New Year's Resolution

I was once an organized person. I was always a pack rat but I was organized. Then I met and married someone who is an even larger pack rat than I am. Then he went to Iraq for 7 months and all hell broke loose around the house. Aside from the previous blogs that I wrote about everything going wrong while he was gone, the deployment came to an end with even more things going wrong! Needless to say, my once wonderful organizational skills sort of disappeared.

My lack of organization has been stressing me out to no end, so while I don't usually make New Year's resolution's (because let's face it, I would never stick with them), this year I did and I vow that I will stick with it!

While browsing a military wives message board, I came across a post that someone wrote about a website called Motivated Moms. The post had been responded to by many, many people and the entire thread went on for 3 pages. Every single response to the post was about how wonderful this website it, and how it helped them keep their house clean and organized.

Basically, what it is, is a chore list. You do have to pay for it - $8 to download and save it, but people were raving about this site, claiming it was the best $8 they ever spent. Since the site is obviously directed towards moms, some people asked whether or not someone without children would benefit from it and the answer was yes. So I checked out the site and found out that I agree with everyone who loves this site.

The Motivated Moms Chore Planner is a day by day list of chores that takes you through the entire year. It gives you tasks so that you accomplish something every day, but you aren't overworking yourself either. If done correctly, it leaves plenty of time to have to yourself. It also seems to work well for people who work full time.

So I bought it. And I love it. Not only does it have "normal" chores on it (vacuuming, mopping, cleaning toilets) but it also has things on it like "clean outdoor garbage cans". Now thats something that I may have thought about doing in passing, but let's be honest, I never would have done it. (and even now, I still didn't do it. I gave that chore to Mr. V.) It also splits up the chores so that you clean the toilets one day, and the bathtub on another day. The point is that you will be doing something every day, but your house should never be disorganized or dirty if you follow the list correctly (and you can switch days around - for instance, it said to clean the garbage can on Wednesday, but our trash goes out on Thursday so it was cleaned on Thursday instead). It even includes things such as "prepare gifts and cards for February". And as for my lack of children, I do have pets so I change anything that says "child" to "pet". For example, each week it says "clip children's nails" so to me that translates into "clip cat's nails".

My reason for this blog is just to share this with anyone who is in desperate need of organization. I am thrilled that someone posted it on a message board so now I feel compelled to share it too. Heck, even if you're already organized, this would still be a huge destressor for me because I hate feeling like I haven't finished doing everything. By following the list, I don't feel that way because even though I know I haven't cleaned the stove, thats ok, because its on the list for tomorrow.

So check it out! I was very surprised at how useful and wonderful this was and I now have to agree with everyone who has said its the best $8 they ever spent.

Motivated Moms Chore Planner