Tag: mommy life

How an Adult Sticker Chart Saved My Productive Life

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I swear by this. This was a huge game changer.

If you follow me on any social media platform you may have noticed that once a month I post a sticker chart/calendar on my stories (fully completed nbd). And if you know me in real everyday life then you’ve already heard me blather on about this method and you can politely disregard this blog post.

But I am not kidding when I say, THIS WORKS SO HARD FOR ME. Maybe it would work so hard for you too. Maybe it wouldn’t. Am I still going to write an entire post about it? You BETCHA BOTTOM DOLLAR LIL ORPHAN ANNIE.

THE STICKER CHART

This is what I do. In order to earn a sticker, I have two goals a day. STRICTLY TWO. (Trust me on this. I have been developing this method for two years. And the first year was me over-trying and failing.)
The two goals are these:

  • Scratch one item off my to-do list
  • Spend 25 minutes cleaning an area of my house.

That doesn’t seem like much, but WHEN I TELL YOU!!! Consistency vs. Baddie superhuman hustler burnout. Consistency is going to win every time. Fact.

Here are the specifics about the two goals…

THE TO-DO LIST

I’ve mentioned it before, but monthly challenges work really well for me for some reason. 30 days is the perfect amount of time before I get tired and bored and want a change. So, personally, I make a new to-do list every single month.

It’s a list of 30-31 tasks (one for each day of the month). Now, the trick of the to-do list is having a good variety of tasks. You want to have both challenging hours-long chores AND chores that you could do in a minute or two. Some days you’re going to have more energy / resources for organizing the entire garage and other days you’re going to be sick in bed and only have enough energy to order your kids school pictures from your phone. You’re going to want BOTH. And the beautiful thing about the to-do list is you can pick and choose what you’re up for that particular day. Which does mean that you’ll put off most of your “yuckiest” tasks until the end of the month. But it weirdly works out because you’re so close to getting a brand new to-do list next month.

Obviously, you’re going to have more than 30 tasks you’ll need to do in a month. I get that. This list is more like things you’ve been ‘meaning to get around to’ or things you’re ‘anticipating you need to get done that month’. For example, when I put together my list I have a good mix of organizing/cleaning tasks, holiday tasks, and writing goals.

I use Google Keep Notes on my phone so I have my list with me everyday.

DAILY 25 MINUTES OF CLEANING

I settled on 25 minutes because that’s what they use for the ‘pomodoro technique’ and it’s supposedly the most optimal time for productivity. (I mean, it’s been working for me!)

So this is a little different than the cleaning tasks on the to-do list. This is reserved for general upkeep of your home. Picking up, vacuuming, wiping off counters Etc. Etc. Doing 25 minutes a day doesn’t feel like it makes a difference at first, but once you keep up with it, it really does keep up your house fairly well!
I have a general schedule in my mind when I do my daily 25. (Mondays- kitchen. Tuesdays – bedrooms. Wednesdays – Bathrooms. Thursdays – upstairs. Fridays – downstairs. Weekends – laundry.) But I’m not strict about that schedule. Sometimes your kids make a disaster of the playroom and you need to focus on that room. So I usually just do my 25 focusing on what room needs the most work that day.
One sad note about this: I tried so hard to make dishes work into this routine, but soon discovered that I had to do dishes separate. I made doing dishes part of our bed time routine and just plan on it every day. It’s the only way I can keep up on them.

THE MOST IMPORTANT PART

The real reason this works so well for me is because… all my life… I have just really fudgin’ loved stickers so much. AHAHAHAHAHA

Whenever I explain to someone that I use my wall calendar as an adult sticker chart, they’re like,
“So what do you get at the end of the month if you fill your chart?”
And I’m like, “What do you mean?”
“I mean like what do you reward yourself with?”
“… I reward myself with the stickers.”
“Yeah, I know, but like… do you get a treat at the end? Do you buy yourself something?”
“Yeah! I buy more stickers.”
The cuter the stickers the more determined I am to get work done, because I refuse to have one single blank space on my calendar. So I curate the most darling and interesting stickers I can find.

SO !!!!! If you have skimmed this post and are just now getting to this part PLEASE READ!!!

Whatever you end up doing for motivation, it doesn’t have to be a sticker chart, but it absolutely MUST be something that delights your inner child. Utilize what you LOVED as a child and it will work. If you loved video games, reward yourself with X number of minutes playing your favorite game. If you loved to draw, add to a drawing everyday until it’s completed in a month.

Your ego will resist this. And you’ll have to sit it down and say, “Look Ego, I understand that you think it’s silly for a thirty-four-year-old woman to have a sticker chart. But sometimes this thirty-four-year-old woman needs nine-year-old little girl things to fulfill all the parts of herself.”

You are the parent of your inner child. Be kind. Be patient. Be encouraging.

13 Thoughts I had watching Baby Shark in Space

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1. Pinkfong looks so cute when he jumps at the popcorn haha I love foxes so much

2. Donut planet?? Sign me up

3. I’m sorry you’re telling me that Baby Shark can see a broken fragment of spaceship on a distant planet? That’s not super vision at that point, that’s God vision.

4. Did that Gorilla just slap his own ass? Lol

5. I love how the snakes clothes are just mismatched pairs of socks! Makes total sense tbh

6. A deer sees a lion and it’s love?? Girl that’s dangerous. You can’t fix him! You need to go to therapy for your daddy issues.

7. Gorilla-la-la is a jam tho haha

8. So Baby Shark just swims around through the air. I mean I’ve seen a lot of variations of shark movies over the years. Lake sharks, sand sharks, snow sharks. I’ve never seen air sharks. That’s pretty scary honestly

9. Halloween planet. I like that. This all gives me Kingdom Hearts vibes honestly

10. Is that kid dressed as a refrigerator for Halloween? Lololol

11. Why does the video game world have Santa on it? Like did they have to add Santa?

12. If Pinkfong has never been to Baby Sharks home before how did they even meet??? At an intergalactic cartoon convention?

13. This show is cute. I mean I’m pretty desensitized to any annoyance after viewing it 50,000 times.

One Week Resolution Challenges

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So I decided to try something new this year for “Resolutions”. Instead of coming up with some radical change that I won’t keep up on throughout the year, why don’t I challenge myself to a radical change for one week in the month of January? For some reason it just works for my brain. I think it’s because the ending makes it “a fun challenge”? Like more of a game with less pressure?


So these are the week challenges that I came up with. (Also try to refrain from judging me too much. I just struggle with these specific things even when others don’t.)

Week One – January 1st – 7th: WAKE UP EVERYDAY AT SIX O’CLOCK


So, I’m a bit lucky. My children have been very well trained with this magic dog alarm clock (here is the link, I highly highly recommend this or it’s equivalent.) So they know not to come out of their room before seven o’clock. On the weekends after seven o’clock, they tend to cuddle in our beds and play on their tablets. So sleeping in isn’t totally unheard of at our house.
And I know you’re like wait, excuse me, don’t you have a five month old? Yes, I do. She’s a miraculous child who often sleeps in until nine or nine thirty. She really loves to sleep I don’t know. It’s incredible.
HOWEVER… I know I would be a lot more productive and get to spend better quality time with my children if I woke up earlier.
If I got up at six, I could potentially clean or write before my children even leave their rooms. (At first idea, I was going to challenge myself to wake up at six and ‘go for a run around the neighborhood’. But it’s winter. So it’s really cold and pitch black at six. Maybe I can do another challenge month in the summer… when my excuse for not doing it can be that it’s one hundred degrees outside haha!)
One of my biggest qualms for waking up early… okay, besides the fact that my natural rhythm seems to be that of a teenager… is that I would have to go to bed earlier. And that cuts into my best friend time with Dan. You know what I mean? Like after the kids go to sleep that’s OUR time.

Week Two – January 8th – 14th: NO SUGAR OR CHEESE


Not to sound so American, but I have no idea what I’m even going to eat haha! I’m just going to try my best with the no sugar thing. I know there’s added sugar in almost everything here like even milk. So I think that’s okay for this particular challenge. Like if I have some ketchup or whatever and that has sugar in it. That’s okay as long as I’m aware and trying NOT to eat sugar. I think if I meal plan this week. I’ll be okay. It’s just a week… right?

It’s going to really hard haha! I am legitimately addicted to sugar. So I’m going to plan on having a lot of natural sugars in the house like fruits I can snack on when I get those cravings. And healthy salty alternatives.
Just… pray for me. Hahaha

Week Three – January 15th – 21st: TAKE MY KIDS OUT EVERY SINGLE DAY


A lot of parents don’t seem to have this problem. But keep in mind that I am a hermit basement dweller writer type. I am such a homebody that maybe the home is actually my body and I’m just an organ of it (short story idea?!?!?). But I do see this as something that my kids would benefit a little bit from. Particularly my four-year-old who is not in school yet and gets REALLY BORED during the day. So I do aspire to give him more structure. I don’t know WHY taking little kids out and about gives me so much anxiety but dang it, I’m going to fight this. And I’m going to prove to myself after this week that I can TOTALLY DO IT!*
*Saying this now or forever hold my peace. If I or any of the kids get sick, this challenge will be rescheduled. We’re not spreading germs or forcing our bodies to overdo it.

Week Four – January 22nd – 28th: INCORPORATE A REGULAR READING (OR LISTENING) ROUTINE


This is most likely an ADHD disability. Which has been really painful for me, since stories are my greatest love in life. I either hyper focus and burst read or the most common problem for me is starting and not finishing a book. Of course, the horrific TBR pile, which for me is an entire bookcase. So I really WANT to overcome this problem in my life. It would improve my craft tremendously and I know that I would really enjoy being able to participate more as an audience in the written word.
So I’m planning on trying a routine. Every day for seven days. What that routine will look like, I’m not sure yet because I have teeny little kids at home, but I feel fairly confident that it might include Audio books. I’m hoping that whatever it is, I can prove to myself that it’s doable and incorporate more of it into my daily life.

These are all my challenges. I will check back in February to tell you how they went. And just in general, how week long challenges were vs. indefinite resolutions. Because I wasn’t totally kidding about a second summer challenge month IF this deems itself to be a successful venture.