Tuesday, February 23

A Clean Home

I've been fed up with my weekend cleaning sprees for the whole winter now, if not since school started in August.  At first I thought, "I work full-time and do real food. I don't have the time each day to clean too."
Consequently we (or I) spend the whole day Saturday cleaning. Really, that is not a problem at all when the weather outside is dreadful and there is nothing to do. However, when it is nice out, or i have plans, or we want to get a project done, it is a problem. You can catch up on seven loads of laundry when you are running errands or out of town for the day!

Eventually I''d had enough. It started with doing a load of laundry each night (in theory). We were also talking among the teachers about chores that some of the other teachers' kids have to do (even the 2 year olds). Growing up we had always had a chore chart. I had also been reading about a cleaning schedule of a blogger that I follow. I thought, "We won;t have that much to clean since it is just the two of us right now. We won;t have to do all of those things daily. I bet if I got in the habit of doing it every morning/afternoon/ evening it wouldn't be so bad eventually.  Plus that way I can have a list of things that I need help with when Baby comes. I can just cross of the ones I've done with dry erase so I  know what I need help with." So it started.

That was two weeks ago. We had a snow day and I sat down with my computer, searched, thought, and typed up a few lists and charts. Now I have daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal cleaning lists. I also have a weekly graph where I write down meals, appointments, and cleaning tasks.  I also put my daily and weekly list in the front of the binder that I keep everything in so that I don't even need to open the binder for a reminder.

That was two weeks ago. Our house has been clean at some point every day since then. Sunday evening no cleaning gets done. It makes for a rough Monday morning since I leave for work earlier and have more clean up to do, but asi es la vida. Really, it is WAY better than before. I enjoy coming home more, so does my husband. I like my house when it is clean. Now I can do things on weekends like shop for carpet for the baby's room, exercise, craft, and visit. Yeah!

We'll see if it continues, but it is much easier now than it was at first, and my husband works harder at it too.

What is next? Keeping track of what is in my fridge so that food doesn't go bad. Plus as the DH said, "You need to make hoggies for your next project."

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