Home: Preparing for Summer Visitors (Cleaning, accommodating, stocking up, etc.)

My favorite summer vacations as a child always involved visiting loved ones. The excitement of playing with cousins was the most thrilling summer adventure. Now that I am an adult I realize that it can be just as much work for the host as it is fun for the guest. Let’s make it enjoyable for everyone by preparing now so that you are ready and able to enjoy your guests once they arrive. When having company over for the summer you want them to feel comfortable and welcome. Let’s make this stress-free and enjoyable visit for all by putting forth some thought and effort beforehand.

Let’s break it down by starting with sleep accommodations. My family didn’t have a lot of room growing up, so oftentimes guest meant sharing a room with my brothers or sleeping on the couch during the visit, which was fine with me. I just loved having people come stay! Once you have decided the area in the house that the guests will be staying in, you want to make sure that the sheets and blankets are clean. If you can do this beforehand (if none of your children sleep on the bed that will be used for the guests) I suggest doing it this week. Some people like extra pillows so, if available, allot at least two pillows per guest like a hotel does. I don’t keep a ton of extra pillows on hand, so I just put my extra personal pillows on the guest bed with clean pillow cases. Now that the bed is ready make sure the room is straightened. You don’t want your guests to trip over toys or have a difficult time distinguishing the items in their own luggage from the clutter on the floor. Of course I recommend putting the items away where they belong, but if time doesn’t permit then just put all the stuff in a box or laundry basket to deal with later. You don’t want to get caught up in organizing the whole house—the goal right now is to make the guestroom comfortable.

When it comes to cleaning the house in anticipation of guests, start with the most important areas first. Prioritize and stay focused. After the guest room feels ready, next on my priority list is cleaning the bathroom your visitors will be using. Enlist the help of your children if they are old enough. My philosophy is that if they help dirty the house (or dishes or clothes) then they need to help clean it. This helps prepare them for the real world and does wonders for their sense of self-worth. Imagine how they must feel, knowing that the world is a better place because they contributed something to it! My 3 year old squirts the Windex on the mirrors and counters and then I give him a paper towel to help wipe. Cleaning together is a great opportunity to teach life skills and share a loving moment. I show him how to wipe in circles and to wipe everywhere it is wet with Windex. He misses spots, but he is improving, and patience is crucial. Recognize and appreciate their efforts and try to find specific praise such as, “I saw how you kept rubbing that really dirty spot until it came off. Way to keep at it even though it was hard! You must be strong!” It’s okay to “trade” spots if they are too young to do an adequate job so you can make sure their area is clean for your guests. While we are cleaning together I tell him how nice it is to be able to make our house clean for our family and guests. Now I hear him say how much he loves making a nice home for his family as he cleans. It’s amazing how much our attitudes can affect our children’s. If we’re going to do something anyways, we might as well enjoy it. It’s up to us.

While in the bathroom, you’ll want to make sure you have plenty of toiletries on hand. Get out your grocery list (and I highly recommend having a running grocery list that other members of the family can add to) and make sure you have enough toilet paper, women’s hygiene supplies, soap, shampoo and conditioner easily accessible. It’s also a nice touch to have toothpaste and an extra toothbrush in the medicine cabinet if you have an extra one on hand, like from the dentist.

You’ll also want to stock up on food and snacks, and possibly paper products to accommodate a larger crowd, so head to the kitchen next. I personally like my guests to fill like they can help themselves to cereal, etc (makes less work for me if they take care of themselves!), so I try to have several varieties available. We normally eat very healthy at our house, so that when we feel like splurging I don't feel any guilt and no damage is done. So when guests are in town I try to treat them a little with tasty snacks and cereals I might not otherwise buy, making the vacation a little more exciting for all of us.

