Elizabeth Drakes's Site

Fantasy Romance

clean house

5 Reasons Why Things Are Stressful and Crazy

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I am beside myself these days, and it’s killing my creativity. Here are five stressors I am trying to control.

  1. Got My Edits Back

I am still new to working with freelance editors. I have in my mind what I think will happen, but so far, it has not been the case. I got the edits back on Seducing the Ice Queen. The editor made some good points, though I wish she would’ve also provided a path to fixing the issues she identified. Simply telling me something is broken is not the same as using experience to give me a nudge into what it would take to fix it. I could also tell she was not as experienced with the romance genre as I would have liked.

At first, the comments were crushing, and I put the novel away for a week. I’ve pondered them a bit more, thinking about some of the areas where she found issue. While I’m not going to change my purple prose, there are some things I can do to make the work better. I doubt I will use this editor again as I think finding a true romance editor would be the best way for me to learn and improve my writing.

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Feels like it most days.

 

2. Girls’ Rooms

They are done! I took us a while, especially the last little bits like getting black out blinds made and installed, but their rooms look terrific. Now, to keep them that way.

 

3. House Move

We had talked about moving to a larger home, then decided against it. Not only is a smaller mortgage and lower taxes a nice thing (our property taxes as a % of value of our home are some of the highest in the country), but we quickly discovered that finding a home in the school districts we wanted with trees and a bit of a yard was all but impossible. After seeing what was out there, and the price tags attached, we decided to stay in our current house.

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Maybe not that drastic…

 

4. Fitting Comfortably Into Our House

I know, right? Such troubles, but real enough for us. It’s amazing how much stuff you collect living in the same place for over a decade. Longest time I’ve lived in one place.

So once we decided to stay in our house, we committed to “fitting” into this house. We are going through closets, desks, dressers, the basement, etc. and attempting to do a hard purge. My question to myself and my spouse is, “Would we have paid to move it?”. If the answer is no, it goes in the Goodwill pile. We’ve been very good supporters of Goodwill these days.

 

5. Kitchen Remodel

*ducks*

Yes, you’d think the chaos of fixing up the girls’ rooms would’ve cured me, but I’ve hated out kitchen since we moved into the house. We did a partial remodel 12 years ago, and the company that did it did an awful job. So bad that tile flooring that should last 50 years is already pulling up. Yeah. Bad. That and our cabinets are vintage 1970s. They are not in great shape, and the blind corners make half of the cabinet space unusable. We’ve hired a designer who has put together a lovely plan. Now, we interview contractors… Wish me luck!!

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Six Tips for Busy Parents to Keep Kids’ Rooms Clean for Good

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I can think of no parents that don’t regularly fuss at their kids to clean their room. I have had that “discussion” with my daughter more times than I want to count. Part of it is my daughter loves to be served. Part of it is the task really was overwhelming.

As we’ve been working on redoing her room, we’ve also been coming to terms with the mess. Here are a few things I’ve learned.

Six Tips for Busy Parents to Keep Kids’ Rooms Clean for Good

1. Plan for Hidden Storage

Kids have stuff. Lots of stuff. Pretty design websites don’t think children do. Or that their stuff is all magically color-coordinated with their room. Uh, yeah, my daughter’s room *totally* looks like this rather than multi-colored elf Legos and piles of mismatched books everywhere.

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Hint: It totally doesn’t. Who has four baby strollers, anyway?

Our plan included under the bed drawers, a full closet organizer, and a dresser. She does have some open shelves, but those are used sparingly and treated like “displays”. Not sure how long this will last, but so far, it’s been great. She knows her plush Link and Zelda dolls go on one shelf, her queen dragon on another. It’s been working.

 

2. Box Like Things Together

I love plastic ware. Yeah, I admit it. But it really does work. I bought some plastic snap lid boxes, and these are now used to keep like things together. Lego pieces not on display? In a box. Disney clip dolls? In a box. Some beloved Little People? In a box. Now, when she plays with them, she can take the box down, and when she’s done, she knows where they all go.

 

3. Tame the Paper

My daughter loves to do art, and when she’s done, the pieces of it end up everywhere. In every box, bin and clothing drawer I’ve gone through so far. To tame this, I bought her two nice plastic folders in Hyrule blue. My husband is stenciling the royal symbol of Hyrule on the cover. This is where her art goes, and we’re not above pulling the Princess Zelda trump card out and asking her if Zelda would leave stuff all over her bedroom. No, we didn’t talk about the fact she probably has a legion of maids.

