me...

           So I have this book, its a Martha Stewart homemaking book.

Here is the book on Amazon

            I have had it for several years, and I have used it. I can fold a fitted sheet like no ones business. But my use of that book ends about right there. Would you be shocked to know that that book was given to me as a gift? And would you be shocked if I told you my sweet husband was the gift giver of that book?

          So there it sat, collecting dust which I'm convinced is a sin if you are a Martha Stewart book. Anyway...Ray asked me about the book. And he sweetly reminded me that it had all these great cleaning list...daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally....you name it and there is a list for the how and the why and the whatever of cleaning.

          So let me say this,  its my job to clean my house, its not Rays job. It's really my job. Ray leaves the house to do his job, my job just happens to be in the same place that I live. So because this is true, it can sometimes be boring, or sometimes I don't want to do because lets be honest, who enjoys cleaning toilets, especially ones that little boys use. So because I wanted to mix things up a bit and make my real job more interesting, I now introduce you to the Martha Stewart challenge.

         I will spend the entire month of July...minus the first few days of the month because come on people I just thought of this....cleaning and doing things the way Martha Stewart does from the book mentioned above. Everything, really I mean everything! And I will tell you all about it because yay, I'm going to blog my whole experience of being Martha for a month...minus the jail time and gardening clogs. Really, who wants to wear gardening clogs when you can just stick your feet in the dirt.

       So now you know and now its real and now I will be held accountable because I might be slightly notorious for starting something and not finishing it.