Lumberjack Hack

Note: I keep trying to take pictures on our camera and every time I get a message that there is insufficient space on the memory card.  So, in an act of frustration I deleted every photo on the card.  I thought I had copied the existing photos onto our computer.  I hadn't.  There were lovely photos to accompany this post to show that the branch really was quite large and the tools I used really were not meant for cutting wood.  You'll have to take my word for it, because as much as this experience connected me to my rugged Montana roots and made me feel like a lumberjack, I will not be repeating this if I can help it.  Next time I may take my own advice and borrow a chainsaw.

About a week ago we had a fairly intense storm come through.  Claude and I heard the thunder and rain one night and didn't think much of it.  It's summer.  There are storms like this often enough.

The following morning, our early riser (Joshua), ran into our bedroom shouting, "The storm last night blew a huge tree branch into our yard!"

Being one prone to exaggeration and drama, we didn't think much of it.  So, when he insisted we come out to see it, we were pretty surprised to find this in our back yard.

[Insert photo of REALLY big tree branch here]

Yes, half of our neighbor's dead tree fell into our yard.  There wasn't much to do about it right then and there, so we assumed that we would just take care of it when Claude was feeling better from his surgery.  I suggested we ask a few friends if they might have a chainsaw we could borrow.  This was a suggestion that I really should have followed, but didn't.  Oh, well...

Fast forward about a week and I was ready to deal with this thing.  I needed to mow the back yard and the branches sticking out in my way absolutely had to go.  That day.  It really couldn't wait.

So, I started breaking off twigs and small branches.  That lead to realizing that if I started taking off some I might as well cut a few of the bigger limbs off.

I went in search of some tools and found this.

[Insert photo of hacksaw here]

I thought it would do the trick, so I started sawing.  And sawing.  And sawing.  For at least two hours, and I'm not even making that up.

Then I ran into some thick branches that I just couldn't hack (pun intended), so I went back to the garage to find something else that might work.

This is what I found.

[Insert photo of axe here]

In my ignorance I was calling it a pick axe.  Apparently it is called a pick mattock, made for hoeing.  Yes, it is designed for the ground.  No, it is not meant for chopping wood.  It is not sharp.  I used it anyway.  The tree had to go.

So, I began chopping and chopping and chopping.  I chopped for at least two hours, and I'm not making that up either.

I developed a rhythm of 30 swings with the "axe", take a breather, repeat 4 times.  Then I would get the saw out and saw 100 times.  Then it was back to the "axe" and so forth, until I had successfully cut through 3 very thick branches.

Then my work was done.  I had reduced the half-tree to this pile of twigs and branches.

[Insert picture of giant stick pile here]

I had sweated through three different shirts, drank four 32-ounce bottles of water, and acquired a good many ant bites.  Now I had to move the tree carnage into a neat pile so that I could mow.  Remember, I was doing this so that I could mow.

5:00pm, approximately 6 1/2 hours after I had begun - of course, I did take breaks because children were in the house and needed me, but still, my time working on the tree was about 5 hours at this point.  Now, enter the neighbor.

"I'm so sorry about that tree.  I saw that it went down so I tried to reach over the fence and pull it back, but it was too heavy," he explained apologetically.

"Yes, I can imagine you wouldn't be able to lift it.  It is very heavy," I replied.  I would know, I just dragged half of the half about a quarter of the length of our yard.

"I thought of trying to do something about it, but both of my chainsaws are broken," he continued.

"Yes, that could be a problem.  I just did this with a hacksaw," I'm not sure if he saw the "axe" and the saw on the ground, but they were there in all their glory.

And so he continued to tell me his name and all about his teenage daughter who is learning how to drive and how concerned he is about her having an accident.  When he had successfully changed the subject he offered for me to throw some of the debris into his yard so that he could at least help throw it away.  I didn't think that would be necessary, and so he left with a promise to take down the other half of the tree, which was hanging into our yard, and off of which I had already cut the biggest, lowest hanging branch earlier that afternoon.