Parenting 101: A Lesson Learned the Hard Way

Yesterday I was so exhausted and frustrated with Brinton's (almost 4 years old) disobedience. He has actually been quite cooperative lately, but he had done several naughty things and I was simply worn out, especially since my husband travels for work and was gone. With no help from hubby I just wanted the kids to go straight to bed last night. I was frustrated and told him so and I listed all the bad things he had done that day. I wasn't yelling or anything, but I told him I didn't have the energy to lay down by him at bedtime like usual because of x, y, and z that he had done wrong that day. His face crumpled and he started crying and said I was mean. So I pulled him close and asked, "What did I do mean?" He replied through tears, "Talking about all the naughty stuff. I don't like that." I said, "Okay. And I don't like it when you do naughty stuff. [pause] Would you rather I talked about everything you did nice today?" He sniffled a yes. I had to wrack my brain for what he did right, but once I got started I was able to list a ton of kind gestures and helpful things he had done (We find what we're looking for. Good thing I changed what I was looking for). I held him and stroked his back while I talked about everything I liked about him and his behaviors that day. It felt much more right to focus on the positive than to pick him apart. Anyways, when I was done his shoulders were lifted, his self-esteem was nurtured, and he was smiling. I asked him to get in the bath and he yelled, "Okay!" and eagerly jumped in the tub. When I asked him to clean up the bath toys and get out, same thing. He was so EAGER to please me, so eager to be the good boy I had described, and so eager to feel the pleasure that comes with doing what's right and being recognized for it. So I learned a valuable lesson (the hard way) yesterday about how to get the desired attitude and behavior out of people and to feel better about myself in the meantime. He went from being attacked to feeling like a winner, and when people feel like winners it's natural to make good choices.

Financial Organization Tips

The following is my answer to someone who asked for advice about organizing their finances:

As far as finances go, my biggest piece of advice is to track your spending for at least a few months so you can create an accurate spending plan (also known as a budget). I personally use an excel spreadsheet that I made the first year I was married that covers EVERYTHING we spend from presents to vacations to monthly expenses and investments. There are also many other programs out there like that. I tracked our income and everything we spend, then made a spending plan based on that. We make sure we pay savings, 401(k) and bills first and have it automatically taken out. I'm an advocate of e-bills--it's quick and helps make sure bills are paid on time and it makes saving easier when it's automatically taken out, eliminates paper clutter, not to mention the trees you're saving. I keep this spreadsheet on my Palm Pilot and write down everything we spend in it. It automatically calculates and adds everything up for me. My husband and I sit down every few months and look at the averages of what we spent the last few months and see how well we're keeping within our spending limits we've imposed on ourselves. If we're spending over in a certain area we make the necessary changes. Sometimes we decide to be more disciplined and buckle down, and sometimes we decide we want to allot more money to a certain category, which means we have to take it from somewhere else. When it's reduced to an equation, it makes being disciplined a little easier because you can't argue with numbers. You earn what you earn and the spending simply needs to be less than the income. I've written an essay on this very topic (see my prior Choices post) about my own experience and struggle with facing the cold hard truth when my husband started making less money when he went back to school. But then I realized that ignoring the truth (numbers) was only denial and not helping anything. It all comes down to choices and we can choose to be disciplined and experience the freedom and peace that accompanies. This applies to everything in life, and it's completely up to us!!! If we say no when needed and sacrifice a little upfront we get to say yes to so many more things in the future!

Organized Garage! Check out my mad skills!

I was excited about the results of the new and improved garage I organized last week, so I thought I would share the before and after pictures. We got rid of a lot of it (I love to declutter!) and used the Rubbermaid Fasttrack system, which I am very pleased with. Amazon had the best prices for most of it and the rest of the hooks were purchased at Walmart as needed.

