Now I’ve prioritized it this way because I HATE laundry, and would probably use any excuse I could think of to put it off for weeks at a time. So I force myself to do it on Monday; this way, if I have ironing or multiple loads that take me an extra day or two to get through, at least the laundry is done. Plus I get it done while I’ve got energy and motivation built up from a Sunday of rest.

Never gotten this desperate, but I do quite frequently end up wearing maternity clothes because nothing else is clean.

So here are my tips for a successful week of cleaning:

• Spread out your cleaning efforts among as many daily sessions as your schedule permits. If you’re a lucky stay-home mom like me, you can get by with as little as 5-20 minutes per day, Monday thru Saturday. If some days are harder than others, split up cleaning sessions among your less-exhausting days and spend 30-45 mins at a time. The point is to plan ahead, make a schedule that works for you, and gradually work on sticking to it.
• 

  Mountains of laundry? Tackle it first.

  Start the week off with whatever is the very most important in your house. If you have pets, that might be vacuuming. If you have small children, maybe mopping. Either way, you start out the week with your biggest hurdle out of the way. So if you run into a wall Tuesday night and can’t bring yourself to clean at all the rest of the week, at least that one thing is out of the way.

• Save things that don’t necessarily need to be done every week for Friday or Saturday.
• Don’t forget things that really only get done on an as-needed basis. I actually schedule them in on top of chores already getting done weekly, just to remind myself to check to see if something needs to get done. These chores include filing, dusting, watering plants, stuff like that that doesn’t need to be done weekly in my house, but gets neglected if it’s not on the schedule.
• Another fantastic tip from Rachelle Wilkinson: Laundry is much less of a headache if you worry less about separating by color and more about separating by person. To paraphrase Rachelle’s words, in this day and age of color-fastness, there’s no need to separate colors and whites, etc. Instead, just dump an entire hamper into the washer and make that person fold their own clothes once they’re dry. I did get burned ONCE using this technique, I threw a cheap red top from Charlotte Russe in with my husband’s and my load of laundry, and all of our white underwear turned pink. Oopsie. So use caution when washing the really cheap stuff.
• By “surfaces,” I mean dusting, cleaning any glass, and polishing any wood or leather as needed. Really only dusting and glass needs to get done every week in my house.
• Use your “catch-up” day to do an honest assessment of what needs to be done most. In the beginning, this was usually a whole week’s worth of cleaning for me. Now, it’s usually some kind of a quarterly or yearly chore I’ve been dreading for months. Still keep your cleaning session down to 20-30 mins… if you can. Be warned, though, cleaning can be addictive once you get the hang of it.

Stay tuned for those dreaded yearly and quarterly chores…

Rainbow Vacuum Cleaner - clothes budget killer

There you have it, plain and simple, the reason I no longer get to buy new clothes every month. I’m now spending my $50/month paying for R2-D2 up there. It goes to show you what a raving clean freak I’ve become, but seriously, the thing traps over 99% of everything it sucks up, rather that spewing it back into the air. To me, that’s more important than shopping. At least, that’s what I tell myself whenever I get the urge to shop. Then I go vacuum something, and I feel much better.

Now, in my defense, it wasn’t a totally irresponsible act. We didn’t buy it new, and the guy threw in the shampooer and stair attachments just to be nice. So we got about $3,000 dollars’ worth of paraphernalia for under $2000. I know, I know, still extremely irresponsible. But exactly how much is a clean, healthy home worth? Especially after you’ve gone through three lesser vacuums in three years?

Not all of them were Wal-mart specials either, one was an Airider that Chad got for free…

Airider hovering vacuum cleaner

… which I shouldn’t complain about at all, because it originally retails for about $450 and really was a good vacuum for a while. The thing hovered (for about the first year of its life) and the handset was self-propelled, so all I had to do was steer. But then it stopped hovering, and we moved into the new house and all the pet hair just about killed the poor thing.

Now, to make it a fair product review, I should let you know the pros and cons of the rainbow.

Rainbow Cons:

• Friggin HEAVY! And not self-propelled.
• Vacuum head doesn’t swivel on the main carpet attachment. The hardwood floor attachment does swivel. This makes it tricky to maneuver.
• Friggin expensive.
• MLM – have to buy it from a sales guy that may or may not assume you have a brain. Luckily, ours was cool.