He cut his part of the tree down on Saturday.  I saw him working out there and heard his chainsaw.  It seemed to take him about 15 minutes.

But he missed out on a really good, total body workout.  And I do mean really good.  My little fitness app on the iPad gave this update Tuesday night:  "Rebecca burned 1,268 calories doing 155 minutes of cardio exercises, including 'chopping wood'".  I think it could have been a higher calorie burn, since I only recorded two hours of work on the tree and just over 30 minutes of mowing.  You better believe I enjoyed a big bowl of ice cream that evening!

As I told this story to my Bible study later in the week one person said, "Hey, we have a chainsaw you could've borrowed."  My sore abs ached as I laughed.

Getting Kids Involved in Household Chores

I was asked once, after writing some posts about our schedule, where cleaning fits into the mix.  I was a little embarrassed to say that cleaning was not on the schedule because we didn't have a specific plan of keeping our house clean.

There are daily tasks that Claude and I perform to keep the household up.  Every evening we finish up the dishes and go over the floors after the kids finish their kitchen chores.  We wipe down the counter tops, take out the trash, make sure things are picked up around the house, and Claude faithfully cleans the toilets and any other bathroom surface that needs attention.

In this way we keep up with the basics.  But the truth was that since our third child, keeping up with vacuuming, mopping, dusting, and other chores just wasn't happening.  Life with three children ages 3, 2, and newborn was just too much to put weekly household chores into our schedule.  We did other cleaning on an as needed basis.  And let me tell you that it was certainly needed!

Fast forward a few years and we find ourselves in a new and different life stage.

One day, more out of desperation than anything, I put a vacuum into the hands of Joshua and Hannah.  I gave them a few basic instructions and then let them have some fun "cleaning" the front rooms.  To my surprise they not only enjoyed the work, but they also did a really good job cleaning the floors.

It was then that a new day dawned in our little family.  I knew that now I had some willing and able helpers to keep up with more than the basics.  So, we instituted a set of Friday morning chores.  When we finish our work, we head to the park with our local home school group - the perfect motivation to get all of us through our chores.

Now, I find that our carpets are vacuumed and our kitchen floor is mopped at least once a week.  Because Joshua and Hannah are able to help out with cleaning the floors, doing the laundry, cleaning the windows, taking out the trash, and changing bedding, we can keep up throughout the week even better.

I have purposely waited a few months before posting about this new cleaning system.  I wanted to be sure that it was actually working and that we were able to maintain our Friday chores over a period of time.  Now after about four months, it has become a regular part of our weekly schedule.  With a few exceptions (everyone being sick or pre/postnatal check ups with the midwife) we have been cleaning every Friday morning.

Can I just say that freshly vacuumed and mopped floors are amazing!  I wasn't able to keep up with it for a season.  That required a definite change in my expectations. But I'm glad to be back in a family stage where regular cleaning can actually happen.




Our usual jurisdictions are as follows:

Joshua, 6 years old:
-Boys' Room--change bedding, pick up toys, vacuum
-Front Bathroom--change trash, change towels
-Living Room--pick up toys, vacuum
-Laundry--wash, dry, and put away boys' room bedding

Hannah, 5 years old:
-Girls' Room--change bedding, pick up toys, vacuum
-Master Bathroom--change trash, change towels
-School Room--pick up toys and books, vacuum
-Laundry--wash, dry, and put away girls' room bedding

Abigail, 3 years old:
-Girls' Room--help Hannah change bedding, pick up toys
-Clean slider door
-Mommy's helper

Jeremiah, 1 year old:
-Help Abby clean slider door
-Mommy's helper

Mom, unidentified age :)
-Master Bedroom--pick up, change bedding
-Bathrooms--clean sinks, counters, mirrors, tubs, and toilets, mop
-Kitchen--clean sink, counter, and windowsill, sweep and mop
-Laundry--keep up with loads
-Oversee kids' chores

Sometimes we change it up a bit, like this week when Joshua and Hannah worked together to clean all of the bedrooms, the living room, and the school room.  I took care of the kitchen and bathrooms with some help from Abby and Jeremiah.  I was proud of the kids to see how they are starting to take responsibility for their assigned areas.

