Habit for the Month - March

In continuing to work through Regina Leeds book, I will be working on the office area of our home. Right now our computers and office items are in our living room area. The mess and clutter can be quite overwhelming at times, so I'm excited to be working on this so early in the year. You can check out Leeds website here.

One afternoon, Amber (Come Here Little Bug) and I were discussing how much we dislike doing dishes and how we let them pile high to the ceiling with food caked on. We just don't want to deal with them, ever. Part of my problem is the location of my kitchen. My kitchen is in the basement and our main living space is the main floor. With five little ones, I can't be far away for very long and doing a meals worth of dishes is too long to be gone from the room let alone going to a totally different level of the house. Sure enough every time I try to do dishes someone gets hurt (feelings or physical), a toy dispute erupts, and someone is screaming, which in turn wakes Baby R. This then infuriates me because I want to be doing (not really) dishes while baby sleeps and they have prevented me from doing so. Now, I know there are many solutions to this problem and I'm working on some of them.

Dishes is the monthly focus of March. I want to have no dishes sitting waiting to be washed when I go to bed at night. I want to wake up to clean sinks and counters. This habit is very overwhelming to me, but I know that when I accomplish this I am a much happier mommy! So here are some of the solutions I am working on to get the dishes in the cupboard where they belong:

1. One of the girls has the morning chore of putting away any clean dishes that have been left drying overnight. This rotates through the older three girls.

2. When someone looks or acts bored one of the chores I've started sending them to do is dishes. I never expect them all to be done, but I'll say, "K, go wash all the bowls and silverware." Then when I go down to take care of some of them myself, I only have the pots and pans to do, for example.

3. Serving our evening meal earlier in the evening. This allows me to get to the kitchen before I get worn out with baths and bedtime.

4. Taking everyone to the basement with me. I usually do this when I'm making the evening meal. And when I do this, everyone helps with something. One will look after Baby R as needed. One will stir a pot. One will wash/put away dishes. One will change the laundry. That kind of thing.

If I did all these things everyday, I know I'd have my dirty dishes problem under control. Join me? Amber??