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From Lisa_K ~ Housework. Ugh! So, how do you get it all done? Do you clean a room a day? Certain chores on certain days? Hire a maid? Do DH/kids help?
I think a clean house is important, so once a year mine is really clean! LOL
Seriously, DH does 95% of the cooking and sweeps, so I do some cleaning while dinner is getting ready. Floors are swept nightly, rugs are vacuumed twice a week. DS is in charge of the dishwasher and washing/drying laundry. If he's short of cash he'll fold, at $1/load. I clean my bathrooms Saturday morning, and wash floors Sunday evening.
From ILmomtobe ~ Unfortunately, I don't. My house is a mess, and there are these little islands of clean when I get energy and have the time. Every couple months, I have a gal come in to clean, because I can no longer ignore the dust bunnies, like when my DS starts naming them
From josben ~ There just isn't enough time in the day. Every now and then I get an urge to get it clean (not very often). Although, my mother is coming in from Florida this Sunday, so I really don't have a choice this week.
From Juju ~ We have an ironclad routine; if we don't, nothing gets done. The first available hour or two in a weekend is devoted to cleaning, which usually means first thing Saturday morning. Dave and I both do it, it gets done for the week, and we can move on with our lives. And yes, unless something gets spilled on or something, we only clean once a week (vacuum more often, though, because we have dogs). We also do laundry twice a week; Dave does it on the weekend and I do it on Wednesdays.
Oh, and every evening after dinner, we all just generally put the house back together--the kids pick up their toys, one of us cleans up after dinner, we get everything together for the next morning etc. It really helps that we just do it at the same time every day.
From Liz F. ~ I have someone help with the cleaning. I just can't do it all
From Lizbaby4 ~ I am encouraging economic growth . . . I hire a cleaning lady who comes in every 2 weeks. With DH and myself working full time, and 3 kids involved in sports, there is just not enough time in the week to do it. At least I know it is clean every 2 weeks.
From Patti ~ I cheat a bit and delegate the rest. My DH is obsessed with keeping the house clean but we both work full time. He does the laundry including folding and putting away. He also loads and unloads the dishwasher. He also tidies up the house and I really love him for that.
About my housecleaning/cheating . . . I buy the lysol disinfectant wipes and keep one in each bathroom. I have three bathrooms. Everytime I use the bathroom and am not headed out the door, I take a bathroom wipe and wipe down the counter and the sink. I then scrub the toilet. I keep a brush and toilet cleaner in each bathroom to make this easier to do. I also spray the tub, tub wall and shower curtain after my shower each morning to prevent mildew. I try to get my hubby to do this in the other shower. He does most of the time.
Another way I cheat is by using a Roomba to vacuum my home. It does everything except for stairs. I usually use a hand vac for the stairs. It's lighter than my regular vacuum. I still use the regular vac about once a month to really deep clean the carpets.
Once a month we clean out a closet. It is amazing what accumulates in a closet that you don't need. It helps us have room for the stuff we really use. We purge what we don't use at that time. I think most messy houses are caused my too much clutter because there is no room for things you need because you store things you don't need. Consequently, you can't clean because you are exhausted once you pick up the junk. I grew up in a very messy house. My mom was a single parent and worked full time. It was not really her fault. Then I married a neat freak. It is amazing how much better I feel with a clean house.
My other secret is scented candles and air fresheners. Sometimes these are great for getting you motivated.
From Jen1 ~ I have a cleaning lady. She comes every other week. We keep things organized and neat in between cleanings and wipe up floors, etc when needed. DH and I believe that as a two income family our time is short enough without taking hours to clean.
From Spanky2 ~ We are exactly the same with having a cleaning lady every other week. I am still on maternity leave now, but when I go back full time, I am thinking of getting her every week - unless we get a nanny or an au pair.
From Harmony ~ It's really hit and miss around my house. There really is no set schedule, but the past month or so, I've been trying to get most of the housework done during the week so that on the weekends all I do is laundry. DH is not much help. He works nights, sleeps during the day, so he doesn't do much but pick up once in a while. As my oldest DS gets older, he's now responsible for unloading the dishwasher (which is run every night after dinner, regardless of whether or not it's full so that there are rarely dirty dishes in the sink), picking up the living room since it's mostly the kids' mess and keeping his bedroom and bathroom clean, which must be done every night before bed.