It may not be perfect or exactly how I would do things, but they are doing their best work, learning to work together, and are beginning to develop good attitudes about their chores.
 

5 Ways to Simplify Laundry

Nothing can be more daunting than a mountain of laundry which seems to grow exponentially.  And around our house, nothing seems to come in greater abundance than laundry.  With soon to be 5 kids ages 6 years and under, I have to be realistic with how laundry is done.

Here are 5 ways to simplify the laundry in your life.  Some of these suggestions may not be applicable or useful to your family, so take it for what it is: How one family, working outside the laundry basket, attempts to keep up with the laundry monster.

1. Find a consistent time of day to work on laundry.  I find that it's easiest to do laundry every day instead of waiting for one or two days during the week.  This depends on how many people are in your household - the fewer people, the less laundry and the fewer days per week you will need to do it.  The opposite is true as your family grows - more people equals more laundry equals more laundry days.

Our washer has a very cool feature called "Delay Wash".  If I'm staying on top of doing the laundry, I wash cloth diapers after dinner time and then put a load in the washer before bed.  Then I set the machine to start washing early the next morning.  When we wake up, the laundry is ready to be moved to the dryer.  This keeps from having wet, smelly laundry in the morning, and also ensures that the laundry is ready to be sorted and put away early in the day.

A consistent time of day helps so that laundry is part of your routine and not an interruption to it.  Figure out what works for your schedule and then take a month to build the laundry habit into your day or week.

2. Pare down your wardrobe.  Yep, the fewer clothes you have the less laundry you can make.  I've found this to be amazingly true as I've noticed the huge difference in how full my kids' clean laundry baskets are.

Our 1-year-old has very few clothes - just the bare minimum - and his basket is barely full any time we're doing laundry (no matter how many loads I've washed and sorted).  Our 5-year-old, on the other hand, has a lot of hand-me-downs (praise the Lord for hand-me-downs!) that she has fallen in love with.  As a result she has more clothes than she needs, changes them often, and has an overflowing basket every time we sort.

So, figure out what your family really needs in terms of clothing, bedding, and towels, and get rid of the rest.

3. Wash in big loads.  We did this out of necessity over the years of living in apartment buildings.  I wasn't interested in paying $1.25 to wash a tiny load of delicates.  So, we don't sort our dirty laundry.  Everything goes into one big load and everything gets dried together (with very few exceptions).  This saves time and we've never had any problems.

If you have a crew of small kiddos, try to buy clothes that are easily laundered and will lend themselves to washing all together.  Try not to buy clothes that will bleed or shrink easily.  Trust me, your 4-year-old is not going to miss wearing a cashmere sweater!

In our household, there is one exception to the large load rule: Cloth diapers.  I put these along with Abby's training underwear in their own load.  In our apartment days we washed cloth diapers by hand, but now we can put them in the washing machine (which senses the size of the load so as not to waste water or energy).  The diaper covers hang up to dry.  The inserts/prefolds may hang up, they may stay in the machine to be washed and dried with the big load, or I may put them directly in the dryer.  Usually I leave them in the machine since I'm not too fussed about the detergent and such - it simplifies things in the long run.  Once in a while I put vinegar in the rinse cycle to strip the diapers and help them maintain their absorbancy.

4. Stop folding.  No, we don't fold clothes except very casually.  Why no folding? Let's face it...my laundry helpers are 3, 5, and 6 years old. Clothes stay folded as long as they are in a neat pile in Dad and Mom's bedroom. Once little hands touch the piles, the folding is out the window. And have you checked your kids' dresser drawers recently? Yeah. Folding is a bit of a waste in my opinion, but then again, I don't mind slightly wrinkled clothes.

