Defeating the Laundry Monster

I have lived for years in a house that I half expected to disappear under piles of wrinkled, clean laundry.  For the past month, I have been plugging along with my little routines, but could not get out from under the laundry.  My husband would be home during the day and wash and dry five loads of laundry...but fold one or less.  It crept out of the laundry room and quickly took over the living room, master bedroom and walk in closet. We had baskets and piles of clean, wrinkled clothes everywhere!   I finally hit my breaking point!  I felt like my house was such a mess, looking back, I realize that the laundry everywhere made everything seem unkempt.  Including us, when we went to wear these rumpled articles of clothing!  So embarrassing. 

I decided to have a chat with my husband about this habit of his.  He thought he was helping, while I would have preferred he do one load from start to finish - washed, dried, folded and put away.  I decided that we would try something new, and miraculously, he agreed without argument.  One load of laundry per day, start to finish.  I am amazed, but two weeks later, the laundry was under control and we are not surrounded by clothes!  I thought it would take a lot longer.  This is not to say that I don't still have 4 closets to go through and thin out, but at least we aren't drowning in our current clothing.  I did realize two things - I need to buy more hangers, and we probably have too many clothes.  This sounds backwards, but we are still, bit by bit, moving into the new walk in closet in our bedroom, and so I am hanging more things that got shoved in drawers in the past.  I will also be working to gradually pull out and donate the clothes we don't wear and throw away the holy socks, before they ever get to live in the nice, new closet. 

It's been about two months since I started doing a load of laundry a day, and I'm actually to the point where I have the time, energy and space to wash some things that periodically need it.  Like the rubber backed bath mats. Now it is easy.  Never thought I would say that! 

I am converted.  It's so much more manageable this way!!  It is mentally easier to throw in a load now...I've given myself permission to change which step is first, so for my first load, I folded what was in the dryer.  That was step one.  Step two was wash more laundry, and third and final step for day one was running them through the dryer.  Day two, load two started with folding.  You get where I am going with this.  Since I do laundry in the evening after work, this way I am not miserably folding clothes at midnight and lugging them around trying to quietly put them away.

I felt so defeated by the laundry, having it under control makes me feel like I can accomplish so much more to reclaim my house from the addition construction and our rampaging toddler! 

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

I'm definitely on the wrong end of this one this week.  It's amazing how this seems to happen both at work and at home simultaneously, despite the fact that they are two very distinct worlds for me.  About a year ago, I attended a panel discussion on work/life balance for women in my company.  It was mostly women talking about how great our company is for this, how wonderful they have it, blah, blah, blah.  Unfortunately, it all hinges on who your direct supervisor is and how willing they are to be flexible and allow work/life balance to happen.  So while it was interesting, it was also very disheartening, because I am not permitted to use any of the great programs that these women love.  One of the women who spoke presented a great visual that is still in my head, and I am actually visualizing it right now. 

If I think about all the things I am responsible for, I can divide them up into balls.  Keeping certain balls up in the air is more important than others, so I picture them as being made of different materials.  For example, the only ball made of crystal is my family...it's the one that I view as most important to prevent from permanent damage and would be the hardest to repair.  Therefore, it is the one that I absolutely cannot drop.  Others are less important and so I imagine them as more resilient materials.  If I screw them up somewhat, not the end of the world. 

This week it is all I can do to keep that crystal ball up in the air. 

The past few weeks, I have been feeling great: getting my house cleaner, getting a healthy, homemade dinner on the table at a reasonable time more often than not, having fun with my husband and daughter, running more, being more productive at work.  This week I am just tired and I am NOT motivated.  I had a conversation with my boss that made it clear that he does not see the value I am bringing, and I get so frustrated by that.  I have had twelve bosses in four years, so basically by the time I get one on board and educated in what I do, they have moved on and I have to start all over again.  Not ideal.  My current boss is inflexible and has a tendency to micromanage.  Also not ideal.

When I get home, I am tired.  We have eaten pizza more times in the past week than I care to admit.  Happily, most of my routines are keeping me afloat at home, so while I haven't progressed onto the clean outs that are long overdue, at least I haven't lost ground.  I am still able to easily keep up with the laundry, and I am still making sure that the kitchen sink is empty before I go to bed.

