Moving from a teeny tiny one bedroom apartment to a larger living space showed me quickly just how much this upgrade was going to cost me in my cleaning time. I loved our new home but with additional bathrooms came additional work. I learned quickly if I was going to enjoy living here and also keep the filth and clutter down, I was going to have to get serious about how I do things in the cleaning department.
Here are some tricks I use to keep on top of my house so my house doesn’t end up crushing me:
Run the dishwasher every evening, Empty it every morning.
Every night after dinner I finish loading the dishwasher with any dishes I used making dinner and run it. Anything left over I hand wash and let dry on my counter. Then every morning I unload it and put all the dishes away. The dishwasher is now empty and available for me to load it as I go throughout the day and it keeps my sink from getting cluttered and overwhelming.
Do a load of laundry every morning.
Some people have a specific laundry day every week that they spend doing load after load of laundry but when I tried to do that, we would end up making plans that would take us away from the home and I would get even farther behind in the laundry the department. So now, every morning after I take care of breakfast I walk around the house and pick up pieces of clothing that need to be washed and then I pick a bedroom and take their laundry to the washer and run a load in AM. When it’s done washing I switch it to the dryer, and then during nap time I fold it and put it away when the kiddos get up. It is a lot less daunting when it is one load opposed to looking at a mountain of laundry. I also challenge myself to put the clothes away the same day. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. But at least it is sitting in the basket washed and folded.
Different day, different rooms.
Pick a few days and decide what rooms you want to clean that day. Monday is my kitchen and living room day because the weekend normally hits hard and it looks like a bomb went off. Tuesday I do our two large entryway type areas where people are in and out a lot. Wednesday I do bathrooms and bedrooms. Thursday I try to do 2-3 loads of laundry all the way to completion, and any leftover chores from the days prior in case we had plans and I didn’t get to complete them the way I like. Friday I do a once-over of the whole house so that if we have company over the weekend I don’t feel frantic and my husband and I don’t have to have a fight. Wink wink.
Toys.
Oh the toys, where do they even come from? Having a play room would a dream but for now we have a living room and bedrooms. So, we deal with what we have. I always have a dream of having the toys being organized by toy in cute little bins and rotate toys each week so they don’t get bored of them, but for now we have all the toys intermixed and it’s a mess. I buy the cheap fabric bins and cute baskets from wherever. All of the toys get chucked in them at the end of the evening. They are off the floor and it isn’t ugly too look at. Win win.
Get help.
Hire a cleaning lady every other week; get your husband and kids involved. I know for me it’s hard to remember this. I just go through the motions and don’t really think about asking for help until I am overwhelmed, and realize I was trying to do it all alone. The kids can start helping fairly young and having a hubby who washes dishes and vacuums is not a bad view. Amiright ladies?
Bonus Tip: Keep up on the little things daily. Even though you are doing more of a deep clean on only a couple of rooms a day, make sure you don’t let the other rooms sit all week. Keeping up on the dishes, counters, piles of mail and junk everyone brings home everyday will help immensely. Sweeping, vacuuming and mopping floors is an every couple of day thing as well. That way if someone stops by unexpectedly, highly trafficked areas are still fairly fresh.
After you do what you can do during the day, sit back, relax and just accept the crazy around you. No house is perfect there will always be chores to get done, but we were not created to just clean sun up to sun down. Wake up, get your chores done, and then enjoy the day knowing you already worked on the house and the rest can wait till tomorrow.
What are your hacks to keeping your house organized?
