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On My Mind – Chorewars

Written on September 2nd, 2011 by Hear Mum Roar in Challenges, In the home, Organisation

This is a Friday photo feature from the Down To Earth blog.

What’s on my mind this Friday is my latest obsession, Chore Wars.

I’m so disorganised when it comes to cleaning. I tried the Fly Lady method for a while, and for a while, it worked. Then it just did my head in. The site I’m talking about today is way more fun.

If you could combine World of Warcraft with Fly Lady, you’d get Chore Wars. It’s free to play and you can earn XP and ‘gold’ for doing chores. For someone like me, I’m finding this a very motivating way to get cleaning. My kids and partner love it too, which means I get more help around here!

To play, you simple need to set up an account and either start your own party or join someone else’s. I have a party named ‘HMR’, which now has 51 players! We’re having fun and supporting each other as we go. If you’d like to join this party for some motivation, you’re more than welcome to join here. As time goes on and the need arises, I add new chores to this group. If there’s a chore missing that you’d like to see added, either leave a message here or on my facebook page and I’ll be only to happy to add it as soon as I get the time.

I know some people will probably read this and think, ‘why not just do the cleaning?’ Well yeah, there’s that. And that actually works for some. For me even, sometimes. But usually, I find it dead boring. It’s nice to have something to break up the monotony. I’m even thinking of starting a second party for bloggers. Would anyone be interested in that?

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What I did on the first day back to school

Written on February 1st, 2011 by Hear Mum Roar in Challenges, February 2011, In the home, Organisation, School aged

There’s something about starting a new school year that makes me want to try to make life easier each year. A few days leading up to the new school term, I began trying a new system to manage my time and get a little more done.

After years of going off and on Flylady with varying levels of success, I’ve started dedicating only two hours per day to cleaning the house. Flylady bangs on about doing fifteen minutes a day for all these different jobs, and I was always frustrated to find that before I knew it, I’d be cleaning all day if I followed her system. Really, that’s not how I want to live my life. Two hours per day is still more time than I usually spend anyway, so it seems to be accomplishing more.

What I do, is I pick out the most disastrous looking areas of the house first, and start with those. As time goes on, the house looks a little bit better everyday, and I’m finding it easier to keep on top of things. Here’s yesterday’s disaster I found after Missy 10 trotted off to school:

Yep, it’s our very own dumping ground, *blush*. That’s where the bills and school notes were getting plonked, then lost. When we needed a bill or note, we had buckley’s of finding it on time. Not to mention how difficult it was to open the microwave, clean it or let the vents on the sides breathe. I thought this was a perfect place to start, as I knew my daughter would be bringing notes home, and I wanted to start out the year having a proper place for them.

Here, I’ve decluttered the area, and created a yellow folder. In the folder, Missy 10 has been instructed that this is where all of her school notes will be placed as soon as she gets home from school. Once they’re out of date, we’ll remove them. We already have an expanding folder for our bills, so it was a matter of just putting them in the right place. All the other clutter simply needed to be put back in its place or thrown out. You can just imagine how much time we wasted with all this junk piling up when we were looking for something, or trying to use the microwave.

Now, obviously, this wasn’t the only job I got done in an hour, but I thought this was a great example of a starting point to better organisation in the new school year.

I’ll be sticking with this system, because I’m amazed at what I can get done in two hours. Once the two hours are finished, I stop for the day. I either let the two younger kids help me as I go, or give them a play activity, or they play together with their own made-up game. The first day I tried doing just two hours a day of cleaning, I got the lounge room floor vacuumed, the kitchen floor swept and mopped, four loads of laundry washed and in varying stages of drying, lots of forgotten laundry put away and a heap of decluttering. By focusing on the jobs in most desperate need of being done, it means that everyone in the house is much calmer. Things are being dealt with that need to be, and our living space is feeling more pleasant again.

And now I want the dirt from you guys: where is YOUR disaster area, that you dump all your crap on? Spill!

