There are perhaps 2 or 3 readers of this blog who have seen what my apartment looks like most days. Becky...bless your heart...you have seen how I live. Katie M. came to visit baby Jon on a day when I had not done any cleaning, to myself or the apartment, and thankfully she stayed my friend. The rest of you have seen what my apartment looks like after a day or two of nonstop cleaning to get it ready for a gathering of some kind.
I feel the need for a change - NOW! It may be because I work from home. It may be because I want my husband to walk into a clean home when he finishes work. It may be because I want to teach good habits to my son. It may be because when I last went out of town for the weekend, I accidentally left a few dirty dishes in the sink, and now I am having to deal with a fruit fly infestation.
I have a subscription to Real Simple. I have years worth of Martha Stewart Living magazines on my bookshelves. I have checked out organizing books from the library. Believe me, it is not really a knowledge thing but a habit thing.
So here is my call for assistance: Please let me know how you manage your daily/weekly chores so they get done on a regular basis. What has worked and what hasn't worked? Especially for those of you with little ones - how do you keep your homes put together with a toddler to keep an eye on? I know there will never be days when everything is in its place, but I feel like I am constantly doing laundry, washing dishes, wiping down surfaces, etc. but my home is always a disaster. I am obviously missing something!
I will keep you updated on how I am doing : )
5 comments:
I'll be interested in the comments as well. This is something I struggle with too. I feel like it is constant cycle for me from super clean, kinda clean, o.k., awful, and then back again to super clean! I have found though that If I try to do a little bit each night and make sure I put things back after I use them (so hard after a long day, and I'm tired), then things look neat for longer. We should have a clean house support group : )
Even without a child, it's still not easy to keep everything in check!! But for what it's worth, this is what I do (child-free)... I assess my apartment after lunch almost every single day. Just a quick look around to see what's going to bother me the most if I don't tackle it. Maybe I need to vacuum or maybe it's been three days since I washed the dishes or maybe it's even just a pile of mail on the table that I haven't dealt with. By doing it after lunch, I still have the whole afternoon ahead of me to get what I need done.
And I agree with Stacey about putting things back and doing a little at a time! Like for me, on the dishes, I often get into cycles where I'm washing them after every meal, because it's so easy that way. There's not much to do so it takes just a few minutes. But when I let things pile up (which does happen) all the sudden it seems overwhelming and a huge chunk of time is needed to get it done.
I'm not sure if this was helpful or just rambling, but the common theme so far seems to be taking things in small pieces! :) This is the story of my life...
Stacey's comment is key - putting things away daily. When that doesn't happen around here, everything goes downhill. Fast. When we keep up with it, it makes the other cleaning tasks 100 times easier. I got lots of baskets for toys and such to make it easier. I also had a basket that I kept in the main living areas to throw things in that would need to get to somewhere else in the house - I'd do it all in the evening.
When I stayed at home, I broke chores down into a daily routine. I tried breaking things out both by room and by chore (so that I didn't have to get everything out every day), and found by room to be the easiest. I'd clean one room a day (floors, dust, windows, and change linens if a bedroom) - everything stayed pretty clean that way. I also found it easier to do bathrooms if I kept a canister of clorox/lysol wipes nearby - I could just grab one to wipe things down every couple of days, so getting out the toilet brush was the only thing I really had to schedule weekly. I always try to do at least one load of laundry every other day so that it doesn't pile up.
Now that I've gone back to work, I had to throw in the towel and hire a cleaning service again. Just can't manage it with all of the work I end up doing after kidlet goes to bed.
The most important step is not to buy anything new until you've put up with the pain of at least a solid week or month of keeping things clean and organized.
Use the rags and water and cleaners you already have to clean and dust. Get things organized where they need to go, even if that means stacks on the floor right now.
It is very easy to do the shopping first and say, "Ah, I have dust, so I must have these dusters! I have a variety of surfaces, so I must have a variety of surface cleaners! I have books, so I need bookshelves, toys so I need toyboxes, laundry, so I need hampers..."
Yes. You have these things, and you need those things to organize them, but take a moment to try it without them, so your planning and organizing is based on known real needs which you can fulfill. Every time I try to base my cleaning and organizing on this abstract plan and the tools I've purchased to make it easier, I find it just doesn't fit, and I get discouraged, and then I give up, and the whole thing goes downhill.
Much more sane to see the one spot where all the laundry gathers on the floor and replace it with a single bin big enough to hold it and small enough for laundry day than to try to organize my socks and shirts into the six-compartment hamper as I take them off at the end of the day.
If that makes sense.
Which is, I agree with everyone else. Habitual tidiness is a way of being just a little bit more intentional with the way you naturally live... not a new master plan to which you must conform your living.
Here's what works for me. I do the majority of my cleaning while Banks is napping. I like to get my stuff done during the day because I am worthless at night and even if I "tell" myself that I'm going to clean at night, I don't do it.
I do my chores on an every-other week schedule. I like to get the house super clean over two or three nap periods and then maintain for the next week and a half. Does that make sense? I also agree with Stacey and Katie that "de-cluttering" everyday is a must.
Another thing I found helpful is to get up before Banks and get showered. That way, if during the day, he got tied up in Sesame Street or playing on his own I could get a thing or two done around the house without feeling like I needed to use that time to get myself tidy!
Good luck!
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