thank goodness today is over

Yes it bears repeating - thank goodness today is over. The day started optimistically enough. I returned to the gym after a few week break for the holidays. I felt rejuvenated and ready to tackle the day. Then I came home. What a mess. Day 14 and more deconstruction and toxic cleansers and mess. I just wonder how many more times I will need to completely clean each item in my kitchen? So I just gave up and gave in. I wallowed and felt lousy. Luckily, I seem to have snapped out of it because that feeling is awful. I realize how lucky I am: noone got hurt, my house is still standing. But sometimes the mess, the inconvenience and the not having any power to make decisions about fixing anything drives me mad! I do think everyone is entitled to a good wallow but I also realize my wallow impacts my whole family. My kids came home happy and sensed my mood - theirs immediately changed. That is not to say they can't see that I have had a bad day but we do need to filter them from some of our "stuff". I am not always great at filtering but I am trying to learn. Growing up is hard even at 40 and some lessons are easier to learn. In light of lessons, I sent out a survey trying to learn what about My Concierge Plus works and where we can improve. The feedback has been very interesting. I really appreciate all the sugestions and will do my best to fulfill all the requests. It is not always easy to read the negative feedback but like any lesson I have to learn from it and use it to better myself and our services. So all in all it was a tough day. I am glad it is over and tomorrow will start fresh with more cleaning and more optimism!

Sunday night...

Sunday night and the weekend is almost done. I am sad because I do love to sleep in. However part of me is relieved because I feel like I have fallen behind in my work and once the kids are back at school I can start playing catchup. Sigh, isn't that sad. I love my kids and I love spending time with them. I just hate feeling torn between the time spent with them and the overwhelming pile of paper that needs to be attended to. Every once in a while I get overwhelmed and then I flip out a little and then spend a Saturday night playing catch up. (I know, I know I really have a life!!!)The sad part is it actually does make me feel better. I can look around my desk and breathe again. The piles are gone and so is the frustration. The last 2 weeks have really been quite insane. I kind of feel like I need this Monday to come so we can all try to get back into a routine. I wonder where my kids get their need for a routine, regular pace! All that being said I still wish the alarm could wait until 8:00 to go off not 6:30. happy Sunday night everyone.

is your living room a gym?

Is your living room a gym too?

I often ponder whether my children are the only ones who use the living room as a gym? Apparently our couches are the perfect design for climbing, jumping and cartwheeling onto & off of. Now I am an advocate of physical fitness like anyone but really my living room? I have asked, begged and threatened hundreds of times. Now I am serious. I finally put my foot down. In the midst of the ongoing chaos our living/dining room has become a kitchen, homework zone, tv room, storage room and it is still the one room that feelslike a grown up space (pre-chaos). Is it wrong to want one room for adult conversation? So i finally used the ultimate tool. I warned both monkey monsters (or children) that the next time the room is used for gymanastics they lose computer/ds/wii/tv time. Well I think that might have scared them. We shall see but in the meantime maybe my all purpose room will be used for one less purpose. And if all else fails you may hear my shrieking across town!

What you may ask does this have to do with My Concierge Plus? Nothing except it is yet another aspect of being a mom, worker bee and homemaker. While trying to juggle it all, their use of the living room as a gym tips the balance of the scale so that the balls come tumbling down and I just want to tear my hair out.

So if your monkeys are driving you crazy and your scale is being tipped - fear not you are not alone!

However one thing you can do is give My Concierge Plus your to-do list and we can take care of some of that stress.
Labels: Delegation

Blogging

I never quite imagined myself as a blogger. But I must confess I am enjoying it. I have found it very cathartic to write about the ongoing chaos in our home. I am sure many people, unfortunately, can relate to the stress imposed by unforeseen home renovations. Our kitchen smells like a bonfire pit and has now been moved to our living room, our clothes and linens are at a dry cleaners and the house is kind of upside down. Yet I have still managed to sort of cook meals and have family dinners (except for tonight when we did pizza at a friend's house). Our goal is to try to normalize our lives as much as possible for the kid's sake. I don't know about your kids but ours thrive on routine. They are not suited to alot of upheaval. They like being home and living a fairly quiet life. By the end of our weekend at a hotel they were begging to go home.

I love our home. It suits us and our lifestyle. Upheaval and all there is no place I prefer to spend time (except maybe the occasional beach in the winter) than here at home. I love hibernating here in the winter. My parents will babysit on a weekend during the winter and then ask us why we did not go out. The main reason is we are homebodies.

I have to confess it was not always this way. We always loved our house but before we had Tina reorganize us it wasn't always relaxing to be here. I would want to be out because the clutter overwhelmed me. I remember her telling me that once we got organized our house would be more peaceful and you know what she was right. Christmas holiday 2008-09 was the very first time I remember spending lots of time at home without loking around and thinking about how much there was to do, to clean, and to organize. It was truly a relaxing staycation because everything had a home and all the piles were purged.

