I’d say the “C” is silent, but then it becomes Horewars, and that isn’t quite the connotation I’m looking for.

But this:

has become my new best housekeeper’s friend. Seriously.

I’m on the Reclaiming the Home team, from the blog and ravelry group (in the sidebar), and MAN…it is TOTALLY helping. At the time of this writing, I’ve got 588 points, which puts me in about 8th place overall. And I’m competitive, so if it takes me forever, I’m totally going to get up there in the top three.

Better, my house is happier. I’ve been fighting a nasty flu bug for the past three days, and just getting up out of bed has been challenging. But with the ChoreWars thing looming, I vacuumed almost all of my house (three more rooms to go!), dusted things that sorely needed it, vacuumed my STAIRS and the WALLS of the stairwell (four hairy dogs + 1 hairy husband + lots of static electricity from the old carpets = furry walls. Seriously. It was gross.), did all my dishes and put them away, folded ALL the laundry that was waiting, decluttered a bunch of stuff, put a TON of stuff away, swept almost all the lineoleum in the house (three more rooms!)….it just goes on and on.

I still want to wash all the windows and do more laundry (and put it away!), and there’s still some seeeeeerious decluttering that has to happen in the kitchen before I’m done. But my house is FEELING cleaner already. And that, to me, is priceless.

I’ve been really hesitant to get into those daily cleaning routines (like the ones from RealSimple that I mentioned before), because it’s so dusty and nasty out here in hooterville that I never see progress. I never get to feel what it’s like to have a truly clean house (and probably never will, based on the amount of crap that’s tracked in)…so I’ve been disheartened in the past. Now, though, I get to look at my points and see that HEY…I’ve actually DONE something. Quite a BIT of something, actually! It’s keeping me going. I LOVE THAT.

If you click on that “reclaiming the home” link under “crafty wives”, you’ll get to the page where the link is to sign up. (Not sure if I have permission to hand it out or not.) It’s freakin’ fabulous.

Which leads me to H for Handbooks…

I just got this in the mail today, and just reading through it, I kind of love it a little. Okay, I love it a LOT. It’s british, but finding used copies is pretty easy, and I think Amazon now sells the new ones, too:

It’s called “How to Be The Perfect Housewife: Become a Domestic Goddess and a Queen of Clean: Lessons in the art of modern household management”, by Anthea Turner. Apparently, there’s a british television series called “The Perfect Housewife”, and this is the companion book they put out.

It. is. fabulous. It’s separated into lessons, starting with de-cluttering room by room, storage, and cleaning, heading into laundry and home office stuff, then on to repair of things like clothes and shoes, and finally into things like shopping and homemaking and entertaining and safety — seriously….this could be the only primer you’d ever need, even if you knew NOTHING ahead of time.

Personally, I think every woman should be handed a copy of this when she gets engaged. (Of course, some would take offense, but for the ones who wouldn’t, this is a great gift.)

It has me all raring to get my house into some semblance of Homehood, and that’s a positive thing. Since that’s one of my goals from this Wife Project, I’m going to be keeping it close to my chest, following the lessons from 1 to 20 in order. It makes it feel like yes, it’s actually POSSIBLE to have a home, even with conditions so out of control as ours.

Motivation, of course, is priceless.

I’m off to earn more ChoreWars points!

Well, that kind of sucked.

The very second my husband went out of town, my voice started acting wonky. And since my other job requires my voice, I had a little bit of an inner squee, thinking that I’d have lots of time to work on the house. I mean, after all, you can’t have wife-guilt if you literally can’t do your job-for-pay, right?

Trouble is, the laryngitis came with some friends — fever and congestion — who were very bad houseguests and caused me to lie about, snuffly and whining, all by myself, for most of the duration my husband was gone.

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men, blah blah blah. Sigh.

However (!!), I did get one wall of the studio painted, which will probably eventually become a playroom for the kids if my ovaries would just stop with the nonsense, and I survived. There were days I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to, but the virus-laden bus that appears to have hit me also appears to have moved on to the next lucky recipient of it’s mucous-filled joy. Whew.

So I promised a couple of book reviews, and since I was down for the count when I should have been writing them, I figured I’d do those now, and take some pictures of the New Wall when I get some curtains sewn for the window. (This week. Or bust.)

(put behind a cut, since they got a little longer than intended…)

(more…)

Amy, of Angry Chicken (a *very* cool housewife, by the way), has in her blog today a link to a free PDF that she created with all her favorite recipes on one sheet.

Talk about a brilliant idea.   I think I might make one of these for myself, customized a little for the stuff my husband and I eat.  (Which, by the way, is a little less baked and a little more grease-laden, sadly, than Amy’s.)

Hoping to launch this site today, or at least get writing rather than messing with code.  I’ve some social obligations, though, that might get in the way.