home decor — project blog — 10,000 Hours Photography

It's still astonishing to me how dusty and dirty a room can get through the course of daily living. And cleaning is just such a tiresome chore that is procrastinated (inevitably) until the next weekend... and the next... until "all of a sudden," everything is dirty! Not to mention, most people who work a full time job just don't have the time or energy to spend a day cleaning everything only to have dust settle back in quite comfortably within the week. Since I'll be starting business school part time in addition to working full time come fall, a few weeks ago, I set out on a mission to find a system that limits the time spent cleaning and breaks it into manageable 20 minute tasks. After all, I don't want to spend what precious little free time I've got cleaning!!

I call it, The Unsavory Chore Board:

The whole idea is to break chores up into 20 minute (or less) tasks and to rotate through the board by completing just 1 task per day. With 10 chores on my board, I rotate through them all in just under 2 weeks. Underneath the chore board is my Post-It To Do list, which I love because I can just grab the Post-It and go if there's a grocery list or the like on it. I also thought about how you could go down the Y (vertical) axis with names if you have more than 1 person in your household that need to share chores.

So far, with 3 weeks into the chore board, it seems to be working! My apartment is certainly cleaner than ever and each chore is actually easier now that I clean everything more frequently, so dust doesn't have a lot of time to build up.

Instructions are below, unfortunately no pictures of the process, I got distracted by the TV while laminating the cards. The best part is that it's highly customizable and you don't have to go all crazy crafter and print/laminate.

The Unsavory Chore Board:

Materials:

13" x 18" magnetic board - can vary depending on the wall you plan to mount it on
magnetic clips or magnets to glue to the back of each chore - 1 magnet per chore
chores printed or written on each card
Optional: colored card stock or construction paper, laminating machine & laminating pouches, glue stick, hot glue gun & cartridges, Post-Its for the to do list, white erase markers for the board

Instructions:

Print or write chores onto separate pieces of paper. This can be done directly onto the cardstock or like I did above by printing on white paper, laminating the entire sheet, cutting it into the chore squares, and then gluing to the colored cardstock to make it more cheerful. With my lamination machine, the cardstock was too thick and would separate the lamination, which is why I just laminated the white paper
Attach to the magnetic clips. In my case, I have clips so I just clipped it together. You could also purchase magnets from the office supply store and glue these to the back of the chore cards.
Mount it somewhere visible! I have mine right next to the door. You could also get a larger board and make the To Do list part of the board itself, but I like having that part just on the wall.

On a photographic note - I upgraded to the D3300 body and didn't understand why the max shutter speed I could get with flash through this series was 1/200. After experimenting and playing around with different settings for a solid half hour, I turned to the Internet and discovered that that is the max shutter speed with the built-in flash because any faster and the shutter would actually click closed before the flashbulb, basically resulting in the same effect as no flash. Looks like I might need to get an external flash! The "if you give a mouse a cookie, he's gonna want a..." problem strikes again!

Active Shooting: 0.5 hour

Review / Book Learning: 0.5 hour

Hours to Date: 166

Despite my love of sleeping in and lazy days, I get antsy when I have too much free time with no mental stimulation. Thus, I have a tendency to pack my days with lots of interesting projects and adventures. Since I wear many hats (full-time professional, part-time photographer) and am now adding part-time student to the mix, I have had "optimizing desk setup" on my to do list for some time.

Chief among my concerns was establishing a solid calendaring and planning system, since I will be juggling multiple priorities come October. While I rely primarily on Google calendars synced across all of my devices, I find it hard to "zoom out" and plan beyond a month at a glance, which results in missing key checkpoints along the way for lower priority projects. I've found that an effective way for me to manage more than 1-2 projects on my plate effectively and simultaneously is to plan out checkpoints so there isn't an automatic prioritization... because if there are 10 things on the to do list and the priority level never changes, some things will inevitably fall off the plate and never get done.

Thus, I knew I wanted a wall calendar of sorts, but I didn't like the options readily available for purchase. The printed year-specific laminated calendars have to be replaced every year and the generic templates require effort in writing in each month and day. I also wanted this surface to be magnetic to post other important documents of miscellaneous origin using magnets I collect from trips and have enough space for the occasional post-it note. Basically, the solution was to make a custom wall calendar board to meet all of my needs and wants.

This wasn't the most inexpensive of home projects, and there were some hiccups along the way, but I love how it turned out.

April - December... since I purchased my laminator in April and didn't feel the need to work backwards in time.

The calendar consists of:

2 large (24" x 36" visible surface) poster frames
Magnetic primer
Printed & laminated Google calendar pages
20 neodymium magnets

I wanted laminated sheets since I could write on them and erase the marker if my plans changed. It was also right around this time that I developed a hilarious fascination for home applications of lamination after I had to get a few things laminated for work... so I purchased an Amazon Basics lamination machine for $18 and some pouches.

I originally intended to purchase galvanized sheet metal, but that didn't pan out once I went to the hardware store and realized it wouldn't come in sizes I wanted and the edges were sharp and needed to be finished. On that trip, I discovered magnetic primer, which I incorrectly thought would be the easy solution to my project desires. It was quite expensive ($20 for a small can) and not very effective since all reviews said to use ~6 coats for a mildly magnetic surface - it took the whole can to coat these two frame backings with 6 coats. Additionally, while my fridge magnets managed to hold their own weight, they gave up when even just 1 sheet of paper was involved.

Once I determined the magnetic primer wasn't enough, I stepped up the game and ordered stronger magnets of the neodymium variety.

Let me just post the disclaimer right now that these rare earth magnets are dangerous and shouldn't be in a household with children, small pets, anyone with metal medical devices or implants, or near sensitive electronic equipment or devices. Getting two of these magnets too close to each other can result in them snapping together with such force that they shatter into tiny pieces.

That being said, these are amazing and scary strong magnets made from neodymium (a rare earth element), iron, and boron. As I mentioned above, these magnets are serious business: each tiny, dime-sized magnet shown below pulls with ~6 pounds of force and can cause serious bodily injury including broken bones. They can also wipe data from credit cards and damage sensitive electronic equipment. Despite the careful handling necessary quality, they can be very useful tools in the right application. Sadly, even with neodymium magnets, the magnetic primer just didn't have enough iron to hold up a magnet with a laminated sheet.

At this point, both my boyfriend and I were looking at the frames when he came to the realization of the perfect solution: to use a pair of magnets, one on each side of the frame, to hold up laminated sheets on the front surface. This kind of solution is the perfect simple genius I love, so elegant in its simplicity and effectiveness.