Rainbow Pros:

• Seriously, the cleanest your carpet will ever ever get.
• Smells pretty. No “burning dust” smell that usually comes with vacuuming. Literally, it smells like taking a shower, all those negative ions in the air.
• Vacuuming can be a workout! I got the shorter hose, mostly because I don’t mind the physical labor. If you don’t want the workout, you can opt for up to a 30-foot hose.
• No banging out filters or changing bags. I used to HATE that! Because dust goes right back into the air and onto the floor. With Rainbow, you just dump the water tank into the toilet and flush.
• 20 year warrantee. Good luck finding a Dyson with THAT.
• Never loses suction. No filter to clog means consistent suction from beginning to end.
• Purifies the air. With or without the vacuum attachments in use, it’s purifying the air in your home. A couple of weeks ago we turned it on because there was cigarette smoke coming into our vents, and another time because we burned dinner. I’m asthmatic, so that’s a big deal in our house.

So… yes, I get little pangs of regret every time I go to Forever21.com, but honestly, anything I buy now will just be out of style in a year. R2-D2 will still be sucking powdered cheerios out of my carpet when the Cheerio Muncher is in college.

If I had my way, everything would go in the closet. But, let’s face it, does anyone REALLY have as much closet space as they would like? So we resort to the next most economical alternative, which, unless you get really clever with your storage solutions, is usually a chest of drawers.

Mine used to be horrendous, all three drawers I was allotted as part of the marriage contract (out of 8 total in the bureau we share… how that happened, I have no idea) up until Christmas when I got a whole bunch of new clothes and my closet and drawers vomited all over the floor. So we went to the most logical place to alleviate any home storage crisis: IKEA!

I’m telling you, the Swedes are geniuses. I know, because I am one. Anyway, that’s where we found this beauty for a whopping $120:

MALM dresser, $120 at IKEA

We bought it, brought it home, put it together, named it George, and promptly filled it up with crap. And that’s when I had a major organizational epiphany: space is only half of the game when it comes to being organized. Because even though my clothes were carefully divided up into their new, spacious homes, they still ended up looking just like the $2 bin at a sidewalk sale.

The other half of the game, I realized, was VISIBILITY! You can fold and refold and stack and restack, but what it really comes down to is 6am late for work and you can’t find that black tank top. So you’re going to tear that drawer apart looking for it, and wha-BAM all your folding and stacking has gone to pot.

This is the part where I remembered a post on one of my favorite blogs, written by Rachelle Wilkinson, a mother of quintuplets plus two older children. She shared that she placed folded clothes into drawers sideways so that every single item is plainly visible, no one item sits on top of or underneath another, so searching for and removing the aforementioned black tank top won’t disturb anything else in the drawer! Genius!

My T-Shirt drawer after 5 weeks

It’s a very long-lasting organization solution because you don’t have to go through and re-vamp every week, it uses the full capacity of the drawer (as opposed to those cute drawer organizer cubbies that only use half the volume of the drawer, or they just look like mini sidewalk sale bins–still not helpful!). It practically maintains itself. The only regression I’ve noticed is that it’s no longer color-coordinated like it was at onset. What can I say, I was a little overexcited.

Baby clothes drawer after 4 weeks

Even the baby’s clothes stay pretty tidy, as long as I can keep her grubby mitts out of them…

In other news, I’ve graduated and am now officially a Real Person out searching for work like the rest of everyone else on the planet. So until I find some good web design clients, I’ll be blogging a lot more frequently! Good news for all you faithful readers… :B

Cardigan & Boots - $12.00 each, AMI Clubwear. Blouse & Jeans - Forever21. Belt - thrifted.

So this month, I did my clothes shopping at AMI Clubwear. WOW they had a lot of cheap boots! And I mean cheap. Plus I caught them during their 50% off everything after-Christmas sale. Score!!

New Cardi from AMI.

New Riding Boots from AMI Clubwear

2 things (and only 2 things) I liked about the experience: selection and price. Everything else was a pain in the neck! Their storefront is a yahoo!-based package deal that’s in serious need of updating and streamlining. Their massive inventory is neither sortable nor searchable (existent search feature notwithstanding – give it a shot and let me know if YOU think it counts.)