Writing this out has actually helped me today...though I am still dragging, I am more optimistic than when I started this post.  I haven't charged forward like I had hoped to, but that crystal ball is still steadily up in the air and the house hasn't backslid into utter chaos.  I will just keep plugging along and I will get myself moving forward again.

Super Mom? Yes, Ma'am

About two years ago, my daughter A was born.  After being home for a couple of days, I had the panicked thought, "I'm never going to have time to cook a meal again! There is never enough time to do the prep work and then actually cook - she needs to eat so often, and wants to be held at the most inconvenient times!"  Then I took a deep breath and banished the thought from my mind - that was why I stocked my freezer ahead of time, right?  Yep.  So I just kept plugging along and doing the best that I could.  Lo and behold, around the time she turned two I realized that I was really starting to feel like myself again.  I no longer felt like I needed to sleep every time I got 5 minutes to sit down.  I had energy again!  Until then, I don't think I understood that I hadn't fully recovered from her coming into our lives.  Yes, my body was recovered in the sense that stitches were healed, but not from the getting less than two hours of sleep at a time and trying to keep everything from crashing down around me while providing A with everything that she needed.  The mental and emotional stress was overwhelming.  I have many balls in the air, stressful full time job, getting A to and from daycare, quality time with my husband, managing around his crazy schedule and solo parenting during his work week, getting decent meals on the table, visiting family on a regular basis who live 1-2 hours away, caring for our elderly and immune compromised dog, part-time job, house still under renovation...and on and on. 

I always told myself that I'm not super mom and that I would never try to be.  But that is exactly what I was unconsciously doing.  And something had to give.  I was sacrificing my well being to keep all those balls in the air.  I was staying up way too late to get things done, I wasn't exercising, I was frustrated at work and my house looked like a bomb hit it.  The only thing I was really getting right was loving my family and enjoying my time with A. 

I have gradually been putting little routines in place that have helped me tremendously.  Something as simple as picking out my clothes the night before and putting everything I need to take with me the next day in one spot, ready to go, saves me anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour in the morning.  (I am sooo not a morning person.) I've been doing that for a couple of years now.  Other than that, though,  I have mentally resisted the truism that daily routines really do make life easier.  Intellectually, I knew it was true, but I always had an excuse ready for why it wouldn't work for me.

The next thing I worked on was having at least a rough plan for meals for the coming week.  This is usually based around what I have in the fridge that will go bad if it isn't used promptly.  I try to cook and freeze or refrigerate at least three meals for the coming week on Sunday, and I use my crock pot frequently.  (It's so addictive!)  I found a couple of tools that really make meal planning, prep and execution so much easier - since my goal is not just to get any old thing on the table, but to make an effort to have it be healthy and taste good.  I don't remember how I got by without the Six O'Clock Scramble (requires a subscription) or Stephanie O'Dea's Year of Slow Cooking blog.  These ladies know what they are doing!

Without realizing it, my routines have turned me into a super mom!  Not in the sense that I originally thought, where mom is stressed out trying to do it all.  More in the way that if I stick to a few simple routines, I gain a cleaner house, am less stressed and we are all happier and more relaxed.  I actually had the time and energy to bake cookies with A on Monday night!  A work night!  This was previously unheard of in our house! 

I'm on a roll, so more posts on routines will be coming in the next week.  I can't believe I resisted this for so long!  Next up is laundry!

