An old cleaning thread re-visited

[PrairieRose]

I'm interested to hear about your cleaning routines again.......

Mine seem to be, whenever something needs cleaning and whenever I can or get to it.......

I used to clean the whole house in oneday but I don't have the energy for that anymore. I love to have my house sparkling clean all of the time but it never is anymore. Today I'm doing the bathrooms and kitchen...tomorrow the laundry room and office, the next day the bedrooms, the next day the living room........

Feel free to add links to prev. lengthy posts.....

[canadian gardener]

Lisa, I do it in little bites, it's all I can do on my bad days, which hopefully are in the past, but I still remember, and I hope some of my techniques will stick with me.

5 basics: look at your five fingers and they are:
1-Sanitary bathroom and kitchen (not tidy, just sanitary, nothing smells bad)

2-Garbage out regularly. (make a kitchen trash run once a day, and run through and toss whatever else you can to fill up the bag—whether it’s the contents of the bedroom wastebasket or the living room basket of magazines, or the liv rm wastebasket with junk mail and newspapers inside) Toss the daily paper daily and if it’s too much to keep up to, you and dh read the news online and save the work.

3-Shop for food, but keep it simple —pre bagged salad, pre peeled carrots or chopped ready to cook broccoli, or frozen veggies ready to pour in a sauce pan to heat and eat. Chops, ready formed frozen burgers, chicken quarters, fish fillets, pot roasts for the crockpot are all easy to make. Freeze the crockpot leftovers in meal size portions for you and dh. Get ready slice deli meat for sandwiches along with bagged salad greens, cold cereals, milk and yogurt for nutritious sandwich and breakfast fixings.

If you plan the meals and the grocery list, dh can do the shopping perhaps, and the cooking. Planning makes delegating happen easily with less fights and it also saves money no matter who does the shopping.

4-Laundry.—I suggest, putting 3 cardboard boxes out in your room (or a 20$ Walmart sorting hamper) for lights darks and delicates. Put the stain stick up in the bedroom so you can treat spots and deal with zippers and pockets as you take clothes off. NOT later trying to find the stain, or check pockets for Kleenex. Do it at the source. Eliminate work.

I prefer the load a day approach, and fit it into a rythym of your day.

Try to just have clothes you actually use in your bedroom. Bag the others for charity. But only a drawer at a time. Have a giveaway box in your bedroom, and as you open a drawer to get panties out etc, just quickly go thru that drawer. When you pull your clothes on in the morning, toss anything you know you haven't worn in a year.

By doing that you can see any "holes" you need to fill by buying new panties or socks or shirts etc. AND you make it much easier to open drawers and fling the clean stuff in. No shoehorning stuff in or out.

5-Bills—Check when they come in for urgent stuff and again on payday and pay what you need to. I like the office in a bag approach. Flylady shows you how to do your own. If you work outside the home use your coffee or lunch break, take your office in a bag, plan your menus, your grocery list, pay your bills, basically keep the bare minimum stuff in your zippered binder (office in a bag) so you can do these basic paper work things. Skip all else.

if you are a SAHM, then use the same office in a bag and grab it for a 15 to 20 minute paperwork session to catch up a couple of times a week. (tuesdays and fridays for example)

Those are my 5 basics. 1-Sanitize kitchen and bathroom, 2-garbage out, 3meals planned and shopped for, 4laundry kept up so clean clothes for work, 5 Bills kept up so lights stay on.

5 fingers, automatic reminder of the 5 basic tasks.

What is your bare minimum? REMEMBER IF YOU PLAN these 5 minimum tasks, you CAN delegate some to your dh, and whoever else you live with, and makes messes alongside you. Just set up the system, explain it, divide the tasks and STAY OUT OF WORRYING HOW IT GETS DONE.

As flylady says over and over "HOUSEWORK DONE INCORRECTLY STILL BLESSES YOUR FAMILY" and she is right.

