Guess I've been ignoring this blog

It's been a couple weeks since I last posted. Not much progress made in that amount of time. But then I've been busy doing things like taking the kids to the pool and the library and whatnot, I guess.

I bought a 2-drawer file cabinet for my "office" today (a.k.a. the former closet in our bedroom). I was hoping it would fit under the desktop I have in the closet, but it's 1/2" too tall. I can change the height of the desktop, so I think that's what I'll eventually do. It just doesn't fit in the space where I have/had the other rolling cabinet, so I need to raise the desktop. DH wasn't happy that I bought something else, but I *need* a place to start filing papers that I need for the kids for school, instead of just adding to a pile that will topple over at any minute in the livingroom.

I also bought some plastic business card sleeves that fit in a normal 3-ring binder. They hold 10 cards per side. Why did I buy them? Ah, I've decided to create my own system for keeping track of chores. The Motivated Moms site has some great calendar tools for keeping track of daily tasks and chores. But they don't quite work for my visual-spatial mind. Yes, it's fun to check things off of lists, but I just wasn't keeping up with the whole system. So I've been trying all summer to think of ways to rework it.

I'm taking the chores/tasks and categorizing them by daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and seasonally (less frequent than monthly). I've assigned the different categories colors (for no reason other than I have colored index cards, and I like color): red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I cut the cards down to 3" x 2" (yes, some waste), so that they fit into a business card-size slot in the plastic sleeves. Each card has a chore/task written on it in bold black marker, from daily reminders to make the bed and take my meds (lol!), to weekly tasks of cleaning the toilet or changing the towels, to less frequent tasks like dusting all the lightbulbs or notating/scheduling household repairs. Then each 10-slot sleeve represents a day.

I've made up enough Monday-Friday sheets for a 4-week rotating system, separating the weeks with dividers. Besides the weekly chores for each day of the week, each page has one bi-weekly, one monthly, and one seasonal task included. When I get through the first 4 weeks, I will rotate in different seasonal chores until I get through all of them (I'm still writing up the cards for those). The things to be done daily are on a separate sheet at the beginning of the notebook. Sunday has things like making shopping lists and filing coupons. These can sometimes be done on Saturday if we pick up the Sunday paper early. But otherwise, NOTHING is scheduled for Saturday (except maybe some tasks I'll assign to DH). That way I should have the whole day to spend with the kids. Plus the time I'm trying to schedule into weekday evenings to spend with them.

I haven't started the system, yet, since I just picked up the biz card sleeves today and started filing everything. The hope/plan is to get these chores done in the morning, along with starting the laundry. This leaves the hours that DD is in afternoon Kindergarten *free* for me to create crafty things and promote my Etsy shop online, or just catch up with the rest of the world. We'll see how things go.

My brain *knows* there should be enough hours in the day to get these things done and have time for myself. I just haven't been good about putting the fun stuff aside for a little while, while I work on the other things that need to be done for my family to happily co-exist. I'll be getting the timer out again once school starts!

I like that the system I'm working on is more fluid. I can move the cards around if I see things aren't quite working. I need structure, but not something so rigid that I feel defeated before I even start. It needs to be "tweakable." I'll report back later with what's working and what's not.