Something that has always been a point of contention between Eric and I are household chores. Dishes, vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom etc.

Since moving into our townhouse we’ve gone from having 600 square feet of space to 1,300 and it’s been a bit of a challenge to keep all three floors of the house clean at the same time. I would get stressed because it felt like a monstrous task and put it off until the place was too filthy to deal with – causing me to be even more stressed because I need a clean space – and then inevitably I would have a little bit of a breakdown.

Sounds silly, but it’s always been a bit of an issue and we were yet to figure out a system that worked for us. Chore chart – nope. Never asking the other person to do something and just hoping they would do it on their own – nope.

About a month ago after yet another argument about the dishes, we had a really long, grown-up chat (seriously – I kept saying “this is so grown-up of us!” when we were talking about it) and decided to try a new system. The plan is that every single Monday, Wednesday and Friday when I get home from work (Eric works 7-3 and I work 9-5ish) the first thing we do is spend 30 minutes cleaning; together.

We set the timer on the oven, put on some tunes and go at it. One of us will usually tackle the dishes and general tidying of the main floor (where we spend the majority of our time) and the other one will do a deep cleaning of another room in the house.

Of course, 30 minutes of cleaning three times per week is not quite enough to keep the house completely spotless, but it works to keep it tidied and it feels less chaotic and stressful these days. If I have time on the weekends I will usually do a more thorough deep cleaning of one or two rooms.

We haven’t bickered about household chores since we started our new system. I’ll take that as a huge win and a sign that it’s working! Too bad it took over six years to figure one out

I’ve sprinkled photos of the main floor of our house (living room, dining room, kitchen) throughout this blog post because I realized that I have not shown you guys furnished pictures of the house since we moved in almost four months ago! We still have a few bare walls that I am on the lookout for the perfect artwork for but other than that we’re really settled and it feels like home. I will share more photos of the other two floors soon

How do you share chores with your significant other or roommate? Is it a point of contention between your or has it ever been? If you currently live alone, have you ever shared chores with a S.O. or roommate in the past? If so, how did you handle it?

My “little” brother graduated high school today! I swear I JUST walked down this very same aisle with my BFF (who is now my maid of honour) Michele yesterday. I can’t believe it’s been five years!

Congrats Logan!

My “little” brother is off to Africa next week to spend a month building an orphanage and in the fall he is moving down to Kamloops for university (he’s living in the dorms, not with us) so we will get to see a lot more of him. I have to admit I’m pretty proud of him!

And, just for fun, here are a couple flashback photos to my graduation day exactly five years ago! I know I have way more photos than this but apparently they are not on my computer. Must find them!

While my high school experience wasn’t amazing it wasn’t horrible either. I had a good, solid group of friends and I remember having a lot of fun (maybe too much!) in Grade 12.

Eric and I also started dating halfway through my Grade 11 year and dated on-and-off throughout Grade 12 (getting back together for good around my grad if I remember correctly) so for that reason alone high school will always hold a special place in my heart!

Did you love or hate high school (or maybe you have no preference)? How many years has it been since you graduated from high school (you know, if you feel like sharing )?

Hi Friends! Happy Saturday.

I couldn’t wait to show you a sneak peek of the amazing engagement photos my friend Rebekah took of us last week. She did such a good job and we had so much fun taking them. I am so, so glad I asked her to do this!

Ahhhh! I can’t wait to see the rest. She did such an amazing job!

I am also popping in to to say that I may be a little absent around the blogging world (commenting and posting) for the next two weeks. I think I was in denial about how busy my schedule was going to be until I started mapping things out in my planner yesterday. Between the 25K trail race tomorrow, making a 2,000-km roundtrip (yes, we’re driving!) to FSJ this week for my little brothers high school graduation and then going on a work-related trip for 5-days the week following I will only sleep in my bed three times between today and July 9 and will travel a total of 3,400 km (by car and plane).

Hold me.

I’m a homebody at heart and would be lying if I said I was looking forward to these two weeks of craziness – most of it is fun stuff (trail race, trip home), just wish it wasn’t all happening at once.

Anyways, I’m off to Kelowna for that race! Back soon with a recap.

How do you remain calm/grounded when life gets a little CA-RA-ZY?!