Everyone talks about how kids need structure and I believe kids need it because they’re whirling balls of chaos! Really its the mother who needs structure.
When I first moved into my current house I was a new mother of my third child and a part time employee. I desperately needed structure. And I found it in the form of the Boone 14 x 14 Magnetic Calendar. Here is a link to buy one off Amazon.com
This is a narcissist secret because it makes my life easier and I then have more time for ME. Let me tell you how I first used it.
We’d fixed up this house and I wanted to keep it clean. But between the kids and the job I didn’t have time to do it all myself NOR the money to hire help. This was partly because I was taught “if you’re going to do a job do it right the first time and you won’t have to do it over.” (Thanks Mom for pounding the nails into my perfectionist plaque!)
My Boone calendar
Yet my perfectionist gene is balanced with my lazy narcissist gene and I had to scale back my expectations of house cleanliness. So I took a hard look at just what had to get cleaned on a daily or weekly basis and what could stand to be cleaned only monthly. Obviously dishes and people had to be cleaned if not daily at least every other day. Laundry, toilets and floors needed to be cleaned weekly. But washing fingerprints off walls, floor mopping, dusting bookshelves… I could live with only doing that monthly.
And with my Boone calendar I had 4 weeks to divide those chores into. (Floor day, Wall day, Dust day, Bathroom day… you know, scrub that shower, tub, etc.) I added the day the kids went to the school library so I could make sure they took those damn books back. (As if 2 obsessive reader parents don’t have kids books in the house!) Then, of course, I added the days I projected to be ovulating (when horny me comes to the surface) and when I’d be menstruating (when scary me might pop out but when oral sex moves up the agenda).
Then I added more monthly chores (mow, filing, accounting, etc.) and the weeks my girlfriend had her daughters during the summer, or days during the rest of the year. Hell, I kept better track than she did sometimes and I gave her one of my calendars! And this system has been working brilliantly for years now.
At the end of the week I erase the transient weekly entries along with that weeks day numbers and after moving all the other weeks up I put the new week on the bottom. The things that never change, I never need to erase or re-enter. Then I check the side of the fridge where I keep clipped all those notices of upcoming events and add any to the new week if they apply.
I haven’t had to buy an annual calendar in years! And luckily my own personal schedule isn’t so packed with events and phone calls that I need to always have my calendar with me. Because nothing is more fun than when the kids notice I’ve put something like Christmas or better yet, Last Day of School on the calendar over the fridge.
Ah, the happy sounds of more chaos.