Getty finally decided it was time to use his clothing budget and go shopping. Walking past this grey-striped button-down shirt, he did a double-take. A must-have. Black jeans, a batman tee, and a Vans-inspired belt buckle completed the look. He knows what he's doing. 
Getty came up with a schedule for his and Connor’s Friday night sleepover. Here goes:
Sleepover
Call Connor
Go to Lake (knee-deep muddy run-off in the neighborhood)
Go to consert (no idea)
Play with Erik
Take shower (remember the muddy part?—********s on)
Play in forest with Cy and Cam
Ride Bikes to Connor’s
Whatch a movie whith food
Come home Barefoot
Play arownd
Bath with Bubbles (********s on—yep, they’re muddy again)
Stay up till 4:30 (a.m.)
Tomarow
Whake up
Saterday chors
Whatch TV
Eat
Call Ren maby
Go to Junkson (local convenience store)
Lolly pop
Swiming
Do what ever
SLOW the FLOW: One thing in, one thing out. If you buy a shirt, donate a shirt. Don't keep accumulating. Teach your family this principle.
Put the Roof on the Day before going to bed:
1. Straighten the house
2. Plan the next day
3. Know what you will cook for dinner tomorrow
4. Sort laundry and start one batch
That's all I've got for the series. Hope you are knee-deep in trash and donations! (It gets worse before it gets better.) MUCH better!
Unwanted junk mail. Request your name be removed from mailing lists and don’t fill out entry forms, etc.
Unwanted phone solicitors. Request they remove you from their calling list. Better still, write to:
Telephone Preference Service
c/o Direct Marketing Association
P.O. Box 9014
Farmingdale, NY 11735-9014
Request that your name and phone numbers be removed from telephone solicitation lists.
Call 1-888-382-1222 from every phone (home, business, & cell phones) you do not want telemarketers to reach you on.
Door-to-door Solicitors: apply 1” vinyl lettering, “No solicitors,” to entrance. Costs about a dollar. Salespeople may still knock, but this way I feel more comfortable sending them on their way. After all, they've been warned.
Soon to follow—last post in the series: How to Maintain Organization.
Set up a kitchen desk or other central location as an information and supply center. Include a phone, phone lists and phone books, a calendar hung prominently, a canister full of pens and pencils, scissors, pad of paper, key hanger, files, calculator, stationery, stamps, “in” and “out” file for mail. —Shari Warner
Get supplies for your home office: Stapler, tape dispenser, three-hole punch, pencil sharpener, tape measure. —Shari Warner
Dry-erase calendar. Post in a central location. This way everyone knows what the schedule is and where everyone went!
Make your own telephone list. Include neighbors, visiting teaching list, kids’ friends, family’s work, doctors, pharmacy, music lessons/sports coaches. Post it by the phone in a central area.
Post a magnetized grocery list pad with pencil on your fridge.
Meals. Double a recipe and freeze one. Cook one day a week. Make 2 recipes and double them for a total of 4 meals. Use the same type of meat for the 2 recipes to simplify the process. Monday through Thursday eat 2 of the meals you prepared that week, then take 2 pre-prepared dinners out of the freezer, and replace them with the other 2 dinners you made that week. Friday: leftovers, Saturday: date night, and Sunday: dinner with extended family or kids cook!
Make things easy to put away. No lids on laundry baskets, for example. If it’s easy to do, your family just might do it.
Keep trash cans in every room, the yard, and the garage.
Kids school work. Special papers can be photographed with the child then tossed. If papers come home with important dates and information, transfer immediately to family calendar or planner. Calendar should be kept next to phone or wherever important papers are kept. —Shari Warner
Use a large envelope for each child’s special school work/papers. Keep anything special or significant in the envelope. At the end of the school year, go through the envelope and decide what to save. Then mark the school year on the envelope and place in a box. When the child leaves home, give him the box.
“Magic Minutes.” Have a “Magic Minutes” session each afternoon before dinner. Assign everyone an area (zone) of the house and for ten minutes work fast and furiously to clean it up.
Laminate an “After-school Checklist” for each child. It might include: put backpack and coat away, do homework, do daily chore, straighten bedroom…. Kids use a dry erase marker to check off each item, so you don’t have to remind (nag) them, and you can easily see what hasn’t been done. When the checklist is done, they can play/have screen time. You can make a Saturday Chore checklist, too. Keep the lists all together by hole-punching the corner and slipping a key ring through it. Put them in a central location, like the kitchen table.
Color-code bath towels. Each child gets his own towel color. When you’re not sharing towels, you don’t have to wash them after every use (in my book). Bonus: you can tell who left their towel on the bathroom floor. J You can color co-ordinate your towels, too. (One striped green, blue, and white towel; a green towel; a blue towel; a white towel…)
Organize toys in a way kids can understand and follow so they can clean up without supervision. Confine kids’ mess to one area. Toys generally stay in bedroom or playroom.
Toy Basket. When toys make their way into other rooms, give the kids a large “toy basket” with a handle so they can easily carry it around the house and gather their toys. Or, designate a basket that you can dump toys, socks, etc. into throughout the day and have the kids empty it before playing or mealtime.
