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You are here: Home / Archives for Home and Lifestyle / Family

Make life easier – schedule household chores fairly with Chore Buster

May 4, 2007 by Tricia

Tired of being the person who does the majority of household chores? Wish the kids would either actually do their chores or stop fighting over them? Why not try this great new free site Chore Buster. This site was created in order to help you generate chore schedules that will be doled out fairly to all the members of your household.

How cool is that?

Whether you live alone and just want to make sure that you remember to clean your stove once a month, turn your mattress or wash the floors twice a week; or live in a household with kids of different ages who should be able to do some chores I’m sure you’ll find that Chore Buster is just what you’ve always wanted, even if you didn’t know that you did.

Using Chore Buster you can easily create a free account, add the members of your family who are able to do chores and assign tasks that should be done, daily, weekly or monthly. Chore Buster then automatically schedules the tasks according to the persons ability or availability and rotates them through the list of household members so that they are distributed fairly. So if your daughter washes the dishes tomorrow evening, your son might get the chore the next night and so on.

I think this is great. I didn’t create a chore list for my husband and I because we are actually pretty good about household chores. We both do just about everything. I think the only chores we defer to the other are 1. garbage – he’s usually the one to take it out, but I’ll often gather it up, and 2. He doesn’t like cleaning the bathrooms and doesn’t do the best job when he does do it so I end up doing it, but otherwise we’re pretty fair in this house. I may however still sign up and assign chores – at least it would help me remember to do the chores that only get done once in a while.

I did however go through the hand Chore Buster Demo to see what it was all about so that I could tell you all about it. First of course you should register for an account. Once you’re ready to get started begin by adding the members of your household who can do chores. Once you are done adding your family members you can edit each persons listing and assign a task level of normal, or only 75%, 50%, or 25% of the regular household chores. Like this:

editpeople.jpg

Once you’ve finished adding and editing the members of your home you can move on to list all the chores that regularly need to be done around the home. Chore Buster has a handy already created list of chores that would need to be done in most homes that you can import into your account to save on your typing. Once you have listed all of the chores you can set about editing each one:

editchores.jpg

As you can see you can choose to not assign certain chores to particular people, decide how often it should be assigned, and give it a skill level.

Once you are done adding all the members of the household, editing each person, adding chores and editing them as well, make sure that you have checked that at least one member of the household is sent the list of chores weekly or even daily.

I can see this taking a while to set up properly, especially if there are several people in a home with varying skill levels, but think about it – how much time do you spend assigning chores now, or being frustrated when the kids start fighting over chores. Once you’ve spent the time to set this up you can pretty much forget about it. You’ll get a regular email with a new list of chore assignments and the tasks will be rotated through the members of the household so everything will be distributed fairly. No more fighting! No more wasted time assigning tasks!

What do you think? Are you going to give it a try?





Filed Under: Family, Home and Lifestyle, Services Tagged With: assign chores, Chore Buster, chores, Family, fighting over chores, home, household, household members, regularly schedule chores, schedule chores

Teen boot camps help troubled teens

May 2, 2007 by Tricia

When I was still a young teenager myself my oldest brother, 19 years my senior, got married and had a son with his then wife. My brother worked a lot of long hours during the day and evening and his wife ended up at first what we believed was post-partum depression, but then it turned out that she was schizophrenic. She just couldn’t handle carry for my baby nephew and he was in fact being neglected when my brother was not home to care for both the baby and his wife.

My mother and I stepped and took care of the baby, and for most of his first year of life he lived with us. I was just 12 at the time and it felt like I was already a mother, especially considering that my own mother was getting close to 60 at the time and tired more easily than when she had her own children to care for. Believe me, after that I knew I didn’t want to get pregnant as a teen!

My brother and his wife eventually broke up, and since custody was normally given to the mother back in those days my little nephew ended up living with his maternal grandparents because his mother was just too ill to care for him properly.

Just to keep a long story short, lets just say that as a teen my nephew didn’t do very well. I don’t know if it was his messed up upbringing or the fact that much of his maternal family had a history of mental illness, but when my nephew eventually returned to live with his father he was a hellion.

He tried to set fire to the house with my brother in it, and made what we are sure a few other attempts on his life, stole things and did all kinds of cruel things. He eventually took off at 16 and lived on his own in a number of different cities throughout North America.

I’m happy to say that he got his life back in order and he’s married and a father himself. I honestly never thought that he’d straighten out.

If there ever was a candidate for Boot Camp my nephew surely was one. I only wish that we’d thought of putting him into a boot camp when he was still a teen because he might have straightened his life out that much earlier.

Boot-Camp-Boot-Camps.com is a great site for anyone looking for information on the various types of boot camps available. They have listings for Military style boot camps and Teen Boot Camp – Help For Troubled Teens. It seems that they have listings for most of the United States and Eastern Canada.

Originally boot camps were started as an alternative to jail for troubled teens, but now there are several types of boot camps available. There are State/Province run camps, as well as private camps.

These camps challenge teens mentally and physically and give them some order in their lives. I know that some of the kids that have gone through these programs really straighten out. They go back to school and get their life in order.

If you, or someone you know has a troubled teen, you might want to visit Boot-Camp-Boot-Camps.com and see what types of camps are available for the child, as well as read through the many articles and resources on the site.

Filed Under: Family, Health Fitness and Beauty, Home and Lifestyle, Services Tagged With: articles, baby, boot camp, boot camp listings, boot camp resources, information, military boot camp, Nephew, North America, private boot camp, state run boot camp, teen boot camp, troubled teen

My niece has a wicked sense of humor

April 6, 2007 by Tricia

Earlier today I received a nice email from my niece wishing us a happy Easter. She’s the first and only of any of my niece’s or nephews to have gotten married so far.

I was just thinking that it’s become clear that she’s inherited my side of the families sense of humor, especially her fathers. With her Easter greeting she sent a photo that I’d like to post, but I’m afraid it might offend as many people as would find it funny. My niece is an animal lover herself, but she sent a photo of a dog that looks quite a bit like her own with a rabbit in it’s mouth – well you can really only see the rabbit ears. Sick humor huh?

I guess her sense of humor became apparent when, at the end of her wedding ceremony last year she and her new husband walked down the aisle to the the Star Wars theme. LOL They both love all the star wars movies, but even so, I’ve never thought of the theme as wedding music!

She’s also the one who sent me photo’s of her cats dressed up in Halloween costumes. In her note she decided that her male cat, Hunter, must be gay because he seemed to like the princess costume better than the more masculine Dracula costume that she’d purchased for him.

hunter_as_a_princes

I wonder what she’ll come up with next?

Filed Under: Family, Home and Lifestyle, Humor Tagged With: cat costume, happy Easter, Humor, neice, sense of humor, Star Wars theme, Wedding, wicked sense of humor

Act of revenge?

March 21, 2007 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday

00031529

Don’t you just love this photo?

My sister had two German Sheppard – German Sheppard/ Doberman mix dogs when I used to live with her. A long long time ago …

I remember one day when my sisters husband was going to drive us to work, and then go off duck hunting – he decided not to take the dogs with him. He didn’t hunt often, but when he did, he usually did bring the dogs.

He had decided not to bring them along that day because one of the dogs liked to make a game of things. Every time my brother in law would take a shot, the dog would jump out of the bushes and try to catch the expelled cartridge. Naturally the ducks or geese would see the dog jump out (and I suppose hear the shot too) and scatter. Needless to say my brother in law wasn’t a very successful hunter when he’d bring the dogs.

The dogs knew that my brother in law was going out hunting. They’d watched him pack up his gear. When we left, we put the dogs in the basement for the day.

I think I got home first that evening. I went downstairs to rescue the dogs as soon as I got home so that they could go outside for a while.

Much to my surprise the basement was a mess – somewhat like you see above, but with lots of clothes scattered about too.

The two dogs had taken revenge on my brother in law. They had ripped up some of his clean laundry that had been either folded or hung in the basement to drip dry, and they’d attacked some of his books and other belongings. My sister and I both had clothing and other items that we owned in the basement, but the dogs hadn’t touched anything of ours. Only my brother in laws things were damaged.

Smart dogs huh? They knew who they were mad at and exactly how to get back at him too!

Filed Under: Entertainment, Family, Humor, Pets and animals, Recreation, Wordless Wednesday Tagged With: brother in law, cartridge, Doberman, dog, dogs, duck, Geese, german sheppard, hunt, hunting, revenge, shell, shredded, shredded clothes, shredded papers

The Dinner

March 17, 2007 by Tricia

PSHunt
Grab the Scavenger Hunt code.
Photo Theme.
Join the blogroll.
Visit participants.

This weeks Theme is Drink

DSC01609

Two weeks ago my brother came to Toronto for a convention. For once, he was going to be in town for more than a day or two. He was actually here for five full days! His wife decided to come along for the trip too. She works for my brothers company, but I guess being the bosses wife must have some benefits. She was relaxing while my brother worked the convention.

On the Saturday night almost all of my siblings and a good portion of their kids got together for a nice dinner in a downtown Toronto restaurant. There were eleven us at the table.

The photo above is of me and my family holding our drinks high and giving a cheer. I didn’t take the photo, one of my nephews did. I’m sitting near the end of the left side of the table. You see way at the end of the table? Two sets of hands holding wine glasses up? The first hand is mine, and the second is my sister-in-laws.

I know, you don’t see much of me on this site, but I do give you little bits and pieces here and there don’t I?

Did you notice the glass of Guinness in my nieces boyfriends hand? Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

This last photo is one of my brother, from Vancouver, in the forefront, and my husband behind him.

Say Cheese!

DSC01616

Filed Under: Entertainment, Family, Home and Lifestyle, Photo Hunters, Photography, Recreation, Socializing Tagged With: brother, Canada, dinner, Downtown, Family, husband, Nephew, Niece, restaurant, Saturday, Scavenger hunt, sister, Toronto, visit

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