Inner B Mum Organiser Giveaway

Written on January 31st, 2011 by Hear Mum Roar in Giveaways, January 2011, Organisation

Are you feeling organised for school, yet? Maybe your kids have gone back already, or if you’re in NSW like me, today’s the big day. I spent all of yesterday, madly running around, making sure everything was ready for my daughter’s first day back at school. Talk about stressful!

To help make life much easier, Inner B is giving one lucky reader the Mum Organiser, in fushia pink.

I’ve actually had a look over this gorgeous diary, and I’m so impressed. It costs $44.95, and can be easily customised according to your family life. You can store your appointments, to do list, birthdays and anniversaries. It has a unique format which allows you to plan all of your family’s activities. It has a section for you to write in all the important things, such as details for your children’s dentist, local pharmacy, GP, local hospital, and whatever else you need regularly.

Inner B always makes sure to remember mum too, though. The Mum Organiser therefore also has a personal well being contacts section for you to keep your physio, hair dresser, massage therapist, and all those other contacts that make our lives more manageable.

Then, it has a household contact information page, for pretty much everything; local council, your accountant, electrician, gas, water, internet providers, and so on. As if that weren’t enough, there’s space for your entertaining contacts, your brilliant ideas (come on, we’re mothers! We have ‘em all the time!), things you want to do and places to visit, your dilemmas, goals, health and fitness ideas, favourite websites and passwords, must read books, must see movies, must listen to music, favourite restaurants, retail stores you like, items borrowed and lent, phew! (This is reminding me of that ‘I’ve been everywhere, man’ song!)

And then, there’s family medical information, current immunisation schedule, dates to remember, (eg, check fire extinguishers, torch batteries, all that practical stuff we all get caught out on), kids’ favourite activities and it even has holiday and party planning sections, with checklists and all. Bloody hell. Pretty much all it doesn’t do is wipe your butt for you!

What I also love about this organiser is that it looks so cool. It comes in four different colours: fushia (shown here), butter, lime green and the most popular colour of them all, turquoise Tiffany Blue. You can also buy refills for it every year too.

So, here’s what you have to do if you want to win this baby:

First entry (both actions mandatory):
- Go to Inner B and tell us which Inner B product would help you to get organised the most, in the comment section.

- Sign up for email updates from Hear Mum Roar. If you already are signed up, that’s fine. And yes, I do check!

Optional entries (one extra entry per action):

- Follow Hear Mum Roar on twitter.

- Subscribe to Hear Mum Roar’s RSS feed.

- Tweet this giveaway.

- Follow Inner B on twitter.

If you have extra entries, please mention in the comments box below what you did, so I can check. Thanks!

The lucky winner will be drawn on Sunday, the 6th of February, 2011 and is open to Australians only.

Good luck, people!

Update:

I ended up deciding to buy some goodies from Inner-B for myself. Since Diminishing Lucy was interested in seeing what the Tiffany blue mum organiser looks like, I thought I’d share the photos of my purchases here, as the Tiffany blue was my favourite colour, too. I also bought the completely AWESOME meal planner. It’s magnetic and fits really well on the fridge. Each meal square is a cute little magnetic tile. The kids have been going stir crazy choosing meals, because they love sticking the pieces on. Valerie was kind enough to send me the planner notepads (meal planner and daily planner) just to be nice. I’ve got to say, I’m very impressed. I’m not the most organised person in the world, and all this stuff has been a godsend.

Putting my foot down

Written on November 16th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Challenges, November 2010, Organisation

Today has been busy, what with my partner’s appointments, and some repairs made to our place today. The morning was particularly stressful. My darling and I could not work out what time his appointment was today for the psychiatrist. He rang around, and eventually found out it was at 1pm today. I asked when his next mental health team appointment was, and eventually his nurse rang back and told me it was for 1:30pm today. Whoah.

I was a little shocked that the appointments had been made to clash so much, as both take an hour each, and driving time between each needs to be accounted for. His nurse and I deducted that perhaps we need to intervene more with the appointments, instead of leaving it all up to my man. It appears that appointments haven’t been written down for him when they are made (I assumed they were), and when he makes the next appointment that is often on the same day as another, he has no memory or concept that they will clash, and just says, ‘ok!’ and sets these appointments. Again, without having them written down.