My shipment was a bit late (right after Christmas, I can understand that) and didn’t actually ship until I called to ask questions. And I didn’t even GET to ask questions until I realized that no one answers their customer service line until well after 2pm PDT. No exaggeration, you actually get a canned phone company message: “all circuits are busy now. Please try again later. CLICK.” There’s no way to track, review, or confirm your order. Plus their models are trashy (as is the vast majority of their merchandise), they ream you for shipping $20 for 4 items? Give me a break! …and, as a web designer, I have to emphasize that their website needs some serious help, which never reflects well on a business.

I also got another pair of boots and another cardigan…

Another Cardigan from AMI

New boots from AMI Clubwear – wrong size! wah!

Love them both, especially the boots, but… they sent them a whole size too small! Don’t get me wrong, I’m no high-maintenance customer service terrorist. I would rather make them work than return them, but I couldn’t even get my feet into them! Sad! So I’ll keep you posted on how the return process goes. After everything, I’m pretty skeptical. Next month, I’ll probably stick to Forever21.

So here’s the $50 rundown for January…

- Taupe striped cardigan, AMI Clubwear

- Brown riding boots, AMI Clubwear

- Dark green cardigan, AMI Clubwear

- Brown too-small boots, AMI Clubwear

So here’s the list of daily things that realistically COULD be done every day, listed from highest to lowest priority (in my opinion):

First, the bed. This step serves a double purpose, because it reduces the temptation to get back in bed. Which doesn’t help your cleaning goals for the day one bit!

The bed can easily take up half of the floor space in the bedroom, so if you make it, your room automatically looks 50% cleaner! The bed was the first thing I tried working into my routine. This was while I was still working and childless and convinced that I had NO time to clean. I made myself do it each morning before I left the bedroom after getting dressed. Mentally, I just kept telling myself: no breakfast till you make the bed. And it worked! Now I make the bed later in the day, but because it’s a fixed part of my daily routine, it always gets done.

Next, tidying. I haven’t broken myself of the habit of throwing crap all over the floor yet. So until I do, I’ve gotten myself INTO the habit of tidying up several times a day. As sloppy as my family is, we can’t possibly get away with just one tidy-up session on any given day. This is something I’m still working on… and you can tell because my house is only REALLY tidy when company’s coming. So I’m still playing with the schedule. Ideally, I would tidy up right before the baby woke up in the morning, right after she went down for a nap, and right before I went to bed at night. But the tricky thing about tidying is, the more you let it build up, the more intimidating it gets, which makes you that much less likely to ever do it again. As long as you live. So tidy while you can.

Dishes are a tricky thing too, because most people hate to do them, their schedule is more determined by how full the dish washer is than by whether or not it’s “time to do the dishes,” and small children make them almost entirely impossible (along with everything else you’d like to get done, right?). So my fix for this was, sadly, TV. It’s something I always swore I would never do, but that was back when I had all the answers, and no kids. Funny how that works. So I strap the cheerio-muncher in her high chair, plop her in front of a Wiggles video, and slam out some dishes. A lot of times, I run the dishwasher at about 75% capacity just to stay on schedule. Not very green of me, I know, but when you’re as lackadaisical as I am, that schedule’s the only thing that’ll keep you going.

So if you can get those three done, make the bed, tidy up, and do the dishes, by my standard you’ve done pretty well for the day. The next two items on the daily list are considered entirely optional in my house, but they sure make the house FEEL clean when you can get to them.

And by counters, I mean kitchen and bath. And on good days, I throw the kitchen table in for kicks and giggles. These are major trouble areas in my house, and fall more into the “tidy” category than actual “counters.” Again, the more often you tidy them, the easier they’ll be next time.

Sweeping doesn’t really do much for the visual aesthetic of a clean home, but if you have baby, between the mess factor of flying food and the ick factor of that food being found and consumed later on, sweeping is a big one.

So this is step 1 if you’re working on being cleaner and tidier. Some time I’ll put my weekly list up here and talk about the adventure THAT’s been.

My first idea was to strap an LED sign to the top of my car, with a voice transcription device that would display everything I said to the cars behind me:
This gave rise to all kinds of ideas for such a handy device:

Unfortunately, I didn’t choose a career in electrical engineering. Plus I can’t even bring myself to affix bumper stickers to my pristine white car, so I find myself limited to either shouting out the window or gesticulating as clearly as possible without corrupting the cheerio-muncher in the back seat. So here’s the system I’ve come up with…

Generic “the eff are you thinking??”

