BACKROUND

To give a little backround so I don't embarrass myself terribly, my DH and I have been married for 5 months now. I was a single mother for 12 years with a mostly complete household and he was a bachelor with a lot of 'stuff' in his own house. So when we married and moved into his house, needless to say, it looked like Target or Wal Mart blew up in my new living room. We have had A LOT of cleaning, sorting, unpacking and throwing away/donating to do. Tim, I mean the guy that works at the Salvation Army, calls for back-up when he sees our car! I'm sure Goodwill has an APB out on us along with warnings to 'approach vehicle with caution-watch for falling boxes'! We've visited a few times to each of these places because one place takes A, B and C but not D and the other place takes D, E AND F, but not E. (me thinks there's a conspiracy afoot!)  

During the day I homeschool Lovebug and he works full time. My hours switched at work so now I work every Sat-Mon. I am still fairly a newbie to homeschooling so there are still a lot of disciplines I'm learning. (like how to be disciplined) I want to make sure DD gets a good education so I have put a few things on the back burner-like unpacking the rest of our stuff and finding homes for everything and weeding through all the 'duplicates' of things my DH and I have. Not to mention all the gifts we got for our wedding! That, and the stuff I/he never took the time to get rid of over the years. So, things have been in kind of 'move this pile over there so I can sort through it later mode'. This week while Lovebug was gone we did some cleaning. We had kind of been ramping up by starting with the laundry a few days before. (what that really means is that we had enough laundry to do over the course of a few days!)

PROBLEM

Asa and I are quite different in a lot of ways. He grew up in a conservative Christian home. Modest home, 4 kids, 1 set of parents, college education...

I grew up on the other side of the tracks. I grew up in a liberal 'God who?' home. Decent home, 6 kids, 2 dads-1 mom, never graduated high school (I did get my GED a few years later). He was preppy, I was punk. You get the idea.

In spite of all that, we are soooooo similar. The similarity I want to divulge to you today is: unmotivated. More commonly known as procrastination, it can easily set you up for failure. When procrastination strikes, it rears its ugly head and makes you put things off when you could quite easily do them at that moment. It also affects the laundry.

Now, when I grew up it was never my chore to do the laundry. It was always one of my sisters who did it. I always got stuck with the bathroom, dishes (my first job was as a dishwasher and so were other jobs after that) and sometimes vacuuming. (Remember, family of 8-two boys and 6 girls-ONE bathroom until I was an older teen) I learned to do laundry when I was 19, out of the house and a brand new Christian and mother! I HAD to learn then.

Fast forward to today. If you were to walk into my home there are a few areas you will notice that aren't very...tidy, shall we say? Yep, you guessed it. The bathroom, the dishes and the laundry! I need help!

A PLAN

Asa and I sat down this week and talked about a way to fix our dilemma. You will never guess what we came up with. We decided Love needs a few 'official' chores and I can oversee her accomplishing them. So, we gave her the dishes, sweeping/vacuuming and keeping her bathroom/room clean. Asa then VOLUNTEERED to take care of the bulk of the laundry and get this, he said he doesn't mind doing it at all and actually likes it! He will also take care of the bulk of household/yard work, his bathroom, office and utility room. The garbage duties will be split w/Lovebug. Of course each one of us has to pitch in and help the others out so we are all doing our part to help out. Now, before you think I won the 'Homemakers Dream Life' Sweepstakes or something here's what I'm in charge of-everything else. The cooking, shopping, overseeing, main floor bathroom, kitchen, dining room, living room, remaining 2 bedrooms(and ours), laundry room, etc...

At least we have a plan.

So, we will try this out for a while and see if it's successful. Stay tuned...

Blessings,

Traci :)