The nurse and I agreed that he’s understandably incapable of having to deal with this side of things right, because he is, after all, very sick. He gave me his email address, and we agreed that as soon as appointments were set, I’d email them to him, so he could refer to it when setting new appointments. I made a point of letting my partner know that this would be happening, so it wasn’t a nasty shock to find out I’d be emailing his nurse, of course! (I won’t even start on the fact that it wasn’t even a psych appointment in the end, it was a relaxation session)

I was quite cranky at myself after this phone call. How could I have overlooked this? Why hadn’t I been more involved? Eventually, commonsense prevailed and I told myself that this is a condition that has been creeping up on us over time, especially in its severity.

Although I forgave myself, I made a vow that I would start stepping up a lot more as his carer. I’m still, after all, just learning what the whole concept means for us. What he needs me to do. Prior to this, I was giving him all his medication (he doesn’t trust himself to do it properly, although he can) and trying to encourage him to do certain tasks throughout the day. But it’s taken me this long to realise that there’s so much more I can and should be doing.

He needs to learn a lot of relaxation techniques to help him to learn to deal with his anxiety. And yet, here I am, with a hypnosis CD I’ve been wanting to get into the habit of listening to, but never was able to find the time. My fiance never wanted to hear it whilst he was trying to fall asleep (prior to me having any knowledge of his OCD). Time to put my foot down. We are going to listen to that CD every night as we fall asleep, from now on. He’ll get some much-needed relaxation work, and I’ll get to listen to it and relax too.

And here I am, a qualified massage therapist! It hasn’t occurred to me to put my skills to good use, and give him regular massages to help him to relax. God, I tell you, us mothers! We forget what we’ve got, and how useful we are! I’ve realised, it’s time for me to sit down and work out everything my partner needs. I’m going to write up a list of my skills and resources and how I can put them to good use. Sometimes I feel like I’m sky rocketing through everyday, with no time to think about what I could do to make things better. Then it takes a day like today to jolt me into the reality that there is so much more potential for us, right under our noses.

Now, I know that a lot, if not most of my readers here are not carers. No worries. But, is there anything you feel like you or your family is missing out on? Things that could be helped by a skill you already have, a book gathering dust somewhere? Can you think of one valuable thing you’ve got going for you that is going to waste? Why not start using it to make your life a little better, or easier?

We all have amazing things to contribute to this life, this world. Don’t waste your talents, your abilities your treasures. Let them do some good.

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Decluttering and recycling at the same time

Written on July 8th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Food, Going green, July 2010, Organisation, Saving money

My partner and I were faced with an overflowing kitchen cupboard this morning. It’s the result of blindly throwing things in and shutting the door on it when we first moved into this house. The picture above is now a new, large space for food, rather than just a cupboard for storing crap.

As we surveyed the mess in there, we continued with removing tupperware and other plastic containers containing BPA’s. Our childrens’ playroom did rather nicely out of this haul!

(Just ignore the walls with drawing on them! We’re repainting anyway, so I’m saving myself the hassle of cleaning it off just yet)

There’s lots of fun, open-ended things for the kids to play with here. We have tupperware which will be great for pretend home play, or whatever else comes out of their imaginations. There’s many, many cardboard boxes which the kids can do an infinite number of things with. So far, they’ve made a train out of all the boxes in a row, and built massive towers, which they then take great pleasure in knocking down again! (Back in the day at childcare, we called this ‘constructive/destructive play’. Nowadays, we just call it fun.)

Once the boxes are completely ruined, they’ll then go into our fireplace, or into the recycling bin. I think it’s a good idea to use what we’ve got before it gets thrown out, if it still has a use. Which brings me to cheap, recycled storage ideas.

Here’s an old bento lunchbox full of BPA’s, that’s just too damned cute to throw away.

It’s now a hair-tie and bobby-pin storage box in Missy 9′s room. Every morning we have been struggling to find her hair-ties, and more often than not, the cat was stealing them! So this is easier to find, more secure and makes her room look adorable.