Choices--Choosing Happiness

The following started out as an email to my husband about an experience we were going through and it turned into an essay of sorts. The situation was that Chad was SUPER busy working full-time and going to school full-time for his Master's Degree, so all he did was work, plus we had a new baby. He hated his job too, and was struggling with the whole situation. We brainstormed and came up with the solution for him to work part-time at work (three 10-hour days) so he could do get homework done and still have time for a weekend to play, and he also asked for and recieved a different job position within his company. The positive results were immediate. But we had to make some financial adjustments when he started working part-time, which is what the essay starts with. Anyways, I just really think life is really what we make it. We could have stayed stuck in the crappy situation, or we could CHOOSE to take control and change what we could. So here it is:

Chad, you know how last night you talked about canceling our cell phones and I said, "I don't want to talk about this subject"? Well, I was refusing to look at the numbers because I didn't think I'd like what they'd say. If we don't face the facts, then we can pretend like we have enough money for our cell phones and keep them. We just won't talk/think about it and the problem will go away.

Well, I finally made myself look at our financial spreadsheet so I could input your new decreased income, and I was immediately able to calmly accept the fact that we'll have to get rid of them. Facing reality takes the emotion and debate out of it. No matter how badly I want cell phones or how I feel about getting rid of them, I can't argue with the cold hard facts: We don't have enough income to keep paying for them. I guess I could have purposely stayed ignorant to the facts and kept the phones, but then every month we would be in a deficit and not able to pay our bills, or we'd go into debt and use up all our savings and be barely scraping by every month. Hmmm, would I rather have financial freedom and peace or cell phones? When it's boiled down this way, it's easy. There's no question. I'll choose less stress any day. I wish everyone could see how these choices equate so directly to peace and freedom, and that they are exactly that: CHOICES. We would all become so empowered with this mentality and be able to control our lives better once we realize that life is usually what we make it. We are somehow or another usually responsible for how to get to where we want to go and for how we got to where we currently are. I think individual choice has much more to do with our "destiny" than fate does. Life doesn't just happen to us. We make it happen. This applies to all areas of life.

By the same token, you could have continued to work full-time and then we wouldn't have to make the choice between financial peace & phones. BUT that creates a different choice for us to make: Would we rather have more time together and more free time for Chad, or have cell phones? Again, it basically boils down to the same question from the previous scenario: Would we rather have peace or cell phones? Life is all about choices. Our environment and situations are usually a direct result of decisions we make. We are not victims. We need to see we got ourselves where we are, or else we won't feel that we are equally capable of fixing things if need be. We aren't stuck. We can brainstorm solutions or try to not get into the situation to begin with. I acknowledge that there are some instances when we truly are victims and things are completely beyond our control. Sometimes we are subject to nature, and no amount of personal choice will affect the outcome. And because other people also have free agency, at times we will have to suffer consequences that are the result of other peoples' choices. But we DO choose our attitudes and how we will feel and react to these situations where we honestly have no control (much easier said than done, I know). At any rate, we must remain grateful for all that has been given to us, even the gifts of intelligence and our talents and emotional capacity that make us able to choose. We are blessed that our decisions are more along the lines of "cell phones OR work less" instead of "pay house payment OR buy groceries," and while the choices to go through college and work hard and be disciplined got us to this point, the unearned gifts of supportive parents, being born in the U.S., scholarships, and being intelligent made these choices possible.

The Rainy Day Poem

I read the following poem to my husband Chad (I like to frequently read poetry from the compilation of poems I collected in high school from a very enthusiastic literature teacher) and he said, “That’s it? It seems to be lacking. It kind of ends on a positive note, but it’s still gloomy. It seems like it’s missing the last verse or something.” So I said, “Then we’ll write a verse to complete the poem!” Chad was sweet and went along with it, although the exercise didn’t excite or energize him like it did me. So after a few minutes we came up with the last stanza to this poem (the message kind of reminds me of a poem my mom once wrote), and our stanza is in bold.


The Rainy Day
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust, the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining,
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

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Through struggle I gain strength and power;
I conquer myself in the darkest hour;
I learn to feel joy in spite of sorrow,
And it makes the light that much sweeter tomorrow,
Thank God for the dark and dreary!

The Purpose of this Blog

This will be where I "talk" and get my constant random thoughts down on paper.   I will share anything from my philosophical musings to organizational tips to things in my personal life.