"The house is always a mess." "I hate spending more time cleaning, than time with my family." "I don't have time to do that." "There's always so much left to do." "I'm failing at this role as Mom..."
...These are some of the things I often say to myself. I feel like our house is always messy, and although it may be just me, regardless, it's an unsettling feeling. Who has time to clean the appliances in the kitchen, or wipe down all of the blinds, or sweep and mop the entire wood and tile floors? (which if you know our house the entire square footage is tile or hard wood) I don't feel like I have that time, but they definitely all get dirty. I certainly feel like cleaning shouldn't consume your life, but it's an important necessity, so how are other Mom's/House Wives keeping their homes so clean? Sometimes I walk into other people's homes and I think, "How do they do this? It's so clean in here!" It's a little discouraging, and makes me feel like somewhat of a failure. If other people are able to do it, why am i struggling with it? Is everyone else struggling too? Am I being too hard on myself? It's really hard for me because I in fact feel like I'm cleaning all of the time, but there's little to no reward because there's so much more that needs to be done...always.
To start, for us, we didn't merge our belongings together very efficiently when we merged our lives. If there wasn't a place for something we'd just stick it in the corner, which has been creating an outcome of clutter. So, we've put some effort in figuring out how to keep it straightened up. The secret is organization and making sure everything has a place to be put away. We are still working on some areas of the house but the places we've organized are much easier to keep straightened. We are definitely getting closer, but still have a ways to go.
This is a great start, but how am I supposed to actually keep this place clean? Where do I find the time to clean, spend time with my son, work, and cook dinner? Is there really enough hours in the day? It seems impossible and I started to realize that I'm spending the majority of my day doing everyday chores like dishes, cleaning the kitchen counters, laundry, sweeping, straightening etc. and since those chores are done throughout the day, as well as numerous times a day, the bigger chores tend to be put off. Not only that, but I have a certain little "helper" which is GREAT, except that his idea of "helping" is actually making my job much more difficult. The chores I've put off just get worse and worse until I simply don't want to do them at all anymore. It's a losing battle and I often go to bed at night feeling unaccomplished, because that is when I start thinking about all of the areas where I "slacked off."
It came to me one day, and now I think I've found a solution to all of this, at least for me. I'm really successful with to-do lists so I figured it would be a good start in feeling more accomplished. Also, (just a little bit of trivia) the body releases more endorphins from crossing off a completed task from a list then it does when we smile. So with these things in mind, I made a list of all the household chores that I feel need to be done. This list included tasks often forgotten about like cleaning the kitchen appliances, wiping down blinds, dusting, even washing the dogs. But also included more important tasks like mopping, cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming area rugs etc. I broke them all down and created a note for each one on how often each chore should be completed based on how quickly I've noticed each gets dirty (i.e. every other day, once a week, or once a month). I then created a key for the entire month by the week, which will be my outline for continuing months if this strategy ends up being successful for me. I separated all of the chores and spread them out over the course of the week where in the end, in addition to the tasks done every day, I only need to complete one or two of these bigger tasks. I figured I could handle only completing a few tasks a day and If I'm successful I anticipated I would feel more accomplished. If I'm not successful some days (as I can guarantee will happen), I will feel less like a failure because only a couple of things were left undone, not an ongoing list of ten or more, therefore a feeling more towards a win-win.
This is the end of the first week of using my new system, and I love it so far!! Instead of having multiple things to do, feeling overwhelmed about it and not knowing even where to start, I already have it written out. I even created a section to check off the completed chores to release those endorphin's, and boy does it feel good to check them off! I also included larger random tasks of things I would like to get done within the month, like organize the junk drawer that's over flowing or take down the Christmas lights from the outside of the house, (things that often get forgotten about over and over again). I took the time to create this list and cut into my sleeping time to do so and it's now saving me a ton of grief and feelings of unaccomplishments in my every day life. The lack of sleep the night I took time to create it, definitely is paying off. I know this whole system sounds completely dorky, but it works for me, and that's the only thing that matters!
Here's an example of my spreadsheet:
