Category Archives: Photography

Daily Life, Project 365

I’m Not Doing the Dinner Dishes Anymore

6 Comments

Over the years we have tried ALL SORTS of chore charts, housekeeping ideas, and organizing plans. We have assigned rooms, meals, and areas of the house to various members of the family. We have scheduled out the days with corresponding cleaning jobs. We have done 10 Minute Tidy Times (using the timer, Two Hour Clean Ups, Daily Life Skills and full days of cleaning (okay, those are mainly on those occasions when we’re hosting a big party).

Some of my favorite friends at our latest party.

Some of my favorite friends at our latest party.

Here’s one thing we did in 2007 – Chore Charts. Complete with Excel spread sheets.

As a homeschooling family with five children, we really LIVE in this house, all day long, for hours upon messy hours, 7 people eating three meals at home (including my sweet husband who works from home several days a week). We generate a lot of laundry, mess and clutter just by the fact that we’re a big family home and together most of the time.

Or at least we used to be. Things have shifted dramatically this year. Rachel and Joshua are both in college in Tennessee (too far away to come home and have me do their laundry). Daniel is attending the local technical school full time, so only David and Sarah are home with me during the day.

Somehow we still manage to create a decent mess.

Or maybe I’m just a messy housekeeper, more interested in ministry, fun and relaxation than keeping a clean and tidy house. No need to comment on that speculation, beloved family.

So, when I read this article the other day, I couldn’t resist sharing it with Tim.

I Haven’t Cleaned the Kitchen in 12 Years

Basically the author shared how her husband decided to hand over the dinner kitchen clean-up to the children so the grownups could enjoy a little relaxing time. Brilliant! I’ve been looking for some way to deal with dishes these days. Understand that my children are (for the most part) gracious, helpful and more than willing to tackle cleaning and tidying WHEN ASKED. It’s the “hey that wasn’t my responsibility” or “come on, I did the dishes yesterday/this morning/two days ago/fill in recent time they did dishes” attitude and responses that are discouraging. I begin to feel like I have to constantly assign tasks or ask them to help.

My Christmas present from Daniel

My Christmas present from Daniel

So, two days ago Tim told the kids, “Mom isn’t doing dinner dishes or the evening kitchen clean up anymore. You all get to chip in and do it for her.” Then he swooped me off into another room where we had cheerful, grown up conversations about nothing important. It was heavenly.

Of course, it just happened that Daniel had been given the job of doing the lunch time clean up (he was off school early that day), so he had already spent quite a bit of time in the kitchen. When he was less than speedy to help at dinner, used a bit of a surly tone with his father, and rather curtly suggested David and Sarah do the work, Tim gave the younger kids the night off and put Daniel in charge of the whole job himself.

An excellent reminder (to all of us) to be cheerful and NOT grumble about our work.

Daniel loves to do dishes. Heh heh heh.

Daniel loves to do dishes. Heh heh heh.

This evening all the kids worked pleasantly and quickly together. Daniel even came back in after he and a friend had made smoothies and cleaned up their dessert mess. Yay! We’re a work in progress.

We’ll see how it goes in the weeks to come. And then next I need to figure out a good rotation for cleaning the rest of the house. No need to rush to solve all the world’s problems in one day.

Project 365 – Day 37

Share or follow
Share

Related posts:

David, Project 365, Sarah

Running Buddies

5 Comments

Sarah and I are on a new plan. We decided to commit to losing a certain number of pounds, by her birthday (July 16). Basically, we eat according to loose THM standards, alternating between ‘E’ (low fat) and ‘S’ (low carb) meals, with no snacking. It is a hard, but livable plan — lots of people do a modified THM plan for months and years at a time.

We also have started walking together at night. Not to be left out, David has joined us in our exercise and no-snacking discipline, which is very encouraging to me. For some reason it is a lot easier to go out walking and jogging at night when I have my two cheerful buddies with me.

Back in July, we all were running, but it was pretty miserable, so I decided to start more gradually, this time. We walk a certain distance (about 1.2 miles) and I’m slowly adding in a little jogging, along the way.

