Revalations

                                    before                                    

after

I shined my sink today ( http://flylady.net/pages/FLYingLessons_Shine.asp ) not realizing the snow ball effect that would occur. Spending all that time shining my sink made me not want to dirty it with dishes, and to dry it out after I use the water so it wont get water spots, and so on. So my kitchen, while not necessarily clean, does look a lot better. As a temporarily single mother of two small children my living room is always a mess. I don't bother to clean it during the day because the kids will just pull the toys out again and I will be back at square one. So my night time routine has been, put the kids in bed. Tidy the living room, relax for a bit and go to bed. The flaws with this routine were that I could never vacuum, because the girl would already be asleep by the time I finished tidying, and I can't put any of her toys away because lord help the person who should try to sneak into her room while she is sleeping cuz she will wake up PISSED no matter how quiet you are. So leaving her stuff in a pile in the living room with the intent of putting them away in the morning never works, because the boy gets up in the morning and immediately spreads it all out. Well tonight I had a thought. Everything on the floor is the kids mess. . . .let the kids clean it up. So a half an hour before bed I said okay I want you to take all of your toys into your bedrooms. Before the kids went to bed the living room was clean and the floor had been vacuumed. :D. There is a snag in this plan however. My daughter is only 2 and doesn't quite get it and most of the toys were hers so I was still doing most of the work. She will get it though, and I am sure it won't be all her mess every night. So hear I sit with a sparkly sink and a clean living room quite content with the world. Now it's time for some grown-up tv (aka. Not Nick Jr.) and then bed.