Today my plan was to post about our super-duper-nature-journal-making-and-using home school group activity that I was scheduled to host, but it had to be canceled because poor Ian threw up 4 times last night (in the toilet! hooray!) and it was 40 degrees with thunder and hail outside.  So on to plan B.

Since I posted about our new magnet board I’ve actually had quite a few people e-mail me with questions about our job chart.  You must understand that I am not a very good housekeeper.  I am completely organizationally challenged, inconsistent, and naturally a slob.  I love things to be neat and organized, to be clean and sparkly, but making myself do actual cleaning and organizing has been one of my life long struggles.  Fortunately I married a saint who has self discipline in spades.  I have improved on my house keeping skills a lot since we got married and I’ve matured and realized how much I really do like order, but I’ve certainly got a long way to go.

First off– it’s just a magnetic dry-erase board.  I used printable magnet sheets I found at Office Max to print the words on which I designed with Pages, our desktop publishing program on our Mac.

Any system we have to keep our house in order around here has to be really simple.  There are a few things the kids are expected to do every morning– get dressed, make beds, and pick up clothes and toys off of their floors.  I have to reiterate these expectations on a near daily basis.  That and the rule NO READING BEFORE BREAKFAST.  Every morning the 3 big kids work together to unload the dishwasher and then as the day goes on everyone rinses and loads their own dishes.  The dishwasher, not the sink or counter, is the dirty dish receptacle.

A couple of times a day (at roughly 12 and 4) we do a “clean up” where everyone works as hard as they can for 10 minutes to pick up and tidy the main floor rooms of the house.  This helps me relax a bit about the inevitable mess of having 5 kids home all day because I know they’ll help get it under control.

Then evening rolls around and that is where the job chart comes in.  The kids rotate helping with dinner clean-up on weekdays.  The dinner chores are the only ones on the chart that consistently get done.  Laundry is on there, but it is just one of those battles I haven’t figured out how to fight quite yet.  (I did try Jessica’s once a week laundry day thing for about 4 weeks, but I just couldn’t do ALL the laundry a family of 7 produces, do school, and make meals in one day.  I have yet to find something I can really stay on top of.)

On Saturdays Barry helps the kids really clean their rooms before anyone can go downstairs in morning and the bathroom chores rotate between kids each week.  So, whoever has mirrors cleans all the mirrors in all the bathrooms, whoever has toilets cleans all 3 toilets (and the surrounding floor), and the counters person does all the sinks and counters in all 3 bathrooms.  Sometimes I’ll make a list of chores that REALLY need to be done in addition to those and we all work on those too.  Vacuuming just gets done when it looks like we need to (which is a few times a week in the main rooms because we have a big dog who SHEDS).  Our sliding glass door is covered in fingerprints and dog-nose prints more often than not.  We’re lucky if dusting gets done once a month.

This helps us get all the necessities done for health and basic decluttering, but our house is by no means spic and span.  I seriously could spend hours everyday cleaning, but I don’t want to, and I really don’t think I need to.  There will be a season when I’ll miss all the mess makers and won’t even remember the mess.  Right now I’m just striving for peace and order, with as little effort as possible.

And I try really, really hard not to compare myself and my home to my friend’s who are obsessively neat and clean with perfectly arranged living rooms and decorated walls.

I usually feel pretty good about where I’m at.

So, I did my mantle re-do research last week and found ideas I loved at a new-to-me decorating blog called The Lettered Cottage.  This spring mantel arrangement was my favorite thing I saw on the whole internet– totally school room friendly and clean and fresh.  My interpretation is not quite as pretty or involved, but the only thing I had to buy was an ugly thrift store flowery painting.  It had no glass and the picture was printed on stiff board, so all I just painted over the painting with chalkboard paint and turned the gold frame white.  That was easily done in a morning.  I think it will be fun to change up the words and draw pictures every now and then.

If you remember my mantel-cubby thing used to be mauve.  SHHHH!  Don’t tell my landlords, but one of the walls in the living room is painted a tannish color.  Barry found the left over down in the basement so I used it to cover the mauve.  Technically, that’s not changing the paint colors in the house right, since this color is used in the house?  I don’t think they’ll notice.  It certainly makes me feel better.

I know my candles would look better if they were pure white instead of cream colored, but they’re what I have.  I think some apple green pottery would be a fun addition, as well as something white and small on the walls on either side of the black board.  I’m on the look out for something that I love.  I don’t want to buy things just to fill spaces– but because I think they’re beautiful and they make me happy.  And I prefer artist made things rather than China made things, of course.  I’ll keep an eye on etsy for things that fit the bill.

In the meantime– happy spring!!

So, here’s that magnet board I’ve been dreaming up for the kids’ side of the art room.  We got a big 3′ x 4′ piece of sheet metal from Home Depot, some inexpensive base board molding, some things to hold the corners of the frame together, and a box full of thumb tacks.

Barry made a frame from the molding and we painted it white, then used thumb tacks to hold the sheet metal to the back of the frame.  (If you try this be VERY careful with the metal.  My poor husband really gashed his finger at Home Depot just trying to slide the stack of metal back into place after he got the piece he wanted.  Before he even took it out of the car at home he taped all the edges to prevent another cut.)

When we first lifted the whole thing up with the metal on the back a couple of the corners of the frame came unglued and we were afraid that the whole thing was going to be an unsturdy failure, but we put some more glue in the corners, wrapped a band clamp around the whole thing, and let it dry for a day.  That did the trick!  It turned out great!

We just screwed picture hanging wire to the back and used 2 of those crazy picture hangers that can hold 50 lbs. to hang it on the wall.  This was a good solution for us because we’re renting this house and don’t want to have big screw holes in the walls.

A couple of my boys and I used fabric scraps to make some covered buttons, then hot glued round magnets to the back of them.  They turned out really cute.

And while I was taking pictures of it I thought I’d show you a view from the kitchen with my pretty calendar (from Paper Source) and our chore chart.  It makes me happy that everything looks so neat and pretty.

Anyway, that’s the magnet board story.  My art room spring cleaning is complete.  (And it’s a good thing that I documented it since it’s a little messy now.  I’m helping Brenna make a quilt…)