How clean is your house....really?

[alioops]

So Bath, when are you coming to my place? I need someone who likes cleaning to visit!!

[amberj]

Oh yay, I feel much better!I am normal!

And missymoo.....you actually clean your skirting boards?
(amberj looks in shame at the accmulated dust on hers)

[LimeSlice]

Does that mean I am abnormal??

I dont mind mess...I am the Queen of the "I'll get to it pile"...but I hate dirt. Really hate it. It does my head in and I get all crabby and it really ticks me off lol
I always do the cobwebs in the ceilings, I pull down my exhaust fans once a months to clean them....I vac every second day and mop at least 3 times a week.
The oven doesnt get cleaned often, only about once every 3 months....the bathroom gets scrubbed every week and the cupboards too. The kitchen cupboards get rearranged and cleaned about once a month so does the pantry and I clean out the fridge once a month too unless it needs it before then.
I clean my windows once a month and clean all the surfaces once a week.
My sink is always shiny. Except trying to teach our housemate to dry the sink is not working well....lol

Am I a freak?? I dont think it is that hard, I just get all motivated once I start and go nuts I suppose. I am a full time SAHM and I only have one child so maybe thats it? I am trying to start a business so that takes up a lot of my time...

I am also a night person though and function on very little sleep naturally, so I do a lot of things at weird hours (if no one noticed most of my BB posts are after 10pm lol)

My house isnt always the tidiest...but I things being dirty.

[amberj]

Alexis, you're not weird, you're a super-woman!

As I was reading your post I was wondering where you found the time to do it all until I read you are a bit of a night-owl. That's great! I need like 9 hours of sleep a night....sigh.

[mrsmac]

Alexis you are a domestic goddess!!
Bath- come to my house, bring Rosehannah with you!

[LimeSlice]

lol yeah.
Most of the house work gets done during the day though. Cant do noisy stuff at night - wakes Charlotte up lol
But yeah...I have cleaning rosters. I am a list person. And after having all the cleaning rosters for work I just thought it made sense to have them at home.
I am a lazy perfectionist - if it is too much effort to do it perfectly, I just wont bother at all lol So having the lists makes things so much easier to get done - I like being able to cross something off.

OMG I sound like a nutter!

Anyway, work out how often you want to do the things you need to do...make a list and work out how often they need to happen. Then you can know what you want to have done on a daily, weekly, monthly etc basis. then it doesnt matter if the bathroom cupboards are a little grimy, because they got cleaned 2 weeks ago and will get done again in another 2 weeks, iykwim?

I cannot believe I am about to put this on the internet, but I have laminated lists for cleaning, so I dont have to keep writing it out....I just find that the more organised I am about cleaning, the more often it gets done and it really doesnt take that long to clean the house. I can do EVERYTHING in a house in one 8 hour day.
If you are spreading those same tasks over weeks or months, then you are looking at very little time each day....you just need to be regular and know what you are doing on each day.

Im going to stop now lol

[mrsmac]

OK Alexis NOW you are scaring me LOL

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

My house:

is not filthy. Ye, it needs vacuuming and there's paperwork on the dining table and some washing up to be done, but it's clean mess. Just like DS's toys out is clean mess.

is not covered in dust, although dusting is infrequent.

There's a pile of washing to be done and damp washing drying in the house.

The bathroom is usually not covered in old hair and skin... usually!

TBH it's quite neatish atm because we had people round last weekend. But it's not neat by any standard! Would take 15 minutes of me on my own, no DS around, to get to a decent standard.

[fionas]

My house is a disgrace. For the people who like the show Black Books, I feel a bit like Mannie (spelling?) when he calls in the cleaners saying, "at the moment, I'm eating scrambled egg ... out of a shoe ... with a comb."

ATM, I have an excuse because we are renovating. However, there's only a few more days of that to go so I will soon run out of excuses.

I am putting all my eggs into the "I need a steam mop" basket.

[amberj]

I find it very sad indeed that I find the thought of a weekend on my own to clean and organise my house quite dreamy and wonderful. Sexual fantasies- bah! Give me time alone in a clean house anyday!!

[Roryrory]

When I was home with Flynn, I actually reached the stage where, at 8pm one Sunday night, the whole house was clean. I mean the whole house. All the cupboards were in order. My spices were alphabetised. The sinky shone. The floors squeeked as you walked across them. This was while I was working part time. I was Fly-Ladying like there was no tomorrow. (I was lucky, my first born was the most placid baby on earth and slept 3 times a day until he was 1 - he is now nearly 3 and still sleeps 1-3 hours a day)

And lo, there was peace. The Goddess of Clean was pleased. Her heart sung with the knowledge that she was A Good Mother, A Good Wife, and A Good Housewife.

Time passed. And on the next day, the Goddess say that mess needed cleaning. So she did.

More time passed. And on the second day, the Goddess say that mess needed cleaning. So she did.

More time passed. And on the third day, the Goddess say that mess needed cleaning. So she did.

More time passed. And on the fourth day, the Goddess say that mess needed cleaning. So she did.

More time passed. And on the fifth day, the Goddess say that mess needed cleaning. And she though "AM I IN A FRIKKEN BILL MURRAY MOVIE OR WHAT!!"

I realised I was in groundhog day. I had thought that once the house was "clean" it would, to a certain degree, stay that way. But nooooo, people have to eat, kids drop stuff, husbands don't stack the dishwasher, dust piles up!

Fast forward two and a half years and I am a full time lawyer again and now have a nearly 3 year old, a 15 month old and a stay-at-home hubby (who is great with the kids and working in renovations and gardening but domestically is a bit backwards!). And my house is organised (sort of - but the bottom of the kitchen drawers need a wipe out), clean (sort of - I mop once a fortnight but the boys trash the place within a day) and tidy (sort of - everything is a bit skew-iff but in the right place).

So the moral of the story - if you are a neat freak at heart like I am (I admit to having had a weekly and monthly flylady roster which I still look back on fondly) your house will go trhough stages of cleanliness and disorder. Suck it up - life is only sweet if you see the dust as icing sugar on your time with your children rather than soot in your eye LOL!!!

[Marlene]

My house is absolutely spotless......








if you keep your eyes closed!!

[Visitor8]

marlene!

life is only sweet if you see the dust as icing sugar on your time with your children rather than soot in your eye

PMSL! Love it RR!

My house gets cleaned every day, just at night when the kids are sleeping. I prefer to get on the floor and play trains, teach Ash to move, sing silly songs, read a million books, over any cleaning, and that is how my day will roll

Oh how it was so much easier to juggle with one kid lol