Household Organization System

I have tried a number of different systems to get the house neat and organized and they all work for a while, then they stop working because our life changes and our system needs to change with our life as well. Today, Rachel Anne is talking about household organization systems and I'm game. It's time we came up with a new system to follow around here, because the last one just isn't cutting it at the moment. And since Hubby is now the one home full-time with the kids, this system seems like one that will work for him as well, which also works for me.

We are supposed to write down the basic household tasks that are important to the health and well-being of our family. So here goes:

• Grocery shopping - 2
• Kitchen floor: sweep - 1
• Kitchen floor: mop - 1
• Dishes - 1
• Counters - 1
• Oven - 4
• Fridge -3
• Pantry - 4
• Trash - 1
• Living room general clean - 1
• Den general clean - 1
• Vacuum living room - 2
• Vacuum den - 2
• Vacuum bedrooms - 3
• Cleaning bedrooms - 2
• Dusting - 4
• Entry way - 2
• Laundry: sheets and towels - 2
• Laundry: family clothes - 1
• Personal time - 2
• Bathrooms - 2
• Paper work (filing, bills, etc.) - 4
• Yard work - 4 (for now, with the exception of shoveling which is just as needed based on snowfall)
• Errands - 2
• Feeding pets - 1
• Cleaning up after pets - 1
• Volunteering - 3

(I borrowed her list and added, omitted or changed a few items.) As you can see, there are numbers next to each item. That is how I rated them, using the following rating system. I took a long, hard look at each item and rated it based on how often it REALLY needs to be done. The rating system is as follows:

1 - This should be done every day
2 - This could be done once a week
3 - This could be done once, every other week
4 - This could be done once a month
5 - This ain't gonna happen

Making up this list today was worth 50 points! And I didn't even have to do any actual work! However, there was a bonus of 30 points for doing minimum maintenance, which I did do. So yay!

Total for today: 80 points
Total for January: 410 points!.

Menu Plan Monday

I'm not planning a menu for this week. My reason for this being that I most likely will not be home and Hubby will be the one in charge of creating meals. And he is an awesome cook. So rather than planning a menu and buying the ingredients for the menu, I am choosing to turn it over to him completely. And, we have had heavy snowfall in our region this past weekend and there is a very real possibility that I will not be coming home from work once I go back there tomorrow night. I may stay in the other town at my boss's house. An interesting, seemingly unusual, arrangement, but one that should work well nonetheless. We will see if that is necessary. If I stay there in town, most of my meals will be provided for me, due to the fact that I had to stay. That's just one of the nice benefits of staying in town. So there you have it, I'm skipping MPM this week and turning it all over to Hubby.