Working Mother's Survival Guide: Catching Up

DAY 10 of TOH 20 Day Challenge came and went in a flurry of activity not related to the 20 Day Challenge. Just the usual kids sports day, racing to choir rehearsal, quick desperation shop to find the "perfect jacket" for that night's performance, race home to scrub up for said choir performane with Deep Blue Orchestra! Yep, just your usual Friday :P

Thankfully this week was the one of the first Saturdays since April that there was no soccer for number one son. This provided the opportunity for a weekend of catching up.

I went back through all of the checklists I had printed out over the course of the last ten days to see what I hadn't quite got to. So here we go . . . .

DAY 1

Clean the Microwave (how did I miss this?)

DAY 2

Put decorative pillows on the washing line for a few hours (we had some pretty awful weather back then, but this weekend was glorious!)
Wash outside windows (main bedroom)

DAY 3

Create a laundry routine. I used to wash on the weekends, but with those two days being filled with all the usual family shenanigans and the weather being fairly ordinary during winter, this has been a constant source of stress. I am trying to be more disciplined and putting on a small load each day. SOOOO much easier! Hanging out doesn't seem such a chore, folding and putting away doesn't seem such a chore because the loads are so much smaller and manageable.

DAY 4

Declutter magazine collection. Love this idea from TOH so much that I got myself an expand-a-file from Woolies when I did the grocery shopping.
Clean the outside of the lounge windows

DAY 5

Complete (YAY!)

DAY 6

Wash outside of bathroom windows. Had neglected to do the inside of the bathroom windows too! Possibly for about hmmm three millennium from the state of the glass cleaning wipe. Too embarrassed to post a photo of that!
Wipe over washing lines. Just took a cloth out with me to the line and wiped over before hanging up a load.

DAY 7

Meal planning - I do tend to do this before my weekly grocery shop anyway and so the weekend was the perfect opportunity. Watch this space! I plan to regularly post the recipes, meals and shopping lists of my meal plans . . . .

DAY 8

Update family responsibility system. We currently use myjobchart.com and we love it. It does take a little time to set it up, but well worth it. The kids can access their own jobs to check off by iPad, laptop or desktop computer. Totally paperless, but it does have a printable too. I will post about this in more detail at a later date.
Sort displaced clutter from spare room clean out!
Declutter toys (darling daughter's room, yet to get to number one son!)

DAY 9

Ceiling fans. Well we don't have any :) So I thought I should clean the air-con filters in the two split system units. I have procrastinated, and I don't know why! Somehow this just hasn't happened, it's not a hard job but obviously I have hit a mental barrier. Something to work through.
Junk drawer. This is actually how my kitchen drawers look after not long ago having a re-shuffle. So I did the cutlery drawer.

Organise Calendar/Diary. This proved a bit of a task. We are a Mac family and I had been using Outlook for mac for my email manager. Outlook is not compatible with iCloud if you use a Mac. PC no problem, but not Mac. So I had to spend a little time setting up Mail & iCal. Now with iCloud, any calender item entered on any device (desktop, iPad, iPhone etc) linked to the cloud, automatically updates all calendars. Huh? for example I add an event to the calendar on my iPhone and within seconds it is sent to my husband's iPhone - including the reminders, alerts and repeats. It's awesome! See the Apple Website for more details. I believe Google Calendar works in a very similar way.

DAY 10

The Oven! Eeeek! I am all for environmentally friendly cleaning products, but when it came to the oven I called in the big guns. If it is good enough for the girls at work who do the vacate cleans, then it is good enough for me.

This is pretty caustic stuff. DO wear thick rubber gloves and long sleeves, and try not to breathe it in. I used damp paper towels to wipe the oven out after the allotted time and then generously sprayed the interior of the oven with a water spray to rinse it thoroughly, and wiped with more paper towel. Remember to run the oven for an hour or so BEFORE cooking in it, so that your baking doesn't taste like oven cleaner.
I did soak the racks in Napisan overnight though, as per TOH's instructions. This was amazing! Still a little elbow grease required, but I was surprised at how well it worked.

Oven {Before}

Oven {After}

Organise Tupperware cupboard. We actually have 2 Tupperware drawers, which is great but they get just as messy as a cupboard. As the kids have taken over the unstacking of the dishwasher, we had to have a little chat about putting things away neatly. SO far so good :)

Top Drawer {Before}