So even though chaos is reigning supreme right now, I know calm and peace will return. Sigh, I can't wait.

Day 3 of chaos & My Nesting Solution

Day 3 of settling back into a house thrown into chaos:

Late in the day yesterday & still no call from the insurance company (6 days post fire), the disaster crew came and installed plastic zip up doors to get in and out of my kitchen. They did this to keep the bonfire smell restricted to the kitchen. My kitchen is now a bubble. When I am in it I cannot hear anything outside (the fact that I am partially deaf does not help). However it is an excellent escape hatch when everyone is driving me crazy. I was going to start cooking dinner after carpool when I realized that the smell was so overpowering in the kitchen that I could not breathe. So I began moving my major cooking appliances : microwave and brand spanking new ginormous toaster oven into the dining room. Dinner had been marinating and I was going to make it NO MATTER WHAT! So I plug in the toaster and microwave and start moving between the biohazardous bubble of a kitchen and the dining room. Zip, unzip, zip, unzip, crouch, crouch, crouch. I come to the realization that my back is too old for this nonsense. I cannot cook on the floor and keep darting in & out. Thankfully my devoted and handy husband showed up as I was about to explode. We ate dinner (which was yummy considering the obstacles) and then he brought up a table for me.

My husband likes to tease me about how I like to nest. Whenever we travel and we get to a hotel I need to unpack, organize our stuff and get settled. He has coined the term "nesting" for this need of mine to turn each place into my home. After dinner I nested - BIG TIME. He set up the table and we put my major appliances including my coffeemaker (which I don't know about you but is key to me!)on the table. Then I sorted my dishes nearby, cutlery, glassware, and some pencils and erasers for homework. My house is still a mess but at least I feel nested. Now if only I could stop losing patience when my kids do cartwheels in the living room and use the sofa as a trampoline. But that is a topic for another day!

So however you need to cope, whether it is nesting or asking for help, find your solution that works for you. After all everyone should focus on what they do best and let others take care of the rest.

Is your living room a gym too?

I often ponder whther my children are the only ones who use the living room as a gym? Apparently our couches are the perfect design for climbing, jumping and cartwheeling onto & off of. Now I am an advocate of physical fitness like anyone but really my living room? I have asked, begged and threatened hundreds of times. Now I am serious. I finally put my foot down. In the midst of the ongoing chaos our living/dining room has become a kitchen, homework zone, tv room, storage room and it is still the one room that feelslike a grown up space (pre-chaos). Is it wrong to want one room for adult conversation? So i finally used the ultimate tool. I warned both monkey monsters (or children) that the next time the room is used for gymanastics they lose computer/ds/wii/tv time. Well i think that might have scared them. We shal see but in the meantime maybe my all purpose room will be used for one less puepose. And if all esle fails you may hear my shrieking across town!

What you may ask does this have to do with My Concierge Plus? Nothing except it is yet another aspect of being a mom, worker bee and homemkaer. While trying to juggle it all their use of the living room as a gym tips the balance of the scale so that the balls come tumbling down and I just want to tear my hair out.

So if your monkeys are driving you carzy and your scale is being tipped - fear not you are not alone!

However one thing you can do is give My Concierge Plus your to-do list and we can take care of some of that stress.

A New Year!

Happy belated new year. I am a few days late because my life has been upside down. I ended off 2009 with a bang, or rather a burn. We had a fire in our kitchen on the 30th of December. I was preparing a delicious dinner for my family. I had spent all morning cooking and pretending to be Martha Stewart while my children vegged out around the house. Later that day, to my horror, not only was the chicken cooking but so was my kitchen. The firefighters came and thankfully saved the day. They rescued the house - which apparently was a mere 5 minutes away from total destruction.

So the new year is off to a crazy start. However, we decided to make the best out of a bad situation. We had to move out for 4 days, for the cleaners to come in and begin the "disaster restoration". So we packed up the kids and stayed at a hotel. We tried to relax and deal with the situation. Yesterday we returned home to a giant mess. Thankfully, I had the help of my family, friends and my housekeeper and things looked much better by the end of the day. We still have tons left to do but I figure I need to take it one step at a time and one day at a time.

I have decided to make use of this fire as a time to reorganize my house. A fantastic cleaning company came and took EVERYTHING away for cleaning - clothes, linens, shoes. My new year's resolution is to go through everything and decide if it is really useful before putting it away again. Tina, our organizer, will be so proud of me. I am looking at this as an excellent opportunity to really get the house in shape again, because even though Tina organized us from top to bottom last year - I let certain things slide as I ran short on time. So all in all I am trying to cope with the upheaval the best way I know how and that is bit by bit. I am always telling people that it is okay to ask for help, well this is my time to ask for help. I am just so lucky that I have so many people I can count on and that I can turn to for that help.