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This week's Meal Plan:
(I shop on Friday, so I plan from Friday - Thursday)
Friday - Seafood Quesadillas, Chips and Salsa Saturday -Oven Baked Chili Dogs (with homemade hotdog chili) and Tater Tots Sunday Lunch - Slow Cooker BBQ Chicken Sandwiches, Chips and Dip, Fruit Sunday Dinner - Leftovers Monday - Pork Fried Rice and Egg Rolls (we like our Chinese food in this house) Tuesday - Chicken Bundles, Roasted Veggies Wednesday - BBQ Pork Chops, Corn on the Cob, Baked Potatoes Thursday - Leftovers This week's life updates:
- We made the decision to cut back on swim practice for the summer. It has made our weeks way more relaxed.
- We are still enjoying our pool days and summer in general.
- I'm still not ready to think about getting ready for the next homeschool year.
Project updates:
- I did not get the painting project done...I kinda skipped it and re-styled our built ins instead.
- We organized the boy's Legos. I can't wait to show you!
- I've spend some time updating my blog and youtube design a little bit. I'm not quite done, but so far I am enjoying the fresher look. I need a hint of color.
I'm excited to share my re-styled built ins with you today. As you can see, they have been through MANY transformations over the years.
This is not the most recent setup, but it was the closet one I could find. This was clearly not a planned project or I would have taken before pictures. I really just decided to do this on a whim mid-morning earlier this week.
before
I had a few goals in mind.
- I wanted them to feel less stuffy.
- I wanted the items to reflect our lives better and not just be a bunch of random pretty items.
- I wanted to bring our books down stairs so that they would be more accessible.
- I wanted to like the way it looked on film since it is sometimes the backdrop in my YouTube videos.
after
I took everything off so that I could start fresh. I added the silhouettes of my boys for a fun pop of color and then started filling in with books. Next came the baskets and a few accessories. It was a little bit of trial and error, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.
All of our hard bound books are one shelf arranged by height.
I arranged all of our paperback books alphabetically by author so that we could find them easily.
This is my favorite vignette. I made sure that it was on the shelf that shows up the most in my videos. If you like the little succulent you can see how I made it HERE.
This is by far my favorite setup. I'm really happy with how it turned out.
Ok, now for the really fun part! I'm going to share all of the before pictures that I could find. Some are really pretty and some are really horrible.
Let me go ahead and apologize now for the not so wonderful picture quality on some of these.
What a walk down memory lane that was.
Do you have a favorite? YouTube Video
This week's Meal Plan:
(I shop on Friday so I plan from Friday - Thursday)
Friday - Date Night (we had Mexican) Saturday -Frozen Chicken Tenders, Mac n Cheese Sunday Lunch -French Dip Sandwiches and Dill Potato Salad Sunday Dinner - BLTs and Chips Monday - BBQ Chicken Legs, Dill Potato Salad, Corn on the Cob Tuesday - Leftover Pioneer Woman's Perfect Pot Roast from Sunday, Rice, Peas Wednesday - Shrimp Scampi Pasta, Salad, Garlic Bread Thursday - Leftovers This week's life updates:
- I really enjoyed my kids going to VBS last week. They enjoyed it, too.
- I'm pretty sure I got an iced coffee from Panera every single day.
- I think I went to TJMaxx at least 5-6 times this week. I now have plenty of Rad Dunn mugs.
- We had a good weekend celebrating all of the father's in our life.
Project updates:
- Our playroom is clean! We ended up not selling any of the toys and just put them away. I still have a few thing left to do before sharing it with you.
- I purchased a lot of new decor for the boy's bedroom this week. I found a few things at Hobby Lobby and it all came together. I will be finishing up a project in there this week, so hopefully I can share it soon.
Today I am going to share my cleaning routine with you.
I have experimented with cleaning routines over the years. I have tried zone cleaning - not for me in this season of life. I have tried having a dedicated cleaning day each week, cleaning once every two weeks, and breaking down all of my cleaning tasks down and doing a little each day.
They have all worked at various times, but during this very busy season of life I find that I am doing a combination of them all.
I have broken my tasks down to Daily (routines), Weekly, Monthly, and Quarterly tasks. I'm sure that there are more things I should be doing each quarter, but I gave myself plenty of room to add them to my list as I come across things that need to be done.