When your dh or your kids help, thank them, don't get all perfectionist and critical, remember that any help is better than none, and rotate the jobs if it bugs you so that once a month, you do it your way. Just get it done fast.

ONE MORE REALLY IMPORTANT STRESS PREVENTION TIP:

Once a week GAS UP the car, NEVER EVER let it get below a half tank! Keep a 20$ bill in the glove compartment for emergency gas ups in between paydays rather than be stranded. Keep in an envelope and when you use, replace immediately. This will make for stress free transportation. If you see the tank getting near the half, gas up on the way home from work. Use full serve and avoid the physical stress if you are too tired to cope!!!!

[canadian gardener]

And the other suggestion is flylady but instead of doing a houseblessing all in one hour on mondays, I leave my vacuum out, and do a little bit all around the house. I break it down, do it during commercial breaks, do it in 5 minute timer sessions. Bit by bit it gets done.

When company comes I put it away.

i do the dusting every couple of days, passing my ostrich feather duster over stuff fast. It really works, doesn't just re distribute the dust. I do Windex when I see a problem, then I do the other windows and mirrors and hit the chrome. 5 minutes max. Not a super duper job, just a swipe up.

Losing the "it has to be all clean all at once at the same time and ALL the time" attitude helps too.

It will never be that way. When we climb Everest and it's done, it only lasts a moment, then a speck of dust falls, a kid visits and leaves sticky prints, the dog walks on the floor.

I waxed my floor on Monday this week. It dried thankfully before Dozer walked with her little muddy paws all over it. She's been digging in a wet muddy spot in the garden lately, and yesterday and today, there've been more little evidences of the paws. Once a day I drop the dead dishcloth down and swish it with my foot, but I don't really care. It's almost perfect. and that is good enough for me and dh and it better be good enough for company.

When I'm in the bathroom for the usual purposes, I clean up a bit extra and leave it better than I found it.

Ditto the kitchen, living room, bedroom and entry.


But First and foremost Declutter-- a few words on one of my favourite cleaning tips:

This makes every job easier. And it does save time and money and energy over and over.

Easy ways?

Every day garbage leaves the house. Take the kitchen trash bag thru the house on the way to the garage (or where ever you keep the cans)

and empty the waste baskets on the way, into that bag.

Teach family and yourself thru each day, to toss whatever you can.

By making this little garbage run a routine, you will keep it up, and not crash and burn.

By doing it this way you only let go what you are READY to toss and that in itself is a biggy. Saves a lot of emotional exhaustion saying goodbye to stuff you aren't ready to part with yet.

Ok next

HAVE A GIVEAWAY box or pretty wicker basket, on EACH floor of the house, to make that conveniant.

As you come across clothing that is not being worn, eliminate. Toys ditto.

It's a lot easier to toss it than to organize it. If you are in doubt, toss.

EMOTIONAL WITHDRAWAL!!!: Handle by having 2 count em, TWO boxes: a box of stuff that will possibly get given away later, and another box that will possibly get thrown away later.

Label BOTH Boxes Emotional Withdrawal, and which type (give away, or toss away). Go thru the pockets etc NOW! So later in 6 months or 3 years, you simply GIVE it away or THROW it out. WITHOUT going into it again.

If you go into it and haul something out, it's earned it's keep.

And you don't have to toss it or give it away EVER if you don't like. Keep it for the next 27 years, just don't keep it in the main traffic zones of the house where it will be in your way.

It's NOT just things though----

The dejunking attitude should spread to your calendar, your comittments, and your life. Dejunk things and even relationships that suck time and energy away from the core things you know you want to do with your life.

Core things might be core relationships like dh and kids or best freinds that are somehow taking a back seat right now, because the pressures of the urgent are pushing your priority people right out of your time and your life.

HTH

[canadian gardener]

I've been playing with menu planning with Menu Mailer lately, and I really like Leanne Ely's approach (and her recipes). I subscribed to the low carb one, and it's made dieting a lot easier.

