Blog of Piers

Moving blog...

Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

More...

Test my gadget!

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 22:26:35 GMT

A quick advertisement

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 03:46:15 GMT

Relaxing weekend...

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 21:17:16 GMT

I spent the weekend relaxing, playing games, and just hanging out. But the best part was on sunday when I surprised Leah with the motivation to build her inkle loom. What is an inkle loom? Well it's a basic loom that is used to make trim for various uses. Here is a picture of hers:

I also got out and sanded the rust off my helm and sprayed it with an anti-rust paint that should keep it looking nice for many years! Woot!

Cleaning and Camping

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:49:00 GMT

Well it has been about 3 weeks and our house is presentable! That means, I would be comfortable with having visitors come over and hang! Woot. I have to give props to my family as they put up with the "drill sergeant" when it comes to clean time. But they do, and our house is clean because of it.

This weekend is our first camping event of the season. It's going to be cold, but that's why we have a tent heater! I'm not really excited about this event. It's so hard for me to come out of hibernation. Once I get out there and we are set up, I'm sure I'll have a great time. Of course, this means you won't hear from me through the weekend.

Cleaning Update

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:32:00 GMT

Okay, we have successfully completed the core part of the house and last night was our first night re-cleaning an already cleaned room. The family does seem to be getting tired of the nightly cleanings and I'm having to push/encourage them a lot. However, we re-cleaned the bathrooms and, as expected, they didn't need much work. So we spent our time concentrating on cleaning out the bathroom drawers. This was nice as they were all full of half used toothpaste containers and old toothbrushes. Once we got them all cleaned out, we quickly hit each other room in the house to ensure the house was caught up. I expect that we'll spend 15 minutes on the room of the day, and 15 minutes checking all other rooms.

Wish us luck!

The RV

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 01:12:00 GMT

Here is a quick post to publish the images.

Cleaning Plan Update

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 21:28:15 GMT

Well we reached a small milestone last night when we finished our nightly cleaning. The entire upstairs is cleaned! WOOT! We are 3 rooms away from a fully cleaned house. Last night was our bedroom, and I decided to have the kids spend time just rechecking the other rooms while Leah and I cleaned up. It was tough to motivate myself and my family to clean these last two days, but I think we are all feeling better about the house in general. The 3 rooms that remain are probably the hardest in the house though. The laundry room, we all know how quickly that can get cluttered. The family room, the common veg place in the house also clutters quickly and gets pretty tough to maintain. And finally the office, which has turned into more of a storage room, so there is a lot of stuff that will need to be relocated to the garage.

All in all, as long as someone in the house stays dedicated and encourages everyone else, then this model works great and I highly recommend it to anyone who hates cleaning. The part I am looking forward to is after the entire house is caught up. Because the cleaning will be 15 minutes in the room of the day, and 5 minutes of recap on the other rooms in the house.

Painting Figures

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:57:05 GMT

Leah and I gave painting figures a shot for one of our DnD games. It was a lot of fun and I hope to spend more time painting other figures and getting better at it. Here are some pictures of my figure.

New Cleaning Plan!

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 05:09:31 GMT

Well, we were looking around our messy house the other day and I came up with a 12 day cleanup plan. Yes, 12 days is a long time, but the idea is to minimize the feeling that we spent HOURS cleaning. Instead, we clean one room, really good, every day. When we are done with that room, we check all the previously cleaned rooms, and do a quick pick-up as necessary. Our first day we picked an easy room… the bathrooms. Our total time spent was less than 20 minutes! And the two bathrooms looked really good. I was impressed how quickly it went, and how everyone felt after it was done, that it didn't take that long. The second day we attacked the dining room. This room seemed bigger, but with careful delegation, we managed to spend only 20 minutes in there, and it looked amazing. Then a quick 2 minutes to check the bathrooms and all was well! So far so good.

The third day was the most daunting required me to do a quick dishes pass to get it ready to clean. But when the family arrived to clean, we spent about 20 minutes in there and again, it shined! Then a quick 3 minutes to recheck all the other rooms. None of us felt like it was dreadful. Way to go team!

Yesterday we hit the hallway and stairs. We actually spent more time here because Leah and I wanted to carefully vacuum the cracks and stuff where dog hair was building up. But less than 25 minutes later, it was dazzling! 5 minutes to recheck the clean rooms and all was well. Another great day.

Today was the living room, and I had to encourage the family that we needed to do it. But once we got started, we spent less than 20 minutes and the room was golden. 5 minutes to recheck the existing rooms (the kids pretty much did this for us before we even asked!) Woot! We are on day 5 and we have about 6 more rooms to go (one room might take 2 days as it's big). I really think we can do this, and once the rooms are all "clean", it will be "REALLY" clean one room, and skim clean the others. I expect that we, as a family, will spend only 15 minutes a day "cleaning"!

If you are having a hard time keeping the house clean, here are a few suggestions:

Don't do too much in one day.
Keep the cleaning to less than 30 minutes a day.
Involve the kids, they love to help, but you have to delegate a lot. (Go put this here, etc.)
Check all clean rooms daily! Otherwise one room can get messy quick and it becomes "scary".
Once you have everything under control, take the 15-20 minutes in that day's room and clean up some part of it REALLY good. (Sort a junk drawer, etc).

Hope these tips work for you. If you try these, and it works, let me know with a comment here!