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.

Day 9 - cleaning without lifting a finger

Something got into my kids today; I don't know what it was. In exchange for erasing some allowance debt and some extra quarters, all three of my kids lit into cleaning today. Without my ever getting up:

• "The pit" was completely picked up and swept - needs a serious mopping but that's another story.
• The popcorn machine was more or less cleaned out.
• The pantry was organized.
• The sink and toilet were scrubbed.
• The dishwasher was unloaded twice and loaded once.
• A load of laundry was done.
• The fronts of the dishwasher, oven, refrigerator, and freezer were scrubbed.
• The German shepherd got a bath.
• One of Mom's boxes was emptied.

This was all on top of their usual daily chores, which between them include picking up and sweeping all kids' bedrooms, the bathroom, and the living room.

Who are these kids, and where have mine gone?

And so it begins

Whose brilliant idea was it to start PCCX during Spring Break? Perhaps some people can leverage their kids' extra presence into help in cleaning, but apparently I'm not that adept at that beyond getting a few things picked up. It's now Thursday and I can't even say I'm all that caught up on basics right now. We've had extra kids over playing, I opened the Wii Fit and now *everyone* has to take their turn all the time, there's more mess than usual if that's even possible, and I haven't gotten started on a single project. Unless you count planting an Aero Garden and adopting a new virtual Touch Pets puppy. Yeah, that's productive. Fun though. :)