Can you teach yourself how to be a 'neat freak'?

[Roryrory]

I Grew up with a neat freak - did nothing but make me believe I never wanted to be like that lol. I was a serious slob, but over the last couple of years I have been fine tuning, and I'm fairly certain I'd fall under the 'neat freak' category to some

I am the same - my mother used to say you could tell a good housewife by whether the tops of her door-frames were dust free!

I personally think that finding your own motivator and level of satisfaction is the key.

Why do you want a clean house? Is it because you are home more and think it is what you "should" do? That a good mother must have a clean house? If you are thinking things like this then you are feeling guilty, which is NEVER a good motivator (hands up those of us who were successful in losing weight by standing in front of a mirror saying "fat and lazy" over and over??) IMO you'd also be falling trap to what Betty Friedan called (back in the 1950's) the "feminine mystique" - that somehow as a wife and mother you will be fulfilled by accepting your higher calling as domestic goddess instead of focussing on nuturing your soul. If these more "negative" things are influencing your post, then I don't think you will end up with a clean house - you'll end up with guilt and angst. While I am a big fan of Flylady and all of the cleaning/organising books around these days (I have quite a collection heh heh!) I think that the latest trend is just another way to put women back in the home (pardon the soap box).

But if you want to have a clean house for (dare I say it) "valid" reasons, such as a genuine belief that mess and disorganisation is stopping you from enjoying life or that you are worried about your daughters exposure to dustmites, or maybe even that you feel your life will feel more "organised" or calm if you banish chaos from your life - if that's the case then I completely second the other suggestions here. Routine (like Skybie and Kim have suggested), reward (as wonderfully demonstrated by Lulu) and multi tasking (as described by Astrid) tend to be common themes for successful cleaning/organising.

Personally, I threw myself into the Flylady system and had incredibly detailed cleaning lists for every room as well. I got that bad that my neat freak-mother thought I was taking it too far (she has since relaxed and no longer dusts her door frames).

So to sum up - my only advice is don't try to be a neat freak for the wrong reasons. If you are doing it for anyone but yourself you'll only end up feeling resentful.

[Astrid]

Roryrory is right. You do need to look at the reasons for wanting things to be tidier. I have only just finished some counselling and we touched on the whole expectation thing, especially in relation to me being a parent and keeping house. Basically I am to do what keeps me happy. If that means ignoring the house for a week, then doing the big clean, then that is ok. If it means cleaning a bit each day, then that is ok too. Neither is better than the other in the terms of what works for the family and myself. Sometimes we just have to accept that we are in survival mode when we have small children and that doing the bare minimum is more than enough.