The bobby pin packaging that came with the purchase was perfect for my sewing pins in the studio. The packaging I was using before this was cracked and leaking pins all over the floor, so this is much safer and easier to find.

I can’t talk about recycling junk to use it for storage without giving the good old glass jar an honorable mention, can I?

My dried mandarin peel is now ready for use, and its home is now in a clean pasta sauce jar. Hmm… when I think about it, that’s really two items that normally get thrown out, being put to good use. Not bad. Once I get my herb garden going, I plan to have lots of home grown and dried herbs and spices sitting in this spot.

I think it’s important before we throw things out, to get into the habit of asking ourselves, ‘does this have another use?’ Obviously, if you’re decluttering, you can’t keep everything! But I found this dividing shelf thingy in the kitchen cupboard (you know, to put cans on?) and was going to throw it out. Then I remembered, I still don’t have a drying rack for my woollen clothes. These racks can be expensive! So instead, the shelf is repurposed, and money is saved.

I often hear my parents talking about how they would hate to be raising kids in this day and age, due to the cost of living, and I do know what they mean. But then, I look back on how things were with my parents and grandparents, when I was growing up. Glass jars were always reused to store food, buttons, or whatever they were needed for. Ditto for margarine and ice cream containers. We weren’t such a ‘throwaway’ society, that’s for sure.

I’d love to hear your ideas of ways we can re-purpose junk, or even unwanted items in the home. What do you re-use?

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We have a winner!

Written on July 4th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Giveaways, July 2010, Organisation

It’s time to announce the winner of the Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010 giveaway.

*Drumroll…*

It’s Nell, with the following comment:

I like the look of the Outlook and the idea on OneNote. And did I read that you can access Word and Excel online as well? Brilliant!

Congratulations, Nell, I hope you enjoy making life more organised! I’ll be contacting you very soon.

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My 100th post giveaway

Written on June 26th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Giveaways, June 2010, Organisation

Wow, it doesn’t seem so long since I just started this blog! It’s been a blast so far, I’ve enjoyed writing for you, and as you know, I love my readers, every single one of you. Aw.

I was wondering what I was going to do to celebrate this milestone, so was excited when I was asked to run a giveaway for my lovely readers.

Up for grabs is a free copy of Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010 (valued at AU$379 RRP) for one lucky Australian/New Zealand reader!

A problem I’ve often written about here that I have, and I know other parents have, is finding the time to get everything done. Office Home and Business 2010 has many great new features that can simplify your tasks, help you improve your productivity and even help you keep on track with your household budget!

To be eligible to win this great prize, you’ll need to read about Office Home and Business 2010 here, then come back and leave a comment below, telling me some of the time-saving features that Office Home and Business 2010 can provide for you.

I will decide who the winner is, based on the best answer on the 3rd of July, 2010.

And most of all, thank you so much to my readers, for making these first 100 posts such a blast!

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Balance, balance, wherefor art thou balance?

Written on June 22nd, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Challenges, June 2010

This is a guest post from the lovely Kristin at Wanderlust.

Balance

I’ve always been good a good multi-tasker, a high energy person able to keep lots of balls in the air at once. Before I married I worked full-time, studied evenings and weekends for my graduate degree, stopped at the gym on my way to work in the mornings and managed to squeeze a satisfying social life in between all of this. So I imagined fitting kids into this equation wouldn’t be too hard, right? Right?? Oh settle down you in the back! If we all knew what parenthood was going to be like going into it our species would come to an abrupt halt.

Yeah, so, those images of me rocking a cradle with my foot as I put the finishing touches on my dissertation, or edited the final version of my novel? Dust. Go ahead and insert laugh track here.

The first few years of parenting are like being caught up in a cyclone. You have no idea what has hit you. You are powerless. You simply surrender because honestly, what else is there to do? You diaper, feed, soothe, bathe, dress, undress, sleep (well, not really sleep) in an endless loop. At some point, however, you wake up and realize your children have gained a modicum of independence and you can do things on your own for brief periods of time (go up and down the stairs, read a book, pee alone!) and it is deliciously liberating. It is about this time that fate whispers in your ear that perhaps, perhaps your life can be blessed with balance.

