I must admit, I've never been real interested in cleaning. I've always been more interested in living life than preparing for it. And, since we hardly ever have visitors to our home, it had become a clutter zone. That's all gone, except for the storage room where those taunting old journals are sitting.
Now that the house is sparkling, clutter-free and actually decorated I'm left to drum my fingers on the desk. This means I'll have to write all day when the girls are napping. No more marathons to pick up, pack up, remove junk. No more sprints to get the floors clean.
It's all about maintenance now. If I do a little each day, it might stay like this.
Still, it's a lot of work keeping a clean house. It makes me wonder about the women who obsess over having the cleanest house around. How much living do they really get done?
Now that I want to keep it clean, in case someone wants to see our house, I am sort of obsessed. I love that it's clean, but I don't want to keep my girls from doing their usual terrorizing of All Things. They enjoy making use of every nook and cranny of the house.
Any tips for keeping your house picked up and clean without taking too much time out of the day? Perhaps, I will enlist a little help starting today from FlyLady.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
When everything is clean
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7 comments:
I'm not a big FlyLady fan. I just don't like her tone, although I may (I don't know) even use some of her methods. I find that it helps me to have a checklist of all the things I need to do in a day (load dishwasher, unload dishwasher, load washer, move clothes to dryer, run dryer, fold clothes, put clothes away, take out trash, clean living room floor...) It helps to post it somewhere public so hubby can pitch in should he ever desire...
The key is maintenance, once you've done the heavy cleaning. I have yet to figure out how to maintain, so I'm not full of useful tips, but I do try to do a once around and bring everything that's on the main floor (that shouldn't be there) to the staircase, so that the next time that I go upstairs, I've got a handful of stuff to put away. It helps a little.
I found a great list for helping with maintenance. I still have issues cause I am trying to declutter myself but I will email it to you.
I'm a pretty big clean freak...but SO much less so now with the crazies in the picture. I try to clean big one day each week and then do maintenance cleaning the rest of the week. I do tiled floors, dusting, bathrooms, and vacuuming only once each week....then each night I pickup baby toys and do the dishes. I do my main cleaning when the babies are napping...and I must say sometimes it is even every two weeks for the tiled floors (eww). Sometimes it drives me crazy that my house isn't sparkling clean everyday....but spending time with the crazies is more important.
I have to admit and own it - I LOVE cleaning. It is an odd and unattractive quality, I know. But even with this oddity, I still live in utter chaos many days and I enjoy making messes almost as much my 3 1/2 year old. I've come to settle for a nightly pick up and weekly real clean.
As for maintenance, I've become rather curious of late with this idea of all that we do having its own ending or closure, a pause of sorts, that we finish what we start and part of that is, when we make a mess, we pick it up before moving on to the next one. I am realizing that outside of my son's chaotic, exploratory, having fun messes that are EVERYWHERE, much of the mess I make on my own comes down to not wanting to end/leave/let go. Interesting.
None of this particularly useful as far as tips go.
Good luck.
Shawn,
Off topic, but where in Maryland do you live?
I get there at least once a year and would love to meet up next time in town.
Bella
It might help to not think of cleaning as being "outside" or separate from living. Not viewing it in opposition to something else. Without the resistance then maybe you can just clean as you go. At least put the shoes back in the closet!
I am over-the-top myself, or so my husband tells me. It's true, I have a hard time relaxing in my own home because I see what needs to be done and I do it. I think of myself as being in the hotel business.
What he doesn't know is how much I will relax this weekend when he takes my daughter to my in-laws. To be alone in my own home: that's how to keep it clean!
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