Beginning of the month planning {summer style}

My school year (sounds like I'm a middle schooler) schedule is quite a bit different than my (glorious) summer schedule. There will be no waking up at times that begin with a 5 uhthankyouverymuch. And hopefully I will not have to work in multiple towns in the same day. Though, I cannot guarantee that won't happen.

So here is a peek at my last week weeks.  The last week of school was a little crazy especially since we were all hanging out at the hospital from Friday afternoon until Tuesday around noon.

The first week out of school is still pretty swamped. Babysitting Niki's kidlets Monday through Thursday plus working a couple days and a work meeting....then off to Des Moines for the weekend for a wedding.

But then finally gaze at this glorious empty week!! (angles sing) I mean really, that baby is empty!! Wa-hoo!!

So here's June's calendar, the one that we share at home. Not much room for details on this one, just events for both of us are listed.

My menu calendar stated back in May and I am trying really hard to stick to it! I think it will be easier being home everyday to make "real meals" ya know, the kind you eat with a fork and not out of a paper bag. That's my goal anyway.

And my weekly cleaning checklist...I'm trying hard to stick to it this summer!

And that's all....woo-hoo!

High Five for Friday

We have been MIA from High Five for Friday, but we are back in full force. Summer vacation snuck up on us and we went into vacation mode with the blog too! ACK! But, here we are, linking up with Lauren again with our High Five for Friday. Here it goes:

1. Niki got to go shopping, to the doctor and to get groceries, all by her self! Woot!

2. New planners are in the works, for us, our mom & brother and eventually you! Woot again!

3. Shannon flower-ized her apartment. Now that the weather has finally caught up with the calendar, I am all for bringing in some glorious spring colors!

4. Niki got a couple fun tops and some awesome long and lean tanks from the buckle (our favorite). They should be here the beginning of the week.

5. Summer ball is in full swing! Faith has already had 2 games and the boys first game is Sunday. Expect pictures. :) Now to recruit Aunt Shan to help!

Operation: Get it Together version N.2

A big part of Operation: Get it Together for me is getting my children on board with maintaining our household. I have been looking at all different kids of chore charts, online on paper and even apps. But they were all to complicated. I have 3 kids, and several chores that need to be done. I thought about a rotating schedule, but I couldn't really make that work. I thought about switching jobs every week, but didn't really like that either. My kids get bored easily. :)

I ended up with a Chore Jar. I'm sure there are tons of them all over the internet, and I know I have pinned a few. But I wanted just the things that were important to me right now.

I decided to go with 3 categories: Daily, Weekly and Extra Credit. Each of the kids has to pick 2 or 3 daily chores a day. They get completed and at the end of the night they are put back in the jar. Each kid gets to pick 1 or 2 weekly chores. They get put back on Sunday night. Extra Credit are things that the kids are not normally expected to do but can do to earn some extra money, or at my discretion.
I had Shannon whip me up some super cute chore chart cards:

I printed them, and Shannon cut, laminated and cut again. I want them to last for a while.

 Then she made me a super cute label for my container:

I had planned on putting these in a cute mason jar. But it just didn't work out that way. Shannon raided my shelf of extra storage and found this fun green container from Dollar Tree. I just printed this, cut it out and Mod Podged it on my container.

Right now we can't find the lid to the container, so there is no picture of that, but used your imagination for now, I will be back to add a picture when I find the lid!

We have started using it. The kids each pick 3 green chores (daily) and 1 orange (weekly) every day. They love the job of wiping the fridge and freezers, and it pays 50 cents, which they love even more! My fridge has never been this clean. So far, we have done a pretty good job of maintaining our house.

Look for our customizable chore jar kit in our Etsy shop soon!

How do you maintain your household? Are your kids doing chores? At what age did you start them? Any helpful hints to get me through this?

What I'm working on...

Last week I was babysitting Niki's kidlets while she was still in school.  So while the kiddos were playing away I was hard at work!

First on the list is finishing up a customized life planner for Courtney, a winner of a giveaway that we recently sponsored on another blog. It's adorable! And while making Courtney's planner I decided that our life planner could use a little update for the next year too. So I made up a list of ideas that I'm toying around with.

We are also thinking about updating a few of the "sets" in the shop. We are thinking the budget documents first. So we are doing a little planning and figuring out what has worked best for us and adjusting them accordingly. And maybe some fun new colors and layouts too??

What changes or updates would you like to see? Any new documents we should create? Something we should add or change on our life planner??

Operation: Get it Together - Daily Agenda Freebie

We are still here, honest!
I am clearly not getting things done. I decided I needed to bust out our daily agenda and see if it works for me. We are use all of the things we offer, at some time or another. We are also constantly updating our printables. We take comments from readers, customers and friends & family who use our products.

This is our daily agenda right now, it has to-do, where to be, to eat, who to call, to buy and fitness (including a place to keep track of your water).

Click here to download for the month of June!

Shannon's initial plan was for it to be laminated and used over and over. However, I like to plan more than one day. I do have a planner, but this is so much more in depth! I have the rest of the week roughly planned out. If things don't get done on one day, they just get moved to the next day.

Here is mine, for today! Nothing like real life blogging!

So, we are asking for you to click on the link above, download our daily agenda and give us some feedback! Did it work for you? What would you add or take away? Based on your feedback, we will make some changes and put up a new daily agenda for you to try!

Operation: Get It Together {episode three}

Operation: Get it together continues. Today we are on "pretend Wednesday" but I am including Thursday too, for the sake of not dragging this out too much.
 Wednesday and Thursday tasks: 

sweep and vacuum floors

check counters

laundry

clear clutter

water plants

check floors

I also added in dishes, because obviously those need to be done everyday. 

We don't always have to run the dishwasher everyday. But there are dishes used everyday and that means they need to be rinsed and put in the dishwasher. Sitting in the sink being all nasty is not acceptable. Occasionally a few rinsed dishes will sit in the sink until the next day and I'm okay with that if they are rinsed and not getting crusty. Nothing makes a girl crankier than trying to scrub nasty crusty dishes, right?

The floors got swept and vacuumed today. We don't have much area to sweep, just a small kitchen and bathroom. But since our kitchen is right inside our door and people are usually still wearing shoes when they walk though, that needs to be swept pretty often. The bathroom usually goes until scheduled days without much needed in between.

I use a carpet freshener powder before I vacuum. I don't know that it actually does anything beneficial besides making it smell nice, but that's enough for me. The one I use is made by Glade, but I'm sure there are other brands out there.

Counters and clutter are about the same. I am still working on putting away or finding a new (better) home for at least 3 things each day. It's gonna take me a while at this pace, but I'm hoping once I'm out of school for the summer I can kick some serious clutter tuckus. (read: find something without needing an entire search team)

Basically the same story for Thursday, I just added in

I also whipped up another chore chart. I felt like I needed a handy way to track the things that don't need to be done on a certain day, but do need to be done somewhat frequently.

This allows me to track the chores that need to be done weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly but not necessarily in any particular order or on certain days. I just check off what I do and clean the list off at the appropriate intervals.

Also on the docket for the week. ATTACK LAUNDRY MONSTER!! It got a little scary for a while, but in the end I won. That empty spot in the middle is where I sat, through two episodes of Law & Order SVU. uhthankyouverymuch, it took forever!! Now I will just stay ahead of it.

Another project in the kitchen. My freezer got another clean out and reorganization. Actually I was using small trash cans before, but they didn't end up working out as brilliantly as I thought. So I popped in these baskets. The bottom one has meat, the top has potatoes, vegetables and snacks. So far it is working out pretty well.

 

 How is Operation: Get it Together coming along in your lives? What are you working? What new systems are helping your family have a smooth transition into summer??

May Goals Update or Operation: Get it Together v N.1.5

Since its the middle of the month, I thought I would do a little follow up and let you know where I stand. Some good, some in the works and some bad. Here goes:

Home & Organizing Goals:

• Clean & Organize kitchen junk drawer: Not at all. But it's still on the list!
• Declutter and organize coat closet: But I cheated, my aunt came to babysit and she did it. I still need to declutter, but its easier to do now.
• Create chore chart & implement it: This is in the works. I have chores printed out. I decided to go in a different direction. The kids and I are working on this together.
• Tame the laundry monster: Again, cheated. My aunt did this too. But, I've maintained it!
• Drop off Goodwill stuff: Not yet. I keep staring at it though, hoping it will load itself in the Durango for me. I am hoping to get this done by the end of the week, because school is done Thursday!

Lifestyle Goals:

• Be more present with my family: This is a constant goal for me. With so much social media and with it on my phone, its easy to "multi-task". I am trying. I will keep working on it.
• Run 3 miles straight: Haven't ran since our 5K the beginning of the month. FAIL. Still time to recover. I am going to try to get out to run tomorrow school.
• Work on core strength: Not even once. UGH. I have really fallen off the wagon. I am trying to find it again though. 

 And, since you asked, here are some of our #challengespringcolors outfits. I'm a little sad that no one has participated with us.... so get out there and Instagram that outfit!