Daily Chatter: 1/15/13

I’m in the market for a feather duster – anyone have any recommendations?  I definitely don’t need the latest and the great (is there such thing in the feather duster world?) and would like to keep it close to $10-15, but if there’s something I should look for, I’d love to hear!  My kids will be using it if that helps guide your recommendations. ;)

Speaking of kids doing housework, I think I may have mentioned that I’ve started having the 7yo help with laundry.  He can pretty much do it himself, as long as I am confident there’s nothing that will become a disaster if it’s not properly sorted.  (The jeans and white towel mixed the other night wasn’t a disaster, but my white towel kind of has a blu-ish tint now. :/)

Anyway, so a few weeks ago the kids had been ordered to clean up the basement until it was as spotless as an unfinished basement can get.  They took me quite literally, down to doing the laundry.  I was so pleased when he told me he’d started the laundry all on his own – until I went down to switch it to the dryer and found that the “load” that he’d started was one.  baby.  sock.

Thankfully, our washer judges how much water to use by weight, so hopefully it didn’t use too much water.  I’m guessing that he put enough detergent in for a full load, though!  I just had to laugh and explain that I appreciated the effort but that the sock could have waited for a bigger load.

Last night I had supper ready at 5:30 and the dishes were cleaned up by 6:15!  Yeehaw!  I haven’t set specifics, really, but my goal for this year is to become more consistent about having supper on the table at a certain time.  I’m not sure it 5:30 is going to be our time, but Jeremy and I both agreed that it was really nice to be done with supper so early last night!

Of course, I am apparently addicted to having something cooking at all times, so as soon as I got the kitchen cleaned up, I started cooking ground beef and onions for tonight’s chili, and then made a Hot Fudge Pudding Cake (primarily because I needed to finalize the recipe for my From Garbage to Gourmet ebook that’s coming soon!).  And even that was mostly cleaned up by 7 PM.  I know this is probably mind-numbingly boring to some of you, but I am thrilled and motivated to do it again tonight.