Our big laundry breakthrough came with the discovery of the "Sort and Stuff Method".

-Laundry comes out of the dryer and is sorted into baskets and piles depending on how it is stored.
-Sorted laundry is gathered up and stuffed into the appropriate drawers and baskets.  A few miscellaneous items are folded.
-Done.

Our sorting looks like this:
-Each family member has a labeled basket (Dad and Mom share) and one for cloth diapers.
-There is a pile each for towels, sheets, and things to fold (small linens that don't have baskets yet and kitchen towels that need to stored in a shallow drawer).

This method has really simplified laundry and has cut back on the time it takes to get it all put away (which for us is the hardest aspect).  As our kids grow up and our family changes I'm not sure that we will keep this method, but for now it is the simple solution that we need to keep from climbing mountains of laundry on a daily basis.

5. Enlist some help from your crew.  Our kids have always helped out with household chores since they were young.  Our laundry help looks a bit like this:

-(Almost) 3-year-old Abby transfers laundry from the washer to the dryer each morning before breakfast.  Front loaders definitely help in this area!
-Every child has "Mom's Helper" day (except 1-year-old Jeremiah, who tags along anyway).  On that day they help me to sort and put away laundry along with a couple of other household tasks.  This is a great way to spend some individual time with my kids!
-Every child is responsible to put away his/her clothing every afternoon once it is washed, dried, and sorted.  Even Abby is able to do this since we have labeled her set of drawers.

Kids love to help and feel important around the house.  So, if they're old enough, have your kids load the washer and/or dryer.  Let them help you sort and (if you do it) fold.  It may not be how you would do it, but it's a wonderful learning and growing opportunity for them.  And it will help you in the long run.

Sometimes tackling every day chores requires a bit of ingenuity, a change in expectations, and a willingness to think and work outside the box.  Figure out what isn't working for your family in the area of laundry and then brainstorm some solutions - you may find the one that makes you laugh is the one that works (like sorting and stuffing).

Now, get out there and do some laundry!


So, how do you tackle laundry in your house?

Check how others are getting their laundry done at The Joyful Keeper.

Hand-Me-Down Clothes Storage

For a while I've been wanting a simple, straightforward, easy to maintain system for storing hand-me-downs.  The system of storing clothes based on gender and size grew to have too many variables and really wasn't working for us, so our bins of clothing became more and more disorganized, and the pile in the corner of our bedroom marked "to put in clothing bins" began to grow.

So, I did what any desperate organizationally challenged person would do - I checked Pinterest.  I can't say that I conducted a Pinterest search because the amazing thing about my "search" is that the pin came to me one day.  Nice!

The pin is from this blog.  I didn't think of this system on my own, nor did I find a way to make it any better.  I simply followed the tried and true advice of another mom who knew better than I do in the area of clothing storage.

The system is like this (you can read the original post from the original blogger here):
Each child has a plastic storage bin for clothing to grow into.  As the kids outgrow clothes or the seasons change, I throw out or donate items that have stains or holes and that we will not use for another child.  Also, if an item has never or hardly ever been worn by one child it goes in the trash/donation - if I didn't use it one time around why would I use it again?

After I sort, I put the clothes into the next child's bin.  For example, Hannah's outgrown and out of season clothes will move down to Abby's bin where it will stay until Abby is able to wear it.  And when someone is in need of bigger sized clothing or something more appropriate for the season, I simply open that child's bin and take out the clothes that are the size s/he needs at that time.

Our bins are labeled as follows:
-Joshua (his bin is small since he doesn't receive many hand-me-downs)
-Hannah
-Abigail
-Jeremiah
-Baby Boy (for future kiddos)
-Baby Girl (also for future kiddos)
-Boy Shoes
-Girl Shoes

What I like about the new system:
-It's quick to sort out clothing since I'm only working with 6 piles vs. the 20+ I had with the size/gender sorting.
-Clothing can be added and removed from the bins without having to re-organize to fit different sizes.
-The maintenance is ongoing since I get rid of unwanted items as I see them come through the laundry or check the kids' closets.
-There are no more questions about the difference between 24 month vs. 2T sizes, or 5T vs. 4/5 - am I the only one who doesn't understand that?!
-I don't have to guess what size the kids are moving into since the clothes in their bins will always be the next size up.