And shopping, planning, and cooking.

If I like her recipe I make it, if not, well I take the same fixings and make something else we like from my old faithfuls but it's so helpful to have that list and the menu and all the fixings there without having to work it from scratch all the time.

Ditto using flylady.

In fact after knowing your bare minimum, and dejunking, and doing little bits when you are in a room

this is my other big tip.

Use someone else's brain cells.

sign up for flylady. http://www.flylady.net/index.asp

Delete anything you like, keep what makes sense to you, and adapt, but it's nice to have the lists in the email, so if you do need help with a routine, it's a no brainer. Do the FLY BABY not the full fly lady. There is a difference.

Try Menu Mailer http://www.savingdinner.com/menumailer.html for a week and see. She has reg and low carb and the reg one has vegetarian variations. If it fits, try a 3 month subscription and see.

I am appreciating not having to reinvent my stuff all the time right now, and I'm losing weight again thankfully.

[canadian gardener]

More on menus and Leanne's recipes are at

http://www.flylady.net/pages/kitchen2.asp

http://www.flylady.net/pages/FoodForThought1.asp

[MJsLady]

I do 15 minutes of cleaning 15 of play until the jobs are done!
It is easy when I have a buddy on aim and we are cleaning and chatting during the same times!

[PrairieRose]

Margery you have got this down to a science.....I need to have you move in here for about a year and help me get your routines down. Meanwhile......I'll do the 15 on and 15 off....thing.....

[canadian gardener]

As Melissa says, ITA, you need to reward yourself. LOTS.

See what you can tolerate. 15 minutes is awfully long if you are feeling ill. I can now, but originally I could only manage 5 minute bursts with 15 to 20 minute rests.

So commercial breaks were perfect, I'd play beat the clock, then collapse and reward myself with more Star Trek or Star Gate.

[dmvezina]

I follow Flylady as well.
I do 20 minutes of cleaning and 20 minutes of playing! lol

Every room in my house, except the computer room and kids rooms (of course!!), are "company ready".
My house isn't spotless or shiny, but it is clean and presentable.
It took me years to get to this point!!

[canadian gardener]

rewards are key. I think people who manage a routine for a long time usually have built in rest breaks, and rewards.

Like, when I'm done 15 minutes I will stop and rest for 15, during which I'll have some fun.

Or online for 15 minutes for every 20 minutes I work, that sort of thing.

Rewards don't always come with the territory of being a mother and looking after things like laundry.

heheheheh in today's terms it just ain't a sexy job!!!

Air traffic control doesn't tense up when young Elizabeth spills mustard and start spewing terse warnings, ---"getting too close there Elizabeth back AWAY FROM THAT HOT DOG," ---" Veronica super controller, get right on it",--- "I got it tower one, I'm on that stain".

Followed by the accolades of your fellow stain controllers, yep Veronica super mom, you managed that tough stain situation like a pro!!!!

It's more like MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I WANT MY SHIRT, WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH its got a STAIN!!!!!!!! MAAAAAAAAAAAAAA howcome it's stained, I put it in the wash wednesday

and mother says something rude under her breath, and tersely remarks something about how that stain was rolled into a tight ball, and kept a deep dark secret from the stain removal fairy, who didn't notice it when dumping in the tons of wash on friday and by golly it's PERMANENT now!!!!

and the small person goes off in a huff wondering what her mother does all day!

Like I said, we gotta start rewarding ourselves if any routine is going to be fun over the long haul.

[Early Bird]

Sometimes the kids and I come home from activities in the afternoon, and

* we're tired
* everything looks a mess

We get it under control this way:

First, a snack.
Then 10 minutes of chores. Most of this is 'pick and put.' (pick up and put away).
Then I read aloud for 10 minutes.

10 minutes of chores.

(By now, the house is looking decent -- after all, 3 people have each worked for 20 minutes).

Read aloud until DH calls that he's on the way home.

Then 20 minutes of chores/final dinner prep.