Avoiding Juice Box Floods and Teddy Graham Attacks

It's funny, before I was a parent, there were products that seemed completely ridiculous and like a waste of money.  Now that I have a super active toddler, I'm rethinking my stance on some of these.  Don't get me wrong, there are some that I still think are a total waste of money, like cart and high chair covers...don't get me wrong, I do wish I had come up with it first, as I see these everywhere.  Whoever came up with them is likely very well off financially.  But I won't be purchasing one, partly because I need one more thing to carry in my diaper bag like I need a hole in my head.  The other reason is that I am not germaphobic at all.  I can hit the cart with a baby wipe or cart wipe if I feel like it needs it, and I truly believe that germs cannot live long enough on hard plastic and metal to make my kid really sick.  Some of the things I thought were good ideas but not worth spending money have turned out to be some of my favorite travel items.  We spend a fair amount of time in the car...to and from daycare and other local outings and also one to two hour rides to visit family on a fairly regular basis.  So we have to have at least two Munchkin snack cups and Dwink juice box holders - one for each car.  In reality this means we have more, because they come inside to ride through the dishwasher and sometimes to be used in the house. We limit food to the kitchen for the most part, so the snack cups are not essential for in the house, but are a life saver in the car.  They get used pretty much every single day either for cereal on the way to daycare or animal crackers or Teddy Grahams or similar as an after school snack.  Juice boxes tend to be an away from home thing too, since we use cups at home...and juice is more of a treat than a regular thing.  I also like to water it down since I think it is too sweet undiluted, and so I like the little Fruitables juice boxes that combine fruit and vegetable juices.  These are 66% juice, but looking at the ingredients, it appears that this is because of the addition of filtered water, so I believe they are watering them down for me.  If I am wrong about this, please correct me, as I would like to know if I am missing something here.  Anyway, these are only 4 oz, so I was concerned that they wouldn't fit in a juice box holder.  The Dwink is perfect though, because you just turn the little Fruitables boxes sideways and pop it right in and it holds it firmly.  I am not a fan of having a juice fountain spraying all over when out in public (or in the backseat of my car), so I love this product. 

Now I just need to find the best sippy cup...though I am starting to think we own every sippy ever made.  Some day I'll find it.  Probably the day before my daughter stops using sippy cups altogether!

February Blahs

Happy Valentine's Day!  Or...welcome to mid-February!  Valentine's Day isn't a big deal in our house, though it was fun cutting hearts out of red construction paper with my daughter and letting her color all over them for her friends.  She had a blast, which I love.  I think she will be asking to make more hearts for the next few months though.  It took us a couple of weeks to make 10 of them, so she doesn't seem to associate them with just one day.  That's alright.  Hearts are within my repertoire.  Hearts and snowflakes.  That's pretty much the extent of my artistic scissor skills.  I think I have another year or so before my daughter outgrows both of those.  One night when we were working together on the valentines, my daughter started responding to questions with, "Yes, ma'am."  At first, I thought I heard her wrong.  It's now a regular part of her vocabulary.  I think it's cute, especially because she uses it to respond to her daddy also. 
February is my least favorite month of the year.  It's the shortest, but grayest, month in the mid-Atlantic region.  Though this year hasn't really been that cold, which has been nice.  I love snow, don't get me wrong...in fact, this time of year, I actually prefer snow to rain because at least snow is pretty.  It covers up all the gray and beige dead grass and mud. I am not missing that bone chilling wind that we usually have this time of year, that usually comes with the snow.  I'm thinking that we guaranteed it won't be super cold this winter by putting an insert woodstove into our fireplace.  I LOVE the woodstove.  I can't say it enough.  Warm and toasty, pretty, energy efficient.  All fabulous things.  The less oil we have to purchase, the happier I am.  A beautiful flickering fire is one way to fight the winter blahs.

Another way to fight the blahs is to go somewhere warm on vacation.  Generally, this is not something that we do because 1) it is expensive and 2) flying or spending a long period of time (more than 3 hours) in a car with a small child is not my idea of relaxation.  So we found somewhere close to home to get that warm weather illusion.  We spent a few days last week at Great Wolf Lodge out in the Poconos.  It only took about an hour and a half to get there, which is perfect.  Of course, no trip is without it's kinks, but we got those out of the way early this time...our toddler refused to take her nap in the car on the way, despite the fact that it was naptime and she was exhausted, and I realized when I went to check us in that I didn't have my wallet with me.  Both things worked themselves out.  Happily, my husband had his wallet with him and the lodge let us switch over to that without issue.  Our room was ready early, thank goodness, and so we went and napped before hitting the waterpark.  Yup, that's right, the appeal of this place is that it has a big indoor waterpark which is always 84 degrees.  It's also open until 9 pm, so we felt no pressure to gamble with skipping naptime or pushing back meals.  It was so relaxing.  I was a little worried that they wouldn't have much for a small 2 year old to do, but there was a ton of stuff.  She's a water bug.  She loved it there...she would live there if she could.