I don't understand why this is, but keeping up with the kids' clothing needs is a real challenge.  How many shirts, pants, dresses, etc do they need?  How do I manage the change of seasons?  Do I put all the clothes for one size out or switch as summer rolls into fall and fall into winter?  (Thankfully the seasons are almost a moot point since moving from New York to Texas!)  And what clothes do I hang onto when there is currently not another child of a certain gender to receive the clothes or the age gap between same-gender kids is several years?

These questions are what I ponder as I fall asleep some nights...well, only occasionally.  But it is all too true that the thought of kids' clothing is often rolling around in my head, waiting to be figured out.  At least I'm a few steps closer now than I was before!  Thank you to the blogging world of stay-at-home moms for hooking me up with a new and improved hand-me-down storage system!

Chores

Around the time of our character crackdown escapade, we instituted some assigned chores  to the kids.  This has given them a sense of contribution to the household, some responsibility, and some useful skills that they will need for the rest of their lives.  It has also helped us keep our house in order and has given us some set times of day when we're all working on something together.  Some days our chore times are fun and productive.  Other days we have a handful or more of complainers, but we always make it through and everyone is learning the value of hard work.

Our kids are 5 1/5 years old, 4 years old, 2 years old, and 7 months old.  They're chore routines look like this:

Morning Routine
All three of the older kids accomplish these tasks on their own.  I usually walk Abigail (2 years old) through her routine, but she does all the work.  I simply remind her what she needs to do next.
-Get dressed and put pajamas in the laundry basket.
-Make bed.
-Brush teeth.

Morning Kitchen Chores
-Joshua, 5 1/2 years old: Empty the dishwasher.
-Hannah, 4 years old: Set out cereal, bowls, and spoons for breakfast.
-Abigail, 2 years old: Help Hannah with breakfast set up.

After Meal Chores
Everyone clears their own dishes and puts them in the dishwasher.  I rinse them off when necessary.

"Foursies" at 4pm
Each of the kids has two jurisdictions that they are responsible to clean up at the end of the day.  Abigail is my "Foursies" buddy since she's still very much in training.  "Foursies" is a time of day that the kids have latched onto as a major anchor in our routine.  They get a bit stressed if the clock passes 4pm and we haven't cleaned up.  But, it has to remain flexible.  Some days we do "Foursies" at 1pm so that we can go play at the park and come home to a clean house.  Other days we wait until 5pm, but usually we stick to 4pm.  We try to have fun with this one.  We turn on some upbeat music - the kids like Veggie Tales, Raffi, and Chris Tomlin and I like to throw in some Prokofiev and Shostakovich when I get a chance.  We set a 15 minute timer (or less if we don't have much to pick up) and we race around trying to finish before the "quack".  Then when we finish we have a little treat - a small snack, a game, or a read-aloud time.  Here are the kids' jurisdictions...
-Joshua: Boys' Room and Living Room.
-Hannah: Girls' Room and Kitchen.
-Abigail (with Mommy): Girls' Room and School Room.

Evening Kitchen Chores/Dinner Time Clean Up
We all pitch in with this task.  Claude and I usually clean up pots and pans from dinner preparation and wipe down the counters and stove top.  The kids jobs look like this...
-Joshua: Sweep the floor.  Help load and/or wash the dishes as needed.
-Hannah: Clean the table, chairs, and bench.  Help load and/or wash dishes as needed.
-Abigail: Usually she is asleep by this time, but when she's awake she clears the table, loads the dishwasher, or helps clean the table and chairs.

Dinner clean up isn't always this exuberant, but we're all getting the hang of pitching in so that the work is both easier and more enjoyable.