 

4. Purge

I purged anything broken. Anything that didn’t have all the pieces. Anything that looked like it could’ve come from a Happy Meal. I purged anything that came home in one of those party favor bags. I purged toys that were geared to children younger than her sister.

I filled the back of my vehicle with stuff that was still in great shape and could be donated, and I filled a garbage can with the rest. This taught me we really need to go through stuff at her birthday and Christmas and weed out toys she’s outgrown. It’s also taught me to be a better gatekeeper. Really, those “goody” bags from birthday parties never need to make it past the kitchen garbage.

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 5. To the Basement

After taking everything out of my daughter’s room, only things that she’d use, wear, or play with were allowed to return. Should be easy, right? It meant taking out her winter clothes, even the things she’d stuffed into the nooks and crannies of her closet and dresser, down to the basement to be stored for next year.  I do this every season as our winters are regularly down to -20F and our summers are in the 90s.

Once this was done, I still found A LOT of stuff in her room. Stuff I hadn’t seen her play with in ages, some of it I’d never seen her play with. But she NEEDED all of it. *eye roll* So, we went through it and boxed a lot of it up for her to play with in our finished basement. We’ll see if she plays with it or not.

 

6. A Place for Everything

This gets me to the most important thing I’ve learned. Everything that remains has a place. She doesn’t have to figure out to do with it. She knows where it goes, and when she’s playing with it, there’s clearly a spot for it when she’s done.

This has been HUGE. Everything else we did really led up to this, and it’s made a huge difference. Perhaps not surprising as it’s hard enough to put something away, even harder when you don’t know where “away” is.

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Yep.

 So far, it’s worked. Her room has stayed clean, and while she still wants help cleaning it (aka for a grown-up to do it for her), she is now capable of doing it herself.

How about you? Any tips or tricks you’ve discovered? I can always use more insight into trying to tame the mess!

 

Invasion of the House Snatchers

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I had no idea what I was in for when we had kids. I have a touch of OCD, and I like my home clean, neat and organized. Especially the kitchen. I know, some of you are already laughing.

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When I lived alone in an apartment, I traveled for work a lot. As in about 80% of the time. My apartment was usually immaculate. As in, company could drop by in 5 minutes or less as I tucked away the 3 pairs of shoes I’d left out. Yeah, I know, and I’m still awful about my shoes.

Then, I got married. Marriage involves compromise, and my husband has never been as compulsive about cleaning as I have. As a matter-of-fact, we sat down and made a house-cleaning list so that he would understand everything I thought that needed to happen in order for the house to be considered clean.

The end list required compromise. My mother used to spend every Saturday cleaning our house and she drilled into me what was expected. I was never as good as she was (sorry mom!), but I tried.

DH loosened those standards a bit more. And that was on Saturdays where we bothered to clean. There was so many things that we wanted to do, that we tried to clean the house once a month or when “comany” was coming over.

This worked for a long time. Well, for the seven years of our marriage that we didn’t have kids.

Then we added a child.

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That was rough. Working full-time and taking care of a child, even with my husband’s help, was hard. Especially as there was so much more work to do. I couldn’t believe the amount of mess one small child could create. Until that child grew a little older. Then she made even more of a mess.

Then we had a second child.

My house hasn’t been really, truly clean since…well, since the Christmas after our first child was born when we were hosting. We made a real effort to truly clean the house. All of it. Haven’t done it since, though I told myself things would change as the kids got a little older.

I had assumed that children could be taught to clean up after themselves, especially once they were no longer toddlers. More experienced parents are now wiping tears of laughter from their eyes.

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We grow, change and adapt. And I simply didn’t have the time or energy needed to keep my house clean anymore. So, I had to adapt.

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This didn’t quite work out for me as DD1 was terrified of the vacuum. 

Adapt I did. How much I’d changed was brought home to me hard the other morning as I was picking up toys, again, and putting them away when I found a crust of peanut butter and jelly toast tucked onto one of DD2’s bookshelves. Clearly, she was saving this for later. My pre-child self would have been utterly horrified. My post-child self sorta shruged, threw it away, and decided it was time to take a break and check my e-mail.

 

How about you? Do you keep your house super clean? Is cleaning a weekly ritual? Monthly? When you have guests? Have you found it super difficult to keep things clean with children?