Our Summer To-Do List

My children's summer to-do list goes something like this:
-Swim
-Play with friends
-Swim more
-Play more


MY summer to-do list looks something (exactly) like this:
-Clean entire house
-Declutter entire house
-Rearrange and reorganize - you guessed it - the. entire. house.

We've come up with a nice compromise:  we do some things from each of these to-do lists every day!


Seriously, during the school year making sure my family has something (hopefully healthy) to eat and doing school with the children are my non-negotiables...everything else is hit or miss.  So come summer:  it is time to get some stuff done around the house!  

I purchased Organized Simplicity months ago (mentioned here), and was enthralled with it...but once I started reading it I knew immediately that there was no way I could tackle the ideas in there until school was out for the summer.

I do not have enough courage to actually show "before" pictures like this homeschooling mama...but I do have some in-progress pics from the last week and a half.

Our very first day, we started on one of the smallest rooms in the house, affectionately known as the "front bathroom" (we have three total, the others being "Mama and Daddy's bathroom", and "The Girls' bathroom").

Noah was our "window guy".

We took down wall hangings, washed rugs and handtowels, wiped down walls, scrubbed floorboards...and the floor...and everywhere!

Thankfully, the children actually thought all of this was alot of fun!  I'm not even being facetious.

(No pictures of Daniel on this day.  The dirty dog was having his "Day with Laoli"!)

We were each equipped with our very own spray bottle, rag and old toothbrush.

And I felt great about the children having their own spray bottle because I made the All-purpose cleaner myself using these kid-friendly ingredients (recipe in Organized Simplicity).

That little bitty brown bottle is essential oil - Sweet Orange - in case you can't read it!

Next up:  Mama and Daddy's Bathroom!

Daniel got to join us in the cleaning fun this day:

This cleaning job was much more fun because I let them take their shirts off.  LK doesn't think it's fair that she can't take hers off...

While it's not like having 4 other adults cleaning with me, the children do actually do more harm than good with their cleaning efforts.  AND, it is so important for them to learn these skills...and that deep cleaning is important...and that teamwork is FUN!

Elisabeth took all these pictures on this day...

...which explains some of the funky angles...

...and fuzzy shots.

This may look like stone tile...but it's linoleum, easy to clean!



I won't tell you what I found on the tops of these beautiful white wall hangings.  It was not beautiful.  Or white.

I also found 50 other totally random shots from all around the house during Elisabeth's "photo shoot" this day. I didn't realize she was gone for that long...no wonder the other children started calling foul on her!

We've also started decluttering and reorganizing the house.  Jas took off Monday and Tuesday this week to help get our summer efforts in this area jump-started.  I had ideas (tons of ideas) but lacked the muscle power to move all the furniture that I wanted moved by myself!  Jas - and his dolly - are my heroes!

If we keep plugging away at this all summer - even just an hour or two of work a day, or most weekdays anyway - we can get lots of much-needed work accomplished!

Please ask me about this in a couple of weeks...just to make sure I haven't thrown in the towel and am just playing and swimming with my kids ALL DAY EVERY DAY!

Also, to my friends I.R.L. - I think we're going to have a yard sale on either 6/9 or 6/16, want to come join us and sell some of your stuff???  I detest having a yard sale, but it would be more fun if we did it together!