everyone still wants a gold star.

New this week!

-One Chore Chart, complete with written instructions for the possibility of getting gold stars.
I was tired of how low on my priority list my house was. (And let's be fair, school's always going to come first- unless I have a project due tomorrow and holy crap, when was the last time I scrubbed down the windows?)  Capitalizing on my unending desire for more gold stars and the innate competition drive that sits within my very bones, I sat down with excel for a couple hours and wrote down the bare bones basics of appropriate house cleaning schedules. Including only 40 items, every basic cleaning routine and how often it should be done is covering my entire freezer front. I get a gold star every time everything on the list is taken care of once during a week, another gold star for every time everything daily in a room gets done every day for a week, and ANOTHER gold star for everytime a weekly task gets done more than once a week.

I plan to keep this up for 6 weeks, a scientifically acceptable amount of time for a habit to form.  Hopefully it'll stick throughout the school year.
And I already have the stickers, thanks to a good friend in Washington!

-One meal planner +grocery list.
Apparently excel is getting on my good side. In an attempt to cut the grocery budget, I've planned out meals for the next week and a half. I'm rather pleased with myself. I think this is a great step in the right direction, and it'll make things so much easier on the lunch planning front.  This is how mom always did it, and I'm not sure why I stopped, other than in the early years of college, writing ramen interspersed with hamburger helper down for dinner every night is really depressing.
The current plan of food includes such culinary wonders as thai spring rolls with peanut sauce (but wrapped in cabbage, we couldn't afford the rice wrappers), taco salad with guacamole, pork fried rice, and tuna salad on rice crackers.

-And lastly- ads on the blog. You probably noticed. For a corporate sponsorship, I would de-ad my blog again (any takers?) but until then, I'm giving in to the propaganda to line my wallet in a nearly labor free way. Granted, it's not paying so well yet either. I'll give it a month. If no money has been made in a month, I'll take the ads back off.