“You are SO lucky I’m not packin heat.” Great to use on red light runners, stop sign ignorers, cutter-offers and all cheeky monkeys in general.

“Lay off the Jack and stay in your lane, Jim Bob.” Useful for just about anyone having trouble coloring inside the lines.

“You’d drive a lot better with that Blackberry shoved up your tail pipe.” Seriously, there’s a reason it’s illegal in most states now.

“Remove head from sphincter, then drive.” Use on anyone focusing on anything other than their driving. Or driving like it.

“Cry me a river.”

This one comes in handy on the rare occasions I’M the one pulling the cheeky monkey moves, and my hapless victim gets their chonies in a twist. Which I only do to people who really deserve it, like people napping at green lights or having panic attacks at 4-way stops. People really who shouldn’t be driving. Or procreating, for that matter.

And finally, the golden standard of non-vulgar gestures guaranteed to mess up any cheeky monkey who’s pissed you off, to keep them second-guessing their driving behaviors for weeks to come, my most powerful and provocative driving gesture…

“Well gee, Uncle Bob, I didn’t know that was YOU that just tried to side swipe me!”

This works especially well if you have “one of those faces,” and even BETTER if you live in Utah. This totally freaks people out, because they start wondering whether or not they go to church with you and how many of their friends and relatives you’re going to tell that they drive like a prison escapee. You have NO IDEA how well this works.

So, there you have it. My best strategies for coping with road rage. Of course, I could take the mature route and manage the anger itself, but what fun would that be?

What are your road rage coping strategies?

I’ve made quite a few attempts at blogging during my adult life, some of them successful, others not. My favorite was “How to Date a Difficult Woman,” which I think a couple people actually read once in a while. But then I got married and my dating habits became much less bloggable.

So why blog now? Because I’ve found that spending most of my time doing mindless, repetitive things either gives rise to a cranium full of useful thoughts that have nowhere to go, or to mindless boredom and frustration. So I’m going to empty my cranium here and throw my two bits out into the arena of mommyness.

Today while I picked up a bazillion wooden blocks, I tried to decide on my categories. I really ought to pick a niche, but not knowing what I’m good at blogging at yet, I’ll probably pick badly the first few times. So until I figure it out, here’s what I want to try…

Live to Eat. I love to cook, but even more, I love to eat. So this column seems only natural. Here’s where I’ll put recipes and other culinary discoveries.

Fight the Frump. Motherhood does atrocious things to your self image. New time and budget constraints limit our choices considerably, not to mention the sudden baby weight and the “please don’t let me turn into my mother” identity crisis. Most of us never take the time to really reconsider our style within the parameters of our changing bodies and lifestyles. We either continue to cram our new mommy selves into our good-old-days wardrobe, or we give up entirely and live in t-shirts and sneakers until it’s time to start shopping at Christopher & Banks. Either way, we come out looking like mommies and they start writing SNL skits about us. So I’m trying to beat the frump without going overboard. After all, we still have much more important things to worry about.

Just Clean Enough. My last year’s new year resolution was to become a clean freak. I used to be the most slovenly slob you’ve ever met (until you met my husband) but luckily, 2009 turned me into a born-again cleaner and organizer. Now, my house is still pretty messy, but I’m on a cleaning routine that works for me and gets the most important stuff done. I really want to get my strategies out there and report my continuing progress, because I could really have used some help and inspiration along the way. Hopefully I’ll help a fellow slovenly slob on her way to peace of mind, if not uber-clean freak status.

Parenting on Purpose. My go-to parenting guru is, far and away, the Baby Whisperer. Tracy Hogg was a genius, the ultimate Mindful Mommy. She coined the phrase “accidental parenting,” and I see a lot of it both in and out of my own home. I fight every day to avoid it, so I’ll share my goals and experiences here.

Products I Swear By. I think the best way to reward a good business for creating a good product is to buy that product and encourage others to do so. I think advertising is evil, creating demand to meet the supply… bloggers have more influence than they realize when the speak out, so here’s me casting my vote for the good stuff!

Products I Swear At. Same principle, opposite objective.

Time Savers. If there’s anything I really am good at, it’s organizing and streamlining. With help and inspiration from some of my OCD muses, I’m going to share strategies here.

… and that’s all I can think of for now.