THE GOOD:
There were a couple things that were really great about this place.  The biggest advantage?  You don't have to leave the building.  You can walk around in flip flops and shorts for your entire stay.  This provides a nice illusion of summer.  The water park was really clean, and there were plenty of lifeguards who were clearly well trained.  I feel like I am qualified to make that statement, having been a lifeguard for a little over 10 years in the not so distant past.  There are slides for all ages...short slides, long slides, kids only slides, slides with tubes for one or two, slides you didn't need to drag a tube upstairs for, a four person tube slide...I think that's all of them, but I'm probably missing one or two.  There are many pools, a tree house, you name it, they have it in the waterpark.  We hit most of it.  There were a couple slides that were for two people over a certain height requirement, so we didn't get to those.  Maybe next time we'll join forces with another family, it would give us more options in terms of the adults getting to go on slides. 

My daughter's favorite was the wave pool.  She treated it just like the ocean - she walked right in and kept going, because she thinks that she can swim.  She can't.  She's too little to be able to keep her body afloat on her own still.  But she's on her way, and I think now we are going to join the YMCA and start going to the swimming class for her age group. 

We had pizza the first night that we were there.  They have two pizza places, one is their own, the other is a Pizza Hut Express.  We skipped the Pizza Hut, as the in-house pizza was really good.  It's a takeout place, so we ate in our room, which had a dining table.  I'm pretty sure that all of the rooms had a wet bar, which I thought was silly until we got there.  It's really just a counter with a sink, a microwave, and a nice size small refrigerator.  It came in super handy for rinsing and filling up both regular and sippy cups.  Next time we will definitely bring some food with us to cut down food costs/increase healthy eating. 

Something they had that I really liked because it was super convenient was that the room key was integrated into the waterpark wristband.  So easy, and always on your person.  No getting locked out of the room, which was a definite plus.  I liked that I didn't have to schlep anything to the waterpark.  Just us, in our bathing suits and cover ups.  They had towels there for us, still warm from the dryer. 

I also noticed some random things while we were there.  The staff were very helpful and friendly.  They were both well-trained and genuinely nice to us. One of my pet peeves is forced and insincere courtesy.  If these people hate their jobs and that they had to put up with me and my family, it didn't show.  It was a refreshing change to experience true customer service.  The other random observation was that they had recycling receptacles all over the site, including in the room.  I love that!  I hate having to put a plastic bottle or paper in the regular trash just because I am on vacation.  If anything, I consume more bottled beverages on vacation than at home, so it really bugs me.  I have had to consciously talk myself into throwing bottles into the trash at hotels or amusement parks because I hate doing it.  Recycling is like putting on my seatbelt when I get in the car - it is ingrained so deep that it is really hard for me to reverse it.  I am the same way about composting at home, but I am not to the point where I expect to see compost buckets in public places.  Yet.

THE BAD:
It can be expensive - we did really well booking an early bird special, and the prices clearly go up around holidays and spring break.  We went during the week and left on Friday, I can only imagine how crowded it must be on the weekends.  It was exponentially more crowded as we were leaving than it was during our stay. 

Something that we didn't have to deal with was the blatant marketing of 'extras' directly to kids.  There were stuffed animals, a story wand scavenger hunt type thing, a costume shop, a kids' spa, a bowling alley, an arcade, and a monstrous gift shop, all clearly designed to have children begging from the instant they step through the door.  If we go back when she's bigger, there will be clear expectations set ahead of time on what will be out of bounds. 


THE UGLY:
Yeah, I really don't have anything for this one except that the wolf/bear/moose southwestern deco themed wall paper, upholstery and carpets was pretty ugly.  In some parts of the lodge it was headache inducing.  So don't look to hard at the carpet or the walls. :)

THE JURY IS STILL OUT:
There are a few things I can't comment on because we didn't try them.  There is a spa, which looked very nice from the outside (I walked past it on the way to the waterpark), but I never actually set foot inside.  We also didn't go bowling, visit the kid spa or basically do anything else that cost extra.  We also didn't eat at the buffet for lunch or dinner.

All in all, it was a great little trip.  Only one tantrum, which may be a record, and she was over tired when it hit, so I kinda saw it coming.  She slept the whole way home.  I arrived home more relaxed than I usually do from vacation, and would love to go back.  I think I'm going to be keeping an eye out for Great Wolf special deals from now on...