“OK, how ’bout we jog from here to that white mailbox,” I’ll say to Sarah. If she agrees, then we do it — and we often find we can go further and faster than we thought. After we catch our breath, we do it again.

Today it was raining, but David and Sarah are Washington bred, and didn't mind at all.

Today it was raining, but David and Sarah are Washington bred, and didn’t mind at all.

Some days we walk a lot more than we run, but today we were down to about a 12-minute pace, which means we’re doing a fair bit of jogging (our walk-only pace is more like a 17 or 18-minute mile). Hopefully over time, we can get down to a 9-minute mile (which was my best pace last summer).

I’ve found that dieting alone just doesn’t do the trick — my body seems to need some kind of exercise to keep it in fat-burning mode. Otherwise, my metabolism decides we’re in famine mode, and I burn less calories as I eat less, which seems extremely unfair.

David and I were laughing about our the imaginary Calorie Foreman in our stomach’s control room:

Foreman: “OK, boys, it seems Tim has been marooned on some terrible and snack-less desert island. We’d better ratchet the furnace down a bit, until he is rescued.”

Down at the bottom of the bar on the left of this blog is a progress meter for our weight loss. Sarah and I are neck-and-neck at this point, but we’ve made a good start. We’ll keep you posted.

Project 365, Day 36
Tim

Share or follow
Share

Related posts:

Daniel, Project 365, Sarah, Tim

A Farewell to Wanda

3 Comments

Early in 2006, my ’92 Ford Escort was dying, so my brother very kindly sold me his low-mileage ’98 Honda Accord. He was concerned that something might go wrong with the car soon after he sold it to me, so he gave me a $500 guarantee — basically, I paid him $6000, but he promised to give me $500 back if something significant went wrong with the car in the next 6 months.

But nothing went wrong, and we were both happy. I drove that car for another 120,000 miles, with help from Joshua and Daniel, rather haphazardly replacing the tires, windshield wipers, and brakes. I figure I spent another $2000 on the car over the intervening nine years, before one of Daniel’s classmates rear-ended him about 10 days ago. When the dust settled, the other driver’s insurance company decided to total the car and promised to pay me $3800 as replacement value.

Sarah and Daniel saying their goodbyes to Wanda the Honda.

Sarah and Daniel saying their goodbyes to Wanda the Honda.

Not bad — 3.5 cents per mile, not counting fuel costs. I think I can live with that.

Tomorrow the salvage company comes to take the car away, and it is very sad. Daniel and I have become attached to that little car — our respective identities are (in some mystical way) bound up with that little car.

Now both Daniel and I are in the market for a new (or, more likely used) car, and maybe new identities as well. I have my eye on a sleek, almost-new red Camry, that I think I will purchase later this week. But what will Daniel buy?

The kids cleaned out everything -- but we couldn't get the gas siphon to work, so we lost seven or eight gallons of gas.

The kids cleaned out everything — but we couldn’t get the gas siphon to work, so we lost seven or eight gallons of gas.

Since the insurance company is being so generous to me, I’m sharing some of the ‘profit’ with Daniel, to get him started on his first car. But this is contingent on getting a new job, so he’s beating the bushes for work, again.

In my opinion, a young man needs to have a beat-out, old car, to properly reflect his financial and social position, and to motivate him to remedy that condition. I think a young man with a fancy car could be prone to having a rather inflated view of his own importance — not a good long-term strategy.

My first car was a 1974 Datsun B210 — I paid $380 for it in 1988. It was very dilapidated, and the floorboards had rusted through so that you could watch the lane stripes as you changed lanes. The previous owner had put down pieces of wood to take the place of the floorboards, but the fit was imperfect. If you hit a large puddle, the passenger’s legs would be drenched to the knees — for some reason, people rarely asked me for a ride more than once.

Not my actual Datsun -- mine was MUCH more rusty.

Not my actual Datsun.

The brakes on the Datsun required two or three pumps in order to work, and the exhaust system was held together with chewing gum and a prayer. One of the pins was broken on the passenger door, so if you opened it all the way, it would rest on the ground. It was a great little car, and it reflected my financial and social status very accurately.

