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You know I've seen books and articles about how to homeschool kids with challenges like ADHD,etc. But never one about how to homeschool and/or run a home for MOMS who are that way. I'd love a book like that. Of course, I'd probably lose it LOL!

I haven't read it yet because it's *always* checked out of my library, but I've heard "If I'm Diapering a Watermelon, Then Where'd I Leave the Baby?: Help for the Highly Distractible Mom " by Carol Barnier is good. I heard her speak at our convention last month, and she was great.

Annette wrote:Now I need a cleaning plan. I'm looking for a few things. First of all,in case you haven't figured out , I'm a little organizationally challenged. Coming up with ideas for this kind of stuff from scratch is REALLY hard for me. (I grew up in a very chaotic home :single parent mom with mental health issues--Borderline Personality Disorder, so there's just a lot of practical everyday stuff that I was never taught.) Anyway, if someone gives me a basic plan, I can use that as a starting point and make adjustments.

Oh Annette,
I'm right there with you, my dear sister. Here is my plan of attack:

- Motivated Moms to help me know what to clean and when to clean it. I am so often overwhelmed by all that needs to be done that I can't even figure out where to start. This has been very helpful. I don't have to think much. I just have to do what the piece of paper on my refrigerator tells me. It is very affordable ($4 right now) and it is pretty doable. I have little ones so I cannot always get to everything, but having daily things that I can check off is a huge encouragement.
- Speed Cleaning 101: Cut Your Cleaning Time in Half! by Laura Dellutri - I stumbled upon this book at the library and am finding it to be a huge help in cleaning. I never learned how to clean a home so I really needed a crash course in the basics. I will be using much of the information in this book to clean all the things that the Motivated Moms planner tells me to clean. A friend let me borrow Speed Cleaning by Jeff Campbell, which was similar to this and it was helpful as well.
- Managers of Their Homes to help me develop a schedule for cleaning and everything else. My flesh fights scheduling so much, but it is truly freeing and helps my whole family.[/list]

I will leave the menu planning stuff to others and glean from them right along with you.

There's great menu planning idea I found. It's called the 30 recipe plan or something to that effect. I'm on my phone right now so it's hard to search for it. If DH leaves his computer home tonight (mine crashed) I'll try to remember to link to it. You may be able to google it.

I just noticed Donna Young has a chore chart now. http://donnayoung.org/household/fullsiz ... -maker.htm Chore chart is a tremendous help around here. Also huge for us is bulk cooking ahead. It is especially nice when we are doing school. It makes it so dinner is on the table no problem each night. It does take me a couple of days of cooking but then I have food for a month or two. It also saves a lot of money with food as long as you are careful about what you make. A great site for this is http://www.30daygourmet.com/ A good book is Don't Panic Dinner Is In the Freezer. Both versions are very good. You can find lots of information online about cooking in bulk. HTH

This has been so helpful. I struggle in this area as well so now I've requested quite a few books from the library to help. Thanks for the suggested resources!

I'm right there with you, I feel the same way. I would say I am moderately organized and my children are much smaller than yours so maybe they make smaller messes? My husband is good at getting them to clean up too because he likes things clean (and he works at home so he has to deal with messes if they build up).

I have heard that flylady has a "crisis cleaning" set or track of tasks to get you going. I have almost got my house in a good "maintainable" state and now I hope/plan to have a list like Stephanie that will help me clean an area/room of the house each day so it doesn't get in such a state again! It also goes along with my schedule, which I created while reading the book "Managers of their Homes" by Steve and Teri Maxwell. I may need to get "Managers of their Chores" too. Julie's charts that she posted are so cool!

I think the kids should definitely be involved. While you are doing the crisis clean-up I would not have terribly high expectations of them if they are not used to having to help clean up. But get them involved. I bet your 4 year old might like to just hang out with you and run things to the trash can, help you sort, take things to other rooms if things need to be put in other places, and things like that. Have your 9 or 11 year olds sort through their own stuff, collecting it if it's not where it should be. Give them limits or guidelines on what they can keep - like get some totes or what can fit in a drawer or something. I used to watch the show "Clean Sweep" and in that, they would go through the contents of a room completely, dividing into 3 piles. "Keep" "Throw away" "Sell or donate". Usually the keep was less than 1/2 of what was in the room (which is always what I find when I go through a lot of stuff). I give away a lot of stuff on freecycle.org when I do those kind of purges of rooms. I just cleaned our bedroom which was a major cluttered mess! I still have about 5 things from there that I plan to try to sell on Craigslist.

I have to say too, since I just kind of did this on a smaller scale, that a major cleanup like this in 12 days is pretty ambitious! I would do what another person suggested and just have a time limit on what you will spend on it each day, and list in order the rooms you want to do in what order. Which rooms are most important and need to be done first in order to make school possible. Then don't be discouraged if you don't get them all done, just keep plugging away, an hour or so each day.

Blessings to you!

I'm a flylady fan too....just not of her overwhelming amount of emails. Way too many! I love her shinny sink method. It is so true, make sure that sink shines when you are done doing dishes really helps to keep the kitchen looking great.

I also ditto Julie's idea of having everyone do a quick clean up in the evening before bed. Makes such a BIG difference in how our mornings run. If we wake up to mess, the day just doesn't run smoothly all day, everything (including our school time) runs behind, I get stressed and take it out on the kids.



Julie...I LOVE the charts you have for the boys! I am going to copy those. I too love charts and systems etc. I like lots of detail as we get into a routine and then we tend to streamline as we go along and get used to it. I would love to see your chore charts too! One thing I need to work on is having set chores for the kids that they can count on and that I can let go of doing myself. Often it seems so much easier to do it myself, but then I end up cranky that I'm cleaning up after everyone. Right now, they are in charge of making their beds and picking up their toys. They do help with random stuff, but it is more on a whim as to what they are helping with. My whim that is....depends on what I ask them to help with.

If you decide to use Motivated Moms..google for a discount code for another dollar off. At only $3 it was so worth it for me. I get easily overwhelmed when it comes to cleaning and such, so having it broken down for me really helps. I have had a fever for the past couple of days and things are getting kind of piled up for the first time since I began Mot. Moms and its about to stress me out, but I am sure I will get it caught back up eventually. Everything is in rotation, so even if I miss it, it will be on the list again the next week or whenever. HTH