Plan #2 was to come up with a house cleaning routine to keep our house in "decent" order. I don't expect to keep a perfectly clean house (that's even laughable if you really know Waylon and I), I just want things to be better than they are right now. Laundry is a huge problem. We are horrible at putting clothes up after we taken them off (if they are still re-wearable) and then we end up with huge piles of clothes all over the floor that we have to smell our way through to determine if they are clean or dirty! It's NOT a fun process and on those days I get so frustrated with myself and ask myself why I let it get to this point when I absolutely HATE having to do that.
Another problem we have is clutter and leaving things lying around the house without putting them away. On any given day, you can come into my house and see "stuff" everywhere. The coffee table, covered. The kitchen table, covered. The counter "bar", junked out. Dirty dishes on just about any surface available including the bathroom sink (yes, I know, I can't even believe I'm admitting this). The trash, overflowing. Brooklyn's toys, everywhere. I know what the main problem is for this problem: laziness. We are lazy. We don't want to put things back where they belong because it requires us to get our rear-ends up off the couch. Even though we know that it requires a lot more for us later when we finally have to clean it ALL up.
So, here is what we have come up with. Keep in mind, this is a work in progress. We'll have to figure out if this system will work for us. We'll give it a couple of weeks and re-assess and change things tha taren't working.
We decided that Waylon and I will alternate weeks for dishes and laundry. So one week, he will do the dishes each night (our goal is that every night we completely clear the dishes out of the sink) and I'll do a small load of laundry each night. For the laundry, the easiest way I could think to do it would be to start off I will put a small load in to wash in the evening and then before bed make sure it's in the dryer so it's dry the next night. That night, I'll take out the dry load and put another small load on to wash and while I watch one of my TV shows, I'll fold and put away the small load from the dryer. Then make sure I put the next load in the dryer for the next night. If I start doing this and we just get used to doing a small load of laundry each night, it won't seem overwhelming to put away a huge load AND we won't have to do several loads in one day (which I abhor doing and usually those several loads don't get put away by the time they are dry). If we keep this up, we should never get huge piles of laundry built up and we just might get to where we don't have to do it every night and just do it 3 nights a week or something. That's a big IF.
As far as the rest of the house, here are our goals:
- Clean one bathroom each weekend, this way each bathroom (we have 2) gets a good cleaning every other weekend. I know some of you clean your bathrooms every weekend. This just doesn't happen for us and I hate to admit that if we were to do this new plan, it would be more frequent than those bathrooms get cleaned currently, so I would be very happy with that.
- Sweep and mop every other day. Now that Brooklyn is mobile and crawling all over the place, those floors need to be swept more frequently and mopped. We are considering buying a Shark. I hear they are awesome and easy to use and you don't have to use any cleaning chemicals.
- Spend 30 minutes a day working on getting the office back in commission. Right now, our office has turned into a dumping ground for everything that needs to get out of the way. We can't use it for anything else. My Mary Kay stuff is all over the place and we have loads of random stuff in there that we just need to break down and get rid of. There's also a lot of paper in there, everywhere.
Those are our cleaning goals for keeping the house at a relatively clean status. It's a lot of change but I think the way we have it set up, we can do it.
The last thing we spoke about, which doesn't have anything to do with cleaning, but is very important, is that we want to make it a point to pray over Brooklyn every night before bedtime. I'm embarassed to say that as parents we have really slacked in this department. It should be the most important part of our day as far as Brooklyn's well-being is concerned and we just haven't put time into doing it. Of course we both pray for her on our own throughout the day. I find myself praying for her several times. But I feel that as her parents and for our marriage, we need to pray TOGETHER for our children in addition to our individual prayers. My good friend Stefanie sent me an email of a sheet she was given from her BSF group with 12 ways to pray for your children. It was a great list! We are going to take one each month and pray it over Brooklyn that way we cover all 12 in a year. The first one is to pray for her to come to know Jesus as her Savior at an early age. Could not have picked a better prayer request for our children! If you're interested in it, I can email it to you, just leave me a comment with your email address. :)
What are your cleaning routines? I'm open to suggestions and ideas as this is NOT an area I am very strong in.
By the way, Happy Easter to all! I hope everyone gets to spend this amazing day celebrating that Jesus rose from the grave to give us all eternal life! I'm looking forward to our first Easter with Brooklyn!
2 comments:
Stepn, I understand your frustration and I think your plan sounds good. One of the main things I'm trying to work at is not leaving ANYTHING laying where it shouldn't be. Yes, that even means if I have to trek upstairs to put one or two things way than I need to do it. I think telling yourself that it only takes a few seconds or minutes to put something away versus half an hour to clean the room out of stuff that shouldn't be in there. My bedroom is the dumping ground and I HATE THAT.
I think doing little bits here and there and keeping up with stuff will help in the long run. Do the deep cleaning on the weekends and do wipe downs and straightening all week long.
OH, BTW, I really like your new layout! I meant to say that in my previous comment.
Ever heard of Flylady? She changed my life. I DO NOT follow her program anymore (I did for about 6 months) - because of the number of children we have (4 with 1 on the way), our "routines" look SIGNIFICANTLY different than the ones that she's put in place. But the idea that stuck with me is that if you can get a few things down that you do EVERY DAY that are really important to you, then the rest doesn't feel quite so overwhelming. It sounds like that's what you're doing.
Mine looks like this: in the morning, I HAVE to make the bed, clean up the kitchen after breakfast (before moving on to anything else), and sort laundry/start at least one load (we have to do 3-4 per day to keep up!). In the evening, I run a vacuum over the floors (when my back can handle it; 7 months pregnant does NOT make for easy housework), put towels in the wash, empty the sink of dishes and wipe down the counters.
If I can keep those two routines going during the day, I can add one thing to my to-do list each day and it doesn't feel overwhelming. Of course, all this will change when Baby Jenna comes in August, but that's for a different discussion, right? :)
I'm glad I found your blog! Your baby is so darling.
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