Hamster wheel and a thank you to Mr. Lincoln

Do you ever feel like no matter how much you do you just can't get ahead? That has been my entire month of January. Well, actually, it goes back to the end of December. I left for the east coast to spend the holidays and much needed time with my family. I was very excited and a little apprehensive because at that time we didn't think that my husband was going to be able to go and we already knew my little brother wouldn't be home as his leave time was moved to the spring. Anyways, my husband ended up surprising me and flying over night a few days into the week and was standing outside of the mall when my mom and I went shopping! We had the best time all together - I hadn't been in Rhode Island for more than a week in over 2 years. The day after Christmas we got a huge snow storm and were snowed in for days. I had planned to leave on Thursday and then I would 4 days to do a lot of things around my house that were projects that were just too big for weekends after working all week (i.e. sorting, organizing, and cleaning all of our clothes and closets, deep cleaning the cabinets and corners, and finishing the office) and getting ahead on all of my planning. I didn't get home until Jan 3 and had to miss my first day back at school. Since then our weekends have been filled with projects around the house but it still hasn't felt like we were caught up from not making it home in time. I have also had to create, administer and grade 130 finals and start a new semester. Enter President Lincoln. For some fabulous reason the school system has given us today off in honor of his birthday and so I have a whole day with nothing to do other than get caught up so that tomorrow, Saturday, will be a Saturday to relax and work on some Valentines Day surprises. I am giddy about this (I know as I type this how dorky it sounds) But, I am off to blast my Glee sound track and get to work. Have a great weekend.
What do you do when you feel like you just can't get caught up?




image from cartoonstock.com

Housekeeping 101

I wish that my house could clean itself. I love the feeling of coming home after a long day of work to a clean house but it often seems like there are just not enough hours in the day. The reality is that maintaining a clean house takes a lot of work. In an effort to be more organized and remain sane while working crazy hours I am going to try a weekly cleaning schedule so that by the time I make it to Saturday my house is clean and I have time to relax. This would be for the actual cleaning not the putting away/doing the dishes/maintenance/ picking up/daily use type of this, this is for cleaning. I'm going to start it tomorrow and see how it goes

Monday: Kitchen

Tuesday: Bathroom, living room, bedroom

Wednesday: Laundry, office, dining room

Thursday: bathroom, car

Friday: dust, sweep, mop

Next weekend I will reevaluate and see how this worked. Added bonus to this week is that my husband is on his 5 days off at the end of the week and he is really good at cleaning and organizing. Any suggestions on maintaining sanity and a clean house while working 65+ hours per week? I'd love to hear what works for you

*image from http://images.esellerpro.com/2243/I/577/7/medscaleCool%20Coaster%20I%20DONT%20DO%20HOUSEWORK%20ON%20DAYS%20THAT%20END.JPG

Confessions Part 1

My husband is a better cleaner then I. Of course, I do it about 10 times more often BUT when he does it my husband is fabulous. I have cleaning ADHD - I tend move room to room to room doing one area at a time - I might start in the kitchen and clean the dishes and then move to the bathrooms and clean the sink and then do a load of laundry and then put away papers in the living room and then head back to kitchen to clean the stove. My husband will stay in one area and work on that until everything is clean and sorted before moving on. He has a unique schedule at work where he work 5 days, has 5 days off, works 2 days and then has 2 days off. He was off this Wednesday through Sunday and did amazing things around our house. Our home improvements from the past 5 days include but are not limited to:

*rearranging all of the furniture in our living and dining rooms completely opening up house and creating more space

*purchasing and painting a table that folds out from the wall in our kitchen. This cleaned up the room by allowing us to get ride of this rolling cabinet in there that housed a strange collection of canned goods, plastics bags and our Kitchen Aide

*sanding, painting, and reinstalling our bedroom and closet doors

* throwing away at least 5 bags of things that we no longer need

*organizing the 'office' so it can actually start functioning as an office

*cleaning our bedroom, kitchen, and bathrooms

We both love the feeling of going to bed on Sunday nights with a clean house and lunches made and starting the work week off on a good foot and a day of gorgeous sunshine here in San Diego after 5 days of rain helps too!