I’m back today with another installment where I share all about Family Organization.
This simple series emphasises organizing for families. Whether you have one or 10 kids you will find easy to implement solutions that will help to keep your family humming along! If you haven’t seen a post on this topic yet, you can go to this page and look at the others in the series.
Based on my Reader Survey that I did at the beginning of the year I was asked a lot to address cleaning and how to organize a cleaning schedule. Obviously I didn’t jump right on this topic because I’m going to be open with you…
I don’t LOVE to clean.
I USED to LOVE to clean when it was just me that I had to clean up after, but now that I’ve got a house full of people, people who I LOVE, I just don’t seem to love cleaning as much anymore. It feels like an ongoing, oh whats the word, I know – BATTLE!
Keeping a home clean and organized can feel like such a daunting task and like I always say, the more people the more stuff and usually that means the more mess.
So HOW do you and I do it?
5 Tips on “How To” Keep a Clean House
1. Control the Clutter
In order to clean you must have clean surfaces to work with, rather that be the floor or the counters. So make sure that everything has a “home”, place a wastebasket in every room and make it a habit to return everything to where it belongs.
2. Schedule to Shine
Now…this can look a lot of different ways. Maybe you want to clean a little bit everyday or you want to do a huge clean every two weeks. Really it doesn’t matter how you organize your schedule, just that you have some sort of routine. Having a schedule will help you know that there is a plan and that things are being cleaned on some sort of rotation. For example – I wash the sheets every Saturday. Make sure that you block out the cleaning time on your family schedule too, so anyone who is asked to help is available!
3. Delegate and Designate
It’s take a village to keep a clean home. Utilize every set of hands in your home. (Kids are often the most under utilized work force in our homes.) This includes hiring extra hands when necessary too! Whenever you say yes to one thing you are saying no to something else. So never be afraid to look for outside resources to help you to better manage your life. Life is all about balance and if we don’t create time and space in our lives we can end up feeling overwhelmed.
4. Live with Less
Sometimes the biggest obstacle we have in keeping our homes clean is that we just have too much stuff. Everything you own can take time away from you. Our stuff requires our time and attention. We have to clean it, move it, organize it, maintain it and look for it! If you have less you will have less to clean, period.
5. Reality Rules
Accept your reality, rather it be that you have very young children or that you are working full-time outside of your home. Your reality truly can affect your efforts. Keeping this reality in mind, you will want to set rules or standards for what you want your home to look like on a daily basis. Live with standards that are doable for you and your family. Let the little things go and embrace your beautiful reality!
AND now I’ll leave you with a little slice of my life and how I keep my home clean (or at least the appearances of such).
First, off I have never had a house cleaner. I have been tempted and personally right now with a three-story home I would actually like to, but I haven’t made that choice for three reasons. One, I only work part-time and really do have the time to keep our home clean. Two, I want to use our money/budget elsewhere. And, three, I want my children to learn all of the home responsibilities and this gives them more of that opportunity.
Secondly, over the years I have done many different schedules and I suggest that you keep trying different things until you find the right fit for you. (And usually one plan will work for one season and then the next season you’ll have to tweak it, again!)
Currently I am treating Tuesdays as my big cleaning day, I’ll clean the main floor, the basement and do my hubby’s and my laundry. (The kids are now each doing their OWN laundry and they each have a designated day W-F!!!) Then, as a family we decided to do an “upstairs blitz”, every weekend. On either Saturday or Sunday we take an hour and all five of us head upstairs to tackle the four bedrooms and four bathrooms. We’ve done this the last two weeks and it is amazing how much we can all get done in an hour. We are flexible with the day and the time, based on what the weekend holds. But this plan is working really well to help get things set up for the coming week and really allows the kids more time to relax after school and do homework etc.
Lastly, my hubby and I make a good cleaning team which is huge. He is a big help and we continue to each take our areas to work on and truly own them and we’re trying to do the same with our kids. With five sets of hands we can get a lot done, especially if we focus. What I probably don’t get to enough is the “deep” cleaning and I’m OK with that. There will always be something to clean and what’s more important to me is an overall tidy home, that is probably my rule number one and I stick to that and cut myself some slack when I start to feel like there is just too much to clean.
I encourage you to do the same – live by YOUR rule number one and work with your village!
*KISS – To keep a clean home, live within your reality, minimize what you own and use your resources.
