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Saturday, December 11, 2010

Keeping it Real










Guess what I am working on today? I realize that I have been missing in action lately. But when your house looks like this...one just can't justify sitting down to blog. Oh wait, that's what I'm doing right now. Hmm...well, scratch that.

My house had gotten out of control. I've been working like a mad woman in the mornings (we do school in the afternoons) to try and clean it up. This is the last room to finish up. And, as you can tell, I have my work cut out for me. Do you other moms ever have the urge to just sweep it all up and throw it away??

I realized yesterday that I have got to get some kind of system established for cleaning. Should I do school 4 days a week and devote one whole day to cleaning? Do I assign one day a week to each room?

Something has to change. When the house is a complete mess I am SO unmotivated to get out of bed in the morning, knowing what is waiting for me!

What kind of system do you use for cleaning and laundry?

Off to wade through toys,
~A

9 comments:

Heather said...

Hi, I found your blog a while back and enjoy it! We also have 4 kids and are homeschooling. I'm still trying to figure out the school/house balance. We currently do school in the mornings and sometimes it spills into the afternoons. I'm trying a new "routine" of cleaning a different area/room of the house each day. We'll see how that goes! Good luck!

Steve, Amanda, Kyle , Owen, and Madilyn said...

I would say for us, cleaning as we go. Once we are done with one activity we clean it up before we move on to the next. The boys love to help sort and organize things too. As for the laundry, we start the wash around dinner and put it in before the boys are in bed. Then I fold after they are asleep or early in the morning. Good luck, I know how hard it can be getting into a good solid routine, but you can do it!

Crystal said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog! I do my cleaning spread out. I just don't have one whole day to devote to cleaning! I clean in the morning right after breakfast.

Mondays- grocery shopping/weekend pick up
Tuesdays- library/clutter area
Wednesday- bathrooms/dust
Thursday- floors/change sheets
Friday- anything I've missed!

I try to be finished with the major cleaning stuff by Thursday afternoon. Oh and 'clutter area' is something like the computer desk, top of fridge, ect. I take one area and devote a solid 15 minutes to it to straighten it up.

As far as laundry, I do a load a day and am never caught up! I do dishes daily too! :)

Nikki said...

I just want to say you are NOT ALONE! Some days my house looks much worse and we are in such a cramped space anyway with not much room for storage. I think we are going to try to take Mondays off to clean and then school the rest of the week. I think if we can "get it over with" on Mondays the rest of the week will go much more smoothly!

TheBorman5 Plus1 said...

For me(us) I clean as I go. I also clean by the room. I will knock out everything in the kitchen one day. I do all the bathrooms a certain day. Unfortunatley it is the day I realize they need it. Mondays are normally my "assesment days". We really try to just be a family together on the weekends except for "clean up times".
I do laundry every other day during the week. One thing that has made my life easier is separating clothes before I wash them . Not by colors or fabrics though(I wash everything on warm and dry on low heat). I separate into rooms. The older boys share a basket and room. Annabelle and the baby share a room, so they share a basket. I do have a basket that is just for socks and undies, and any "accident" clothes. I heard some where something about the nasty germs from socks and undies so I refuse to wash them with clothes or towels ever again. I also have a basket for towels and unsoiled linens. So once laundry is washed and folded by the load it is easier and much faster to put away. Finding our fix to laundry has made everything else seem easier to keep up with!!
Plus the children have "chores". Annabelle has the dishwasher. Mathew the bathroom's trash. Jacob helps vacuum and set the table. We also do a "clean up time" every morning before lunch and one either before dinner or bed depending on sports nights. "Clean up time" is where the children have to clean their rooms and the office bookshelf(if they have had their reading time). Every toy must be put in its place. I have noticed the last year or so there haven't been as many toys pulled out and left out, now that they the have to do "clean up time".
All of these little thing have really helped our home stay tidy! Good luck in finding what works best for your family!

Edi said...

I have like the flylady system, www.flylady.com, I believe. You divide the chores/household duties up in to zones (each zone is a list of chores maybe three or four per zone) Then you do one zone a day or every couple days. And if you have company coming, or something to really clean up for, all you really have to do is straighten everything up and not deep clean anything. I also have a sticker chart for the kids and their rooms, if they go to bed with a clean room they get a sticker and when they have 10 stickers they get a treat, such as riding the penny horse at the grocery store or getting a cheap toy out of a quarter toy dispenser. I've used this system or a hybrid of it for a couple years now, and since I've starting teaching I've been able to continue it by making some adjustments. Hope you can find a system that works well for you. Let us know what you come up with!

Erica said...

Oh Amanda, I finally finished unpacking our house and hear you about the mess. Our apartment is tiny, so any little mess looks like a BIG mess. I generally do a good cleaning Saturday mornings while Marvin can entertain little folks, but of course there is the daily stuff that has to happen. I have a little motivator when we are in language study because our house has to be picked up every morning because my teacher and our nanny come to our house. This means everything has to be put away every evening, and generally I quickly clean the sink and toilet after I get dressed in the morning. My mom does her cleaning by days certain things on certain days, I prefer to do it once a week. I cannot imagine your laundry, I feel like we have a ton and we only have 4 in our family. Since we don't have a dryer I must do a few loads every day or else I'm swimming in laundry and no place to hang it up to dry during the winter months. Good luck.

Mountain Home Quilts said...

Thanks for being real. I think all moms have a room that looks like that at some point! :)
I try to "map out" a plan that inculdes cleaning chores each day. As the week progresses, so does the house.
While maintaining a somewhat orderly house is important, the most important thing is your children and a house that is perfectly in order at all times certainly says something for the mother/child relationship!

Anonymous said...

Hello, just passing through.I've found this blog to be incredibly helpful in establishing household routines. A mother of 10 tells how she organizes her life. She writes about cleaning under the "Home Making" tab at the top. God bless you.

http://raisingolives.com/

Marisa