I find that making the daily tasks part of my daily routines are very beneficial for the flow of our day.
Morning Routine:
Make Bed
Empty Dishwasher
1 Load of Laundry
Evening Routine:
Clean Kitchen after Dinner
Quick Pickup
The weekly tasks are the things that I would ideally get done each and every week. I prefer to get all of these tasks done on Tuesday, but sometimes if we have a lot going on, or our homeschool day runs long, I switch days or divide the tasks up as I have time to get them done. I don't write this in my planner on a specific day anymore. Some weeks everything goes really well, other weeks I skip dusting, or vacuuming upstairs, or our cleaning our shower, and just make sure that it gets done the next week. Cleaning is important, and I do plan around cleaning most weeks, but it is not my #1 priority. I have learned that in this busy season of life I have to be a little bit flexible.
I don't have designated times set aside to do these monthly cleaning
tasks. I refer to my list as I have free moments during the day and pick
something to tackle. It is very unlikely for me to complete each task
every single month. I do keep up with it in my planner so that I can
prioritize what needs to be done. Monthly Tasks:
Wash Bathroom Rugs
Wash Kitchen Rugs
Wash Dog Bedding
Wash Living Room Blankets
Vacuum the Garage
Wipe Baseboards
Clean Ceiling Fans/Light Fixtures
Wipe Doors/Switch Plates
Clean Top of Fridge
Clean Vacuum Filter
Clean out the Fridge
Wash Makeup Brushes
Vacuum Couches and Underneath Furniture Quarterly Tasks:
Descale Coffee Makers (all 3)
Clean Oven
Wash Comforters
For a little while now, I have been sharing a video called "The Weekly Report" each Monday on my YouTube channel.
The purpose of the video is to share my weekly meal plan, grocery haul, any life updates, and plans for current projects all in one video instead of having several short videos.
I used to share a weekly meal plan here each week, but got out of the habit. Bad blogger.
It's easier to list links for recipes here, so I am going to try to get back in the habit of listing them here for you as well.
This week's Meal Plan:
(I shop on Friday so I plan from Friday - Thursday)
Friday - Pizza Saturday - Ham Fried Rice and Egg Rolls Sunday Lunch - Chicken Salad Sandwiches, Chips, and Fruit Sunday Dinner - Scrambled Eggs and Pigs-in-a-Blanket Monday - Tacos Tuesday - Pioneer Woman's Perfect Pot Roast (minus the carrots, potatoes, and onions), Baked Potatoes, and Peas Wednesday - Chicken Parmesan Bake, Pasta Roni, Salad, and Garlic Bread Thursday - Leftovers This week's life updates:
- We had our first of many pools days on Friday. We had a blast.
- I finally found 2 more Rae Dunn mugs at TJMaxx this week.
- I did NOT order a new Erin Condren Life Planner during the launch this past week. I am determined to finish mine that runs through Dec. I am more of a Jan-Dec. planner. I did however order a new notebook, new cover, and several of the new accessories. I am really looking forward to receiving it all in the mail.
- Cade has his first swim meet this weekend. I'm really excited to see him swim. He has been working so hard!
Project updates:
- I spent a good bit of time working on our laundry room this past week. It feels so much better. The space is still not a "wow" kind of space by any stretch, but it feels so much better. Maybe later on down the road I will work on making it prettier. I'm looking forward to showing it to you on Wed.
- I have been getting a few questions about my cleaning and laundry routines? Is that something that you are interested in?
I almost didn't share this month's setup with you. I have tweaked my setup, added more inserts, added more dividers. It's all become a little too much. This setup is overwhelming and not working for me.
I might have ripped it apart right after I filmed this.
Why am I still sharing? Because it might help you know what not to do.
What's Not Working
- I finally had to get real with myself and admit that I don't like writing in a ring bound system. At all. I can't use it as my main planner. ( I'm still going to use it as my on the go planner like I planned to originally.) I tried cutting slits in the holes so that I can pop the pages in and out without opening the rings. That was okay, but I still don't enjoy writing in this multiple times a day.
- I thought I would really like having monthly tabs, but it made the whole thing feel really busy.
- It doesn't feel organized. I need to eliminate some things and redo my dividers.
It's time to simplify!
Do you ever find yourself over complicating your planning process? If so, how do you get your groove back? For me, it always means it's time to start taking some things away.