Coming Out of the Gloom

Damn, it's been longer than I thought since I posted here - and where is anyone else, btw?  I could run on for a while about this excuse or that, but I won't bother.  The fact remains that I haven't been doing what I should for months and now I'm trying to reverse the trend.

To that end, I have drafted my older children (8, 10, 13) to help me PCCX the house this summer.  Partly because the place is a DIS-AS-TER and partly because we all need an exercise in project completion and follow-through, I intend to run through the entire list to the extent that it is possible.  We won't be delving into repairs or redecorating because that's beyond the scope of time, skill, and finances at this point.  Here are the rules as I laid them out, in case anyone's interested:

• They will get the first week of vacation off.  The project begins Monday, June 11.  That actually gives them a week and a half off, but I like starting neatly at the beginning of a week.
• They have to each put in a total of 40 hours of work-time over the course of the project.  If we get going and haven't finished enough of the list for my satisfaction in that amount of time I will consider "overtime pay", but there is no compensation for less than the full 40 hours.
• The 40 hours must be completed before the first of them (A) goes to camp in July.  Therefore the end of the project is Sunday, July 8 for a total length of 4 weeks.
• For each of them who completes the project I am offering $100 cash to do with as they please, paid no later than the week before school starts, or by Sunday, August 19.  I'll have to save up in case I end up paying all 3 of them. :)

So that, in a nutshell, is my summer plan.  In amongst the cleaning we have the library program (2-3 times per week), almost daily trips to the pool, Chris's work schedule, regular chores, and other normal summer stuff.  I'll be blogging the progress along the way, of course.  In the meantime I have to work on getting - and then keeping - things picked up better.  Wish me luck.

Week 1

The first week of 2012 is in the can. I was out of the gate like a shot, but then laziness and other things got away from me and no real change or progress has been made. It's early yet, I still have hope. I've tried to think of at least one thing I did accomplish this week, and I truly can't. Rather a waste of 7 days.

January PCCX

I'm using the room-by-room track.  This month I'm doing the kitchen and dining room.

Challenges:

• The giant hole in the ceiling.  It's something I'd like to see repaired by the end of the month but I don't know if that's likely.
• Really bad linoleum, coming up in pieces in several places.  There's no hope of repairing that this month and probably not this year.  I should be able to trim back the loose places and at least make it look a little better.
• Difficult to work with cabinets.
• A whole lot of extraneous china and crystal that is never used and much of it isn't even mine.  There is no flinging allowed, so it's just a matter of cleaning it all and reorganizing so it hopefully takes up less space.

I'll spend this week catching up on basics and then head into deep-cleaning and organizing.

Is anyone else working PCCX at all this year?

What's Coming in 2012

Hopefully good things for everyone.  More specifically, I have some plans.

I'm going to (try to) send out regular challenges to the PCC group, beginning today with a resurrection of the 21 Days of Clutter series.  I'm also planning a few PCCX reminders each month because I want to actually go through it for a change.  I'll get some posts and emails scheduled in advance so I don't forget or skip it; hopefully that will help with my follow-through.

I have a few other thoughts brewing about other things to do, I just haven't decided which ones will apply to this group/blog.  What are your plans for the year?

Not Much to Say

I don't have a lot to say about December.  I quit tracking anything on the 18th.

There was Christmas of course.  Baking got put off until the last minute, but it did get done (unlike the last 2 years).  Packages for out of state friends and family went out at the last second also and cost a fortune to make it before Christmas.  Things generally went pretty well; the kids made out like bandits as usual.  They each had at least $70 cash/Target gc to spend when all was said and done, on top of presents under the tree.

Then I kind of took the last week off.  Christmas was over but it wasn't 2012 yet, and psychologically I wanted to start anything new on the 1st, no earlier.  So I didn't do much of anything besides get all the Christmas decorations and everything else boxed up nicely.  Now if Chris would just get the boxes out of the dining room...

Just to be moderately consistent:

18 - days tracking points
73,955 - points earned
4,109 - average points per day tracked
659,218 - total points earned in 2011
1 - injury (Chris put a knife through his finger unwrapping a toy.)
3 - dr. appts.
8 - Christmas events
11 - days off school
5 - UIL ribbons and medals won
1 - movie premiere (Sherlock Holmes was really good.)
$216.34 - total cost of Christmas gifts and cards (including shipping and postage)
8,067 - emails deleted
3 - books read
12 - blog posts

So there's the last month of 2011.  It wasn't a stellar year, but we all made it through to the other side.  Here's to 2012. *clink*