How clean is your house on an average day?
Some people let things pile up and then have a designated cleaning day to get things in order.
Some pick up here and there so there’s always a tug of war between 
completely clean and disorderly.
And then there are the OCD sufferers (no, really, I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) who cannot think straight if the floor isn’t clean or if the counters are piled up with clutter.
Seriously, if it wasn’t so bad it’d be funny.
I cannot sit at my desk and work or focus on a subject with the kids if there are crumbs all over the counter or dishes everywhere.
What makes it worse? We live on a farm in a very rural area. We have dogs, cats, horses, goats, ducks, cows, and chickens. You-know-what gets tracked in on a daily basis and it drives me crazy!
But we have a weekly schedule that we mostly stick to that helps.
*Weekends are a battle I don’t fight. We are either all home and enjoying time together as a family, or we’re in and out, making messes and just doing the minimum to keep up. I let it pass, knowing I’ll attack the mess during the week.
Monday morning the dishes get done, the counters and all other surfaces get cleaned. I pull out the Dyson and get to work on the floors. We have epoxy-coated cement floors, and the Dyson is a D-R-E-A-M come true! Worth every penny – 5 years and counting. I’ll then run the steam mop over the entire kitchen, mud area, hallway, and other high traffic areas.
Depending on what else is going on, I’ll then clean all glass surfaces, including the windows. I may clean the outside windows, depending on the season and if they are dirty.
The kids wipe down the counters, clean the bathrooms, wipe down the stainless appliances in the kitchen, take out all of the trash and straighten their rooms.
No One is Perfect, said the pile of 4-day old clean clothes…
Clothes get washed, dried, folded and ironed if needed, all in one day. That’s the goal anyway. Do I occasionally have to rewash a load that I completely forgot about? Absolutely. Do I sometimes have to take clothes from a clean basket and toss them into the drier to get wrinkles out, because they sat at the foot of my bed for 3 days? Of course! None of us is perfect, but we try and that’s what counts.
That pretty much covers everything that can be seen by any company that stops by. Good enough for a farm, and most anyone I know.
About every few months, I’ll decide to clean a little deeper, like dusting the tops of bookshelves, cleaning out the refrigerator, straightening the closets, but that’s not often.
On a Daily Basis
After school is finished for the day, no matter what time it is, the kids straighten their rooms and then they get free time. Evening chores include feeding the animals, getting dinner ready, baths, and I do a quick clean up while they are reading in bed.
When the house is really messy after a super busy weekend, we make things fun. We’ll turn music on and play games like who can find the most dirty clothes, who can clean their room the fastest, and other silly games.
In reality, no one likes to clean up, but if we can all laugh while cleaning it’s not so bad.
What works in your day?
Leave a Reply