Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.-- Phyllis Diller
AMEN
Now that I have been feeling better I have been trying to catch up on all of the house cleaning that I had been ignoring but..... we are not naturally clean people. Not to say that we are gross and smelly (although I did find 3 rotting apples under the couch thanks to my boys). We just don't put things away, we come in and drop everything. So I feel like I am cleaning & cleaning & cleaning the same things over & over again. And it is taking up ALL of my time and energy. But now that I am obsessed I am extremely frustrated.
I know some people have a system that works for them.
- Clean on Mondays
- Do one big chore a day
- etc.
But I do not see how these systems can work. If I only clean on Monday it would be a mess the rest of the week. If I only did one chore a day it would always look as if I had done nothing at all.
So I am asking for HELP . Does anyone have some advice or words of wisdom that would make this process easier? Because I want a clean house but I also want some free time. Is that too much to ask?
7 comments:
Hmmm... I totally understand. I feel the same way, and it drives me nuts to be constantly putting the same stuff away. Every. Day.
The only advice I could offer would be to share a chart I have. I have a chart listing all the weekly chores with columns for each week. When I do a chore on the list, I check it off. It is sometimes depressing to see so little checked off, but then I am also able to see which chores I have not done for like weeks and weeks (ie. cleaning the shower). That way I know which ones would be most important.
Anyway, good luck!
I'm so glad you are feeling better! I have had health issues over the years and have benefited by having a schedule. I decided what I wanted to accomplish in a week's time and divided the work up so that each day has about the same amount of work plus some non-scheduled time for unplanned activities. When my children were young, I planned activities with them each day. It is a system that has turned out well for me. There is a website for Real Simple magazine that has suggestions that you might find helpful. Good luck! Take good care of yourself!
I often feel this same way too and I am constatnly trying to find a better program/schedule for me, but as much as i hate not to have a clean house all the time, i have realized I have to do one big thing each day and then kind of surface clean on friday so that I atleast feel like my house is clean for the weekend. I can't get it all done in one day, so I just divide it all up through the week and have the kids help as much as possible. that can often end up being more work, but i think it will help in the long run. Good luck! Glad to hear you are feeling better!
I have chores for each of us that need to get done each week. I try to do all mine on one day... at least I will then have half the house clean for one day- better than it looking like nothing has changed all day from week to week. If Kev doesn't do his, I take over the next week. So, pretty much, upstairs is clean one day, and down stairs is clean one day every other week. At least I know what is getting cleaned and the rest is clutter. I do wish I could train the fam to be better at the clutter, though. I hate only having one "clean" day!
I am not the person to ask. I feel like my kids intentionally follow behind me messing things up again! Let me know if you come up with a good plan. And to be honest I have a hard time imagining your house being anything but clean!
I have a couple of suggestions for clutter control. 1-Each evening I would tell the children that it was time to clean up the living room before daddy came home. We made it a race to clean up all the toys and put them in a laundry basket that was stored in a corner of the room. 2-After dinner and before bed, all the toys and books in their bedrooms were quickly tossed into a laundry basket (for toys) and a large cardboard box (for books). It was important to have the floors cleaned up in case we were up in the night. 3-We had (and have) a woven basket in the kitchen for each person's mail. 4-We have a rack to hold magazines.
In addition to suggestions in Real Simple magazine and the corresponding website, there is a website called flylady.net where I have found some helpful suggestions for managing housework, which is something we're all doing. Good luck to all of us!
hahaha I wish I had some good advice for you, but it seems like we are all in the same boat.... I try the one chore a day along with all of the little stuff. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. A lot of help that was, huh?! Anyway, I hope you guys are doing well! It's been years since we've seen each other!
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