Garage: buy buckets for sports equipment and gardening tools. Paint an outline for bike storage area. —Shari Warner
Charity Bin in Garage. Buy a large plastic garbage can and keep in your garage for charity.
De-Cluttering Tips by Shari Warner
Kids rooms. The best rule of thumb is to do your kids’ rooms when they are gone. If they are neat, they will miss what you get rid of, but if they were neat you wouldn’t have to be de-junking their rooms. They won’t miss much if anything. With eight kids and 18 years of motherhood I have tossed very little that was noticed. If your child protests your announcement that you will be cleaning his room, give him a set amount of time to take care of his territory, say two weeks. Tell him that if he does not take care of the cleaning in that period of time, you have the right to clean it for him. I am almost certain you will get the job.
Keep bedrooms simple: just a bed and a dresser. On the bed, just a comforter and fitted sheet for easy-to-make beds.
Counter clutter. Should be non-existent. If junk mail is discarded immediately, there should be little left to clutter counter tops. Find a place for everything and put everything in its place.
Junk drawer: Most of it is junk. Toss it. For the rest, purchase a drawer organizer.
Tupperware-type containers and lids. No lids, warped or melted, get rid of them. Too many? Out they go.
Broken or missing parts to anything—it’s outta here!
Recipe books. If you have book after book that you haven’t used in the past three years, donate them. If you have books with only one recipe you use, cut that one out and add it to a book you use. Clipped out recipes you’ve never tried, out they go.
Small appliances not used in the last three years. If in working condition, donate. If broken, toss.
Fridge. Keep leftovers for two days, then toss.
Next post: Favorite Organizing Tips
“DE-JUNK: toss it, trade it, tromp it, give it away, sell it, but get rid of it. It’ll be the greatest housework reducing move you ever make. The formula is easy: Don’t love anything that can’t love you back. If something doesn’t enhance your life then part with it. I can promise that dejunking will change your life and housework schedule more than any other single thing you can do.” —Don Aslett
How to De-Clutter
1. Plan a de-cluttering session when your husband can watch the kids and you can work uninterrupted.
2. Focus on one room at a time. Start with your main work areas first (kitchen, laundry room...)—your success will spur you on to tackle one more room!
3. Set a timer for 45 minutes. Then take a 15 minute break. Set the timer again.
4. Discard and Sort are the most important things you can do to get your house under control.
Here’s how: Use 3 boxes and a large trash bag when organizing a room.
Box 1 or large garbage bag TOSS
Box 2 RELOCATE is for items that belong in another room
Box 3 CHARITY is for items you will give away. Don’t think something is too nice to give away!
If necessary: Box 4 PROBATION is for items you are unsure about. Keep it in your basement. Donate the box if you haven't used the contents in 6 months.
Organization expert Sandra Phillips’ rule of thumb: Get rid of 80% of your clothes, toys, furniture, stuff. We use 20% of our stuff (clothes, appliances, etc.) 80% of the time. Even if you don't actually get rid of 80%, it's good to keep that guideline in mind; it will help you get rid of the stuff you really do need to part with.
KEEP anything that meets the criteria for what is truly useful or beautiful for you. Ask yourself these questions when sorting:
Do I love it?
Do I use it?
Do I need it?
Do I want it?
Do I have space for it?
"I can not WAIT for my birthday!"
1. M&M arguing as soon as I am conscious in the morning.
2. Elle doing her famous “shake the living daylights out of her milk-filled bottle soaking the carpet” trick.
3. Getty putting on the same purple and grey striped t-shirt and jeans every morning for school. Sometimes I notice, sometimes I don't (not a morning person). When I ask him to put on clean clothes he puts on another shirt he's already worn in the last couple of days and which is lying on the floor. He changes a 3rd time into a t-shirt he fished out of his dirty clothes hamper. Does he HAVE clean clothes? How about a selection of suitable t-shirts and shorts? The answer is he has far too many clean shirts in his drawers. All he needs is ONE, as long as it's dirty. That's his point. And my point is this also MAKES ME MAD! (okay, frustrated)
4. Ziplock packaging #@*&@!!!
5. "Leakproof" sipper cups. What a set-up.
Done for now.
I am French braiding Mia’s hair, Elle is “combing” it (read: pulling hair out as fast as I can braid it). She’s frustrated, while Cam is doing all he can to get her to scream. The oven timer downstairs dings. It dings again. Again. Again. (It’s been 5 minutes.) MK is on the couch downstairs, lying there. Not asleep. I yell down, “Can you take the chicken out of the oven?” No response. “MK,” no response. I hurry and finish Mia’s hair and run downstairs through gray smoke. MK is staring off into space. “Why didn’t you get the chicken?" "You said we were done.” (As in done watching me prepare the chicken, so they could learn what you do with one.)
I haven’t slept more than 6 hours a night in the past 7 days. Does that have something to do with my anger? Or are my kids THAT annoying? You know what I think…
Tube wars were not caught on film, but were the highlight. 
Meanwhile back at the ranch, Cam was pining away for Cy. MK's idea was to put Cy's photo next to Cam's bed, but all Cam would say was, "I don't want frozen Cy; I want real Cy."
