Disclaimer: I am not an organized, all together, with-it, sort of person. I am also not that kind of mother or wife. Most days I fumble through striving to do better than the day before. I am not an expert and most of what I do at our household is due to trial and error. This is the way it works best for us. Up to this point in our lives we have been a pretty unscheduled and non-routine sort of family. This makes our life hectic. So most of what is posted here on Mama Mondays will be our new way of doing things. A new method that we've implemated in order to bring, well, order to our family. Some of it will be tried and true and we've done it since becoming parents. All of it will be in hopes of glorifying our Lord and Saviour. None of it is perfect. I do not claim that our way is the right way or even that it is the best way, only that it is our way and it works for us. I cannot wait to hear your way.
Cleaning House
Keeping the house clean is one of my biggest challenges since becoming a mommy. Before Adam was born I would clean my entire house in a day and it would stay clean for about a week. Yep, besides the every day stuff like dishes and laundry, I cleaned once a week. That's it. Well, times have changed. I can no longer clean my entire house in just one day. And I can no longer keep it that way for a week.
For the first years of parenting I would do most of my housework during nap or after bedtime. But now that I have 3 kiddos who are quite capable of destroying a house in a matter of minutes and two of which do not nap on most days, I can no longer do all of my cleaning while they are asleep. So I have kind of just gotten lazy about it.
Most days our house is a bomb. I won't lie. It's a complete pigsty. I mean, I wouldn't eat here if it weren't my own family's mess! The biggest reason it's this way is because I never had a plan or a routine for cleaning. I just did what needed to be done the most and for a while I still tried cleaning it all in one day. Ha! It's also because I feel so overwhelmed that I just throw my hands in the air and say, "Ah, forget it!"
So I bought a book called Large Family Logistics. The author has nine children and lives on a farm. She suggests embracing the way of our foremothers and doing one cleaning chore per day. For example: Monday is Kitchen Day; Tuesday is Laundry Day, Wednesday is Office Day, etc. If you've ever read The Little House on the Prairie series you'll know that this is also the way that the Ingalls girls did it. I was quite intrigued by the idea only I quickly realized that it wouldn't work for me because she still has one day for cleaning the entire house. I can never manage to get it all done in one day. So I adopted her idea and twiqued it. I decided that I would do one room a day(some days it's two rooms). That way I still have time for the everyday stuff and I can really clean the room, not just surface clean.
I have only just started doing things this way so it has not been fine-tuned, it's more of a rough draft.
Here is my cleaning routine:
Monday- kitchen & dining room
This is also the day I do baking because it doesn't make since to mess it all up
with baking another day.
Tuesday- bathroom & master bedroom
Wednesday- laundry room & stairway/downstairs rooms
Thursday- kids' bedrooms
Friday- bathroom & living room
Saturday- Outside work
I also do my every day chores as needed: dishes, sweeping, meals, etc.
I try to wash one load of laundry a day.
Friday is also our town day. I will soon be writing up a menu plan to help this go smoothly.
I have just recently really started involving the kids in my housework. They dust, unload/load the dishwasher, vacuum, fold towels, take clothes to the bedrooms, and they do most of the picking up of toys.
Ultimately my goal is to have all of the cleaning done by lunch and then the rest of the day can be used for other things. But when school starts this will be a little harder.
That's the way we do it. How do you do it?
