Clean your room!!

So my house is going down the tubes...cleaning wise. I have been having the hardest time keeping up with things, and it will not get better as the winter holidays get closer.

So I have an idea, and would LOVE your opinions.

A chore list, who does what and on what days.

While Boo is 6, she can still do chores. I did chores until the day I moved out of my parents house, and they started when I was very young.

I am not talking just cleaning your room, that is standard no way around it normal. I mean, cleaning the cluttered hallway, helping with a bathroom or sweeping. She is more than ready, and lives here too! lol

Hunter already takes one of the bathrooms on his weekends here. Yes, he is only here for maybe 10 days the month, but he is a messy boy, and needs to chip in too. Plus, he like to play the "None of my friends have to do chores" card, and that makes me want to give him more to do. I am just mean like that I guess.

My point you may be wondering...

What do you have your kids do as chores. How old were they when you started having them do chores?

I am looking for input please! I am so unclear where to start with this, but it needs to be done.

Bathroom in need of help!!! UPDATED

Since we were having people over this past weekend, I needed to REALLY clean my house. Things were all over the place, and not a pretty site at all. My downstairs bathroom is very VERY boring, so I needed to add some color. I mounted two frog and two fish cut outs above the mirror, below the lights. They are really cute, and I have had them since Andi and I had gone to Micheal's last.



I then dug out my lone white unscented candle and my beads and went to town. Taking some stick pins, beads and a candle I made a great display candle. It is Andi's idea from her craft blog, a great project for gifts. It looks great, even not done. I really needed the color in the bathroom.

Hopefully sometime soon I will be able to find some colorful fun pictures to mount and hang. Maybe more frogs and fishes...maybe more animals.

And speaking of Andi...she gave me the best purse ever!! I will take a picture and add it tonight. Nice and big, and my favorite color!! She is fabulous!

Andi...we need to go to Micheal's!!!

Oh the books...

I am a reader, a major reader. My favorite thing to do next to spending time with the fam is to curl up with a book. I will read almost anything once. I am not a fan of the "Lord of the Rings" books, but I have read them all. I can still recite parts of the original Alice in Wonderland, and love to reread Charlotte's Webb with the kids. There is nothing better than a good book.

However, there is a problem when my dear hubby finds my books all over the house, my car and the garage. I have them everywhere. People ask me why I don't use the library, but that doesn't work as well. I forget to bring them back, then pay fines. I love my books, and hate to give them back.

What brought this up is the new book case hubby got for me. We have been living with a long clumsy book case, and it sits in my entry way. It takes up a lot of room, and makes it hard to get into the closet. A pain is what it is. So, hubby found me a tall book case that is no where near as wide, and much more stable. Books won't fall out the back, and I can't stack things on top.

So, I have been going through my books, binging what I don't HAVE to have, and keeping what I love and need. I have made hard decisions but, easy ones. JD Robb is a MUST have, along with John Grisham. I love Nora Roberts and Nicholas Sparks, but there are some books I just don't care for. Binge and purge I go. My mom will be happy with the books she gets to choose from this weekend, when I show her the three boxes of books that are marked for giveaway. Whatever she doesn't want, will go to Goodwill, so someone who wants new books can have some.

What books can you not live without?

Oh the paperwork...

So, with Katie starting school in 8 weeks (yes I count it by weeks) I realized that we are going to have an onslaught of paperwork to fill out and read through. On top of it all, we will have projects, work pages and many other things she will bring home. In an attempt to get ahead of the paperwork by any means I have been looking for expandable, multi-pocket file folder things to put all the paper into. Then, at the end of the year, or trimester, I can go through it, dump what isn't needed and put what we keep into Katie's binder I am going to start. Sounds easy right?

Well, I have been looking for a month for those folders to go on sale. No luck. BUT!! Today I was at Target getting Jen's shower gift and in their fabulous dollar section I found them! For $1!! What a deal! So, I got one for Kate and one for Tim. He is moving schools this year, and will have a ton of paperwork, on top of the stuff we have from the clinics already. So we are set. Tonight I will go through the two piles on the counter and file it all away! I am a little excited about this.

Oh the chaos is going away...

I spent a lot of last week working on the main hall closet we store things in. Katie's hair stuff, first aide and so on. The family games are stored there as well. I have gone through every box we had in there prior, and created more organized boxes. Hair Stuff, Nails, Foam crafts, Beads, Color books, Learning stuff and so on. I then labeled all the boxes with card stock. I attached them with my hot glue gun and labeled them all. Now Tim won't go for the knitting box looking for band aids! Next stop...entry closet!