Sadly, I wrecked the Datsun on a bridge abutment in the middle of an ice storm, on my way to Phil and Deb Dickerson’s wedding. What kind of a car will Daniel buy, I wonder?

Project 365, Day 34
Tim

Share or follow
Share

Related posts:

David, Project 365, Sarah

Playmobil Break

5 Comments
So many people - so little time!

Enough Playmobil people to populate an entire city!

Daniel and his friend James cleaned up the garage this weekend. And by clean up, I mean they piled all my Christmas bins and random projects into nice, tidy stacks against the edges and walls of the garage. I’m not sure I will ever be able to find everything. But then, Daniel would probably say that was my fault for leaving it a mess and hinting that they should clean it up before the party. Ha.

Time for some Playmobil

Time for some Playmobil

With all of the Christmas containers shoved aside, you can actually see things on the shelves in the garage. At some point during our party on Friday night, someone took down some Playmobil for the little kids. Several years ago I bought a HUGE amount of Playmobil from a friend who offered me a deal I couldn’t resist. I’ve organized and separated the pieces into separate containers, but nothing has been played with or enjoyed in a long while.

Sarah has a knack for building.

Sarah has a knack for building.

During our school reading today, David and Sarah pulled out four of the Playmobil bins and started to put the castles together. I couldn’t resist getting a few pictures of them, and we ALL wished the afternoon reading/playing time could have stretched on longer.

For now the living room is still covered in people, odd pieces and wonderful potential Playmobil fun.

Nothing like a little hands on activity during reading time.

Nothing like a little hands on activity during reading time.

As long as I don’t worry about company or having a tidy living room, we can leave out the Playmobil and enjoy them this week. There isn’t as much time for “play” as there used to be when the children were little. Interesting how homework, friends, and computer activities (games, social media, etc) replace simple “playing” as the kids get older.

Even though I am constantly decluttering and giving away bags and boxes of things, I insist on keeping Legos, Playmobil, Knex and shelves and shelves of kids’ books. I love toys that encourage creativity and inspire the imagination.

Project 365- Day 2
Kathy

Share or follow
Share

Related posts:

Project 365, Tim

No Joy in Muddville

3 Comments

For his monologue in Center Stage (a course at the homeschool co-op) David memorized Casey at the Bat, a poem by Ernest Thayer. So it was that the Superbowl this evening brought the final stanza of that poem to mind. Kathy posted it on Facebook:

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in Mudville— the mighty Seahawks are out.

He always was a good-looking kid.

He always was a good-looking kid.

OK, so we might have slightly modified the last sentence, but you get the idea. Kathy and I watched the second half of the game online (the kids were off at various parties), and were elated by a spectacular (and extremely lucky) catch by Kearse just seconds before the end of the game. It looked as though the Seahawks would hand the ball to Lynch, who would easily push the ball across the goal line and win the game.

Instead, the ‘Hawks threw a pass, and the pass was intercepted. Then some of the players decided to embarrass themselves by brawling with the Patriots, with less than 20 seconds left in the game. Not our team’s most shining moment.

It made me think about how so many times I add stupidity to poor judgment, and how those two don’t mix very well. And how sometimes I think that I will have more chances to accomplish something, only to discover that I’ve squandered my last chance.

I split my time this afternoon between the Superbowl and a good book.

I split my time this afternoon between the Superbowl and a good book.

Today’s sermon at our church was based on the passage in Luke 16 about the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar, who both die suddenly, but whose eternal destinations are dramatically different.

I’m sure the offensive coach in today’s game figured they could try an unexpected pass, and the team would still have another chance to run the ball if the pass was incomplete. But instead, the pass was intercepted, and the game was effectively over. How many people think they’ll have plenty of time to make their peace with God, but suddenly their chances are gone?

In such cases, the consequences are much more serious than winning or losing a football game. Sobering thoughts.

Project 365, Day 32
Tim

Share or follow
Share

Related posts: