delivering grace: Motivated Moms

Monday, 3 March 2014

Motivated Moms

Keeping the house clean and tidy is a constant challenge and one at which success often seems out of my reach. So you can guess that I jumped at the chance to review a Motivated Moms product. Motivated Moms is a company that provides chore planning materials both as e-books and as an app. I reviewed one of the Motivated Moms Ebooks.

There are a variety of e-books available:

black and white/colour
page a day/half page a day
chore planner in two sizes with a week per page
with/without a daily Bible reading planner

I chose a black and white half-sized chore planner with daily Bible readings. As I wanted this planner to be available in the kitchen, I printed it and filed it in an A4 folder. The planner prints on 29 pages with two weeks per page. The pages can be cut in half but I chose not to do this. The weeks on the same page are adjacent weeks. The last two pages are set up to be used as a two week menu plan.

Each week is dated with items on the left which need to be done daily and other items, for individual days, on the right. The Bible Readings are at the end of the left hand column and follow the Bible through book to book. Each item has a tick box beside it.

The items on the right hand side do not all come up weekly. Some appear monthly, some fortnightly, some weekly and some on alternate days.

Does it work?
Obviously, the system can help but doesn't do the work. I trialed this at a challenging time: Grandma, who lives with us, was admitted to hospital and then discharged home with carers calling several times a day as well as multiple visits from other health care professionals.

No, I didn't manage to do everything on the lists but yes, it definitely helped. Some items, such as sweeping my hallway have become part of my daily routine. Other items were broken into small chunks such as cleaning the refrigerator where only one shelf is cleaned per day. In my house, this vastly increased their chances of happening. The dishwasher door was cleaned because it was on the list and could be done quickly rather than waiting until I had a major kitchen blitz.

Now, please don't think my house is perfect. Anyone who has seen it will know quite how far from the truth that is but it is cleaner rather than dirtier. In view of the past month or so, that is quite an achievement and is thank you to Motivated Moms.

There were items that didn't apply. I thankfully put a line through taking medication and more puzzled, put a line through buying furnace filters. There were also a few items that I added: my stairs need vacuuming but this didn't seem to appear. Similarly, cleaning the bread bin was mysteriously absent. Motivated Moms comes from the US. Are bread bins a peculiarly English necessity?

What I liked about Motivated Moms

My house is cleaner. A big plus!
It is simple and saves me planning. Another major plus for busy days.
It makes housework feel less overwhelming. Small chunks are good.
Items recur so if I don't clean the microwave it will reappear again soon and hopefully, get cleaned.
Having small amounts for each day.
The weeks start with Sunday not Monday.

What I didn't like about Motivated Moms

There is only one thing that I didn't like but that is a fairly large negative for me. This is that Sunday has a fair number of chores. We like to keep Sunday as the Lord's Day and do as little work as possible on that day. As a result, I don't have a list for Sundays and certainly don't want to be clipping coupons on the Lord's Day or even menu planning.

I tried to do the Sunday chores on Saturdays which is the quietest day on this planner. I wonder whether the Sunday chores could be moved to Saturdays or Mondays for those who want to keep the Lord's Day special?

Overall, I have found Motivated Moms really helpful and plan to continue using the planner. My hope is that my house will continue to get cleaner: there is still a long way to go!

The Motivated Mom 2014 e-books are available at $8 (about £4.77).