I do laundry only on Sundays now, but for the rare occasion DH needs uniforms during the week. I start in the evening and wash and fold through my Sunday prime time shows, and I really notice a difference if I fold and put away right away, which I didn't do much before.
My best investment so far has been my bissell flip it. I can vacuum, then mop and it takes all of about 10 minutes. I TRY to run the vacuum part of it every night after dinner, but it's usually every other or every third night. The mopping is done once a week. The bathrooms are more hit and miss than anything else. I do the toilets at least once a week with those disposable things, but the counters are usually cluttered constantly.
We had to have our house appraised a while back and did a major cleaning job on every room in the house. Since then, it's been much easier to keep up with. Heck, most of the time, all the rooms in the house are clean at the same time, LOL! God knows that has never happened. One of these days, iIm going to hire a someone to come in once a week to do the big stuff--showers/tubs, floors, dusting, etc. because with working almost full time, there just isn't enough time in the day to get it all done.
From Mykar ~ As Jen1 said, we have a cleaning lady because time is short enough without taking hours to clean. I used to feel uncomfortable with it, especially if I was home on Saturday mornings, when she came. Now she comes on Wednesday afternoon when I'm at work. The best!!!!!
I still sweep the kitchen every 2-3 days, and Swiffer the spots where needed. With a messy DH/DD, a dog, and two cats, it's very needed. The kitchen connects to our family room, and we are ALWAYS in those two rooms, so they get the messiest. I am constantly battling the clutter on the island and counters. Alexis is in charge of making sure her toys, etc. are put away; she's really good about her clothes now that I have gotten her "own" hamper for her room. I don't worry as much about making beds and such. I do try to get all the laundry done, and DH is supposed to fold (HAHAHAHAHA). I hate a messy bathroom, so I keep the all-purpose type wipes in there to do the mirrors, sink, toilet, etc. when I need to.
The past two weeks I have been working on decluttering the basement. I felt it was time to get rid of much of Alexis' outgrown clothes. No one ever wants to borrow, and she has some really nice, very gently used, things. So, her school is benefitting in their used clothing drive this weekend. I also re-cleaned my closet for the 5th time since the start of the summer, realizing how much I really don't wear and probably will never. I'm after DH to do the same. Once I feel better about the clothing situation, I'll tackle the office. I really need to get the paper clutter out of there.
From MonicaLeigh ~ Our main level gets cleaned every other day just because we are there all the time. Every other Friday, DH comes home early and while the kids nap, he deep cleans the upstairs and I deep clean the downstairs. We then pay ourselves $75 (what our cleaning lady used to cahrge) and put it in our vacation fund. I do laundry every Friday morning and the nanny does the kids' laundry every other day.
From acorn ~ I've considered getting in someone to clean but I'm not quite comfortable with it and DH really doesn't want to (and he does clean so he does get a say!). Partly it's about having someone in our home and whether they get paid fairly if using an agency, but more it's because we're picky about how certain things get cleaned. We've got a lot of surfaces that just can't be cleaned with any old cleanser (e.g. marble).
Our routine? Basic kitchen cleaning (dishes, counters wiped, table wiped) gets done every night. Saturday morning we do laundry, a general pick up of the horizontal surfaces that seem to get cluttered every week, and a shoe pick up. At the end of the weekend we try to vacuum the kitchen/family room. Every few weekends we'll tackle a bigger job like vacuuming other parts of the house, cleaning bathrooms, etc. We're not spotless, but we're not too disgusting!
One thing that really helps is that we don't have any pets.
From miss meg ~ Count my DH as another fanatic about cleaning . . . to the point of lunacy. Drives me up the wall. He'd strip the bed every 4 days if I gave him half a chance . . . then leave the dirty sheets on the floor in the laundry room and expect me to make the bed in the evening .
Basically, our house gets clean as we have time. Here's what I *try* to do: have the kids pick up the living room and their rooms before bed every night, sweep the dining room floor daily (most of the food is spilled in there), have enough dirty dishes to start the dishwasher before bed. Vacuuming *usually* gets done on Saturday mornings, as does mopping the kitchen. Dusting . . . not so often .
DH works most weekends, so can't do family cleaning like I grew up doing. So he tends to clean what he can on his days off during the week, and I do some by myself on the weekends.