After all, there are scores of books and articles in women’s magazines dedicated to the topic. Articles with pictures of slender women with nice complexions sitting comfortably in lotus pose. It must actually exist, this balance. I’m sure I could achieve it if I just managed my time better, said “no” to the things that drained me, spent less time reading emails, took more bubble baths, dressed in earth tones and lit candles and baked organic cupcakes with my daughter, right? Right??

When I first came out of my mommy coma and started to do things for myself again, it was exquisitely gratifying, like a long rain after drought. I renewed old friendships. I read books. Lots and lots of books. I traveled to Australia with a girlfriend. I wrote. And wrote and wrote and wrote. All of this fed a deep need in me that I had abandoned during the selfless, faceless first years of childrearing. And yet it just touched the tip of the iceberg. Because there was still work and kids and all the day-to-day responsibilities of a life. But there was also something else. There was a noticeable backlash from my children. When I would sit down and open up my laptop (which was often) they would respond. First with sighs, later more strongly.

My daughter told me, “I think you love your computer most of all.”

My 5-year-old son: “I hate your computer.”

And two nights ago my daughter had a dream that I was leaving to go to Australia but could only take one child with me.

Wow.

Okay.

Here’s the thing. Balance is a fine concept. But it is just that. A concept. There are times in our lives when it is more achievable than others (retirement comes to mind, our twenties perhaps). I don’t think raising small children is meant to be an easy, relaxing time in our lives. Throw full-time work into the mix and it’s even less tenable. (Though, honestly, I don’t know that it’s any easier for those parents who stay at home – just a different set of challenges.) I’ve come to accept that I will probably not feel well-rested and sated in all the myriad ways I would like to be for quite some time, and that’s okay. That doesn’t mean I will stop seeking balance. It’s a necessary goal. But I think of it less as a final destination and more as a mark by which I navigate, something that keeps me from going too far off course in any one direction.

Lately, this has meant closing up my computer and getting down on the floor to build a train station out of Lincoln logs. Or sewing the arm back on Bear. Again. Or baking cupcakes with the kids (not organic, sorry) and letting them lick the bowl.

My kids will probably never have as much of me as they would like. I will never have as much of me as I would like. We’ll each have to live with that and do the best we can. I’m willing to give up more of myself to them now because I know that one day, I won’t have the honor of them wanting to spend all their time with me. I want to enjoy being at the center of their universe while it lasts. Soon enough, life will call to them and I’ll be left with time on my hands. At that point, I suppose I can unearth the tub from beneath the plastic boats and crayola bath crayons and cherry bomb no-tears shampoo that currently live there, and take that coveted bubble bath.

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Time to rediscover the old me

Written on May 30th, 2010 by Hear Mum Roar in Uncategorized

This has been destined to happen, and thank god.

Since getting a new car at the end of last year, I have put on more weight than I am happy with. There’s been many changes in my life. We’ve moved house to a small country town, and I’ve gone from a mother who used to spend two hours every weekday pushing a double pram to and from school (when my fiance was working, once he wasn’t I did the walk without the kids), up and down hills, to a mum who lives two minutes’ walk from a new school, and a partner who often takes my daughter to school for me.

It’s partly because I want to look better and fit my old clothes (and new size 8 ones!) but it’s so much more than that. I want to readjust my insomnia once again. That has always been a constant battle for me as long as I can remember. Exercising is a big part of my self-identity, heck, I studied it as a potential career all those years ago! Most of my adult life, I’ve been exercising, be it walking to work, TAFE, basically everywhere. I used to enjoy going to the gym and doing personal workouts at home, as well.

And now… well, I’m living the cliche that I hate. The martyr, who is too tired, too busy and doesn’t have enough time. Oh boo friggin’ hoo. Well, those excuses get a girl nowhere, except sore back and sore joints from carrying excess weight, and constant fatigue. I want my bouncy, energetic old self back, thank you very much, and this video below has given me just the push I needed:

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