Tribe for mamas who want a clean house - Page 4

[dantesmama]

Originally Posted by Delicateflower

Even when I have the right amount of stuff, two children rampage through and everything ends up on the floor. It's so frustrating. Even worse is my preschooler putting all the toys out of the baby's reach, on the island and kitchen table. It drives me batty.

That's my biggest problem. "A place for everything and everything in its place" is a nice idea in theory, but here it's more like "A place for everything and everything on the floor". I like to have the crayons readily accessible for the kids so they can draw whenever, but my 18mo is constantly dumping all the crayons on the floor. Like, several times a day. I have an organizer for their drawing stuff - crayons and colored pencils go in one drawer, coloring books and paper in the other drawers. Apparently I'm the only one who values the "organized" thing.

My ultimate goal for the day is to get all the laundry folded and put away. I have 3 baskets in the hall and one in the basement and I'm not going to bed tonight until they're all put away!

[AngelBee]

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[CultivatingMyRoots]

My house is 'clean,' for the first time since....um, ever?

I had an interview with a woman who needs childcare for her two boys (age 1 and 2, both SUPER sweet!) so I got the house ready for company. I still have stuff without a place, but it is stacked and waiting for us to have the money to buy furniture/for freecycle to gift us with something.

The hitch is that the office is still a disaster, and it took most of my energy and all day to do it. I did get dinner on the table, and took a walk with DD (and found a neighbor who will give us oranges!) and I don't regret the day, I just can't imagine doing it all again tomorrow.

Add to that taking care of other kids to make our money ends meet...I just don't know.

Thanks for this thread; sorry to be a downer!

[Krisis]

My house is super clean too... we had my sister in law come over to babysit tonight and I didn't want her to see my sty! I even mopped, which I hate hate hate doing. Of course, I worked so hard today it's going to take me 5 more days to recover... argh it's a vicious cycle!!:

[maryjane]

This post was great inspiration for me the other day. I woke up at 4 a.m. with one of my kids, but couldn't fall back to sleep after he did. So, I went down to the basement (of doom!) and spent 2 hours creating order. I weeded out broken, junky toys; sorted everything back into bins; and decluttered/reorganized the bookshelves. I even folded about two weeks worth of clean laundry, which had been languishing on the couch (and making actual sitting on the couch completely impossible.) It looked amazing and so far, three days later, it's still looking good! : Now if I could only do the same thing in the bedrooms, living room and kitchen, I'd be in business.

I have found that having an organized/tidy home is 90 percent of the battle with me. I don't bother cleaning when the floor is littered with shoes, art projects, mail and (in the interest of full disclosure) garbage. It's just too much effort. Running the vacuum, dusting, scrubbing out the tub -- those are the easy and quick parts. It's the major clean-up that has to be done in order to clean that completely bogs me down. I've never understood when people say that their home is messy, but clean. For me, the two go hand in hand.

The only solution, IME, is consistency. If I let it slide one day, I may as well have let it slide for ten days. I just have to do it every.single.day. Thirty or sixty minutes a day is usually enough, if I have good systems in place for storage/organization. That covers maintenance tasks -- one load of laundry washed, dried, folded and PUT AWAY; kitchen cleaned up completely after dinner; toys/books/newspapers corralled and put away, etc. etc. If I stay on top of the maintenance, then the weekly cleaning stuff can be done in less than 2 hours -- probably closer to 1 hour. But sadly, my problem is that I don't do the former, so the latter also falls by the wayside.

[MittensKittens]

Originally Posted by CultivatingMyRoots

My house is 'clean,' for the first time since....um, ever?

I had an interview with a woman who needs childcare for her two boys (age 1 and 2, both SUPER sweet!) so I got the house ready for company.

Yeah, the only time it is clean and tidy here is when someone is coming to the house. Perhaps we should invite MORE visitors?

[MittensKittens]

Originally Posted by maryjane

I have found that having an organized/tidy home is 90 percent of the battle with me. I don't bother cleaning when the floor is littered with shoes, art projects, mail and (in the interest of full disclosure) garbage. It's just too much effort. Running the vacuum, dusting, scrubbing out the tub -- those are the easy and quick parts. It's the major clean-up that has to be done in order to clean that completely bogs me down. I've never understood when people say that their home is messy, but clean. For me, the two go hand in hand.

The only solution, IME, is consistency. If I let it slide one day, I may as well have let it slide for ten days. I just have to do it every.single.day. Thirty or sixty minutes a day is usually enough, if I have good systems in place for storage/organization. That covers maintenance tasks -- one load of laundry washed, dried, folded and PUT AWAY; kitchen cleaned up completely after dinner; toys/books/newspapers corralled and put away, etc. etc. If I stay on top of the maintenance, then the weekly cleaning stuff can be done in less than 2 hours -- probably closer to 1 hour. But sadly, my problem is that I don't do the former, so the latter also falls by the wayside.

:

I don't keep it up and do it every day though, though I keep telling myself I will. About once a week, I do the whole lot and it looks nice. Five minutes later it is a mess again . I have still not mastered the art of getting stuff clean with a babe in a sling... oh and a toddler running around recreating the messes I just got rid off. What do you all do?

[dantesmama]

Well, I *was* doing much better with keeping things tidy... sigh. I've been working like mad to finish a paper that's due tomorrow (I'm also a student) and my 19mo has been miserable from teething and putting off bedtime til at least midnight most nights, so I've had practically no time to do anything but the bare minimum around the house. My dad is coming over to watch the boys today while I'm in class so I need to get things somewhat clean... it's bad when you're too embarassed to let your family see the condition of your house!

[LeighB]

Great example of why I can't get anything done-
this morning I decided to sweep and mop the kitchen floor. I am halfway through mopping and Dd comes tearing around the corner and before I can stop her she wipes out and gets covered in mop water. I had to immediately stop and giver her a bath.
Sigh. I did finally get it done though!

[Annikate]

Originally Posted by LeighB

Great example of why I can't get anything done-
this morning I decided to sweep and mop the kitchen floor. I am halfway through mopping and Dd comes tearing around the corner and before I can stop her she wipes out and gets covered in mop water. I had to immediately stop and giver her a bath.
Sigh. I did finally get it done though!

My girls like to "skate" while I'm mopping. Now I've switched to a steam mop and it's sooooo much easier, faster and cleaner! I that thing.

[Annikate]

I had a kind of epiphany yesterday too as I was cleaning (and mopping). I don't really hate cleaning like I always tell myself I do. What I hate is taking the TIME away from other things to do it.

So if I could add on time every day - say an extra hour or two *just* for cleaning (when I couldn't do anything else at all), and if I wouldn't think of all the other things I'd rather be doing, then I think I'd enjoy cleaning more.