New Jersey Nesties
StephNJohn2008
member
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Cleaning tips needed
I keep my house overall neat and try hard to keep the clutter away (I do hate clutter) but it doesn't come natural. Unfortunately John's no better so I feel like it's a battle to keep the house how I like it, especially now with the baby. I'd love to get a cleaning person/service but John has some moral opposition to this (ugh lol) so that's off the table for now.
If you keep a neat/tidy home or love cleaning I need some tips. Do you do a little each day/have a cleaning day/etc.? How much time do you spend? Any other tips would be great... I feel like this is common sense and yet I still struggle!
Re: Cleaning tips needed
I don't really have any tips but since I work FT, my cleaning gets done Saturday's. MH works till noon every Saturday so I try to get some done like the floors when he's not home. Upstairs gets done while he's gone too. The girls come up with me since Jilly wont leave my side. They play in their rooms while I do the bathroom and straighten up. Everyrthing else gets done "eventually". lol As long as its not too cluttered, I'm happy!
And this is not every Saturday.....tomorrow will be cleaning since the weather will be crappy. Plus the girls jsut need a change of scenery around the time I do it. I usually run errands on Saturday mornings with them before everything gets crowded.
i'd like to know what the moral opposition is.
we both work FT and were both getting frustrated with spending weekends scrubbing and straightening and dusting and vacuuming when we could be spending quality time together instead. my kids go to sleep around 9pm or so, and while i can pick things up and even dust, i still have dinner to clean up and lunches to prep and sometimes i want to sit for 10 minutes too. and i'm not vacuuming at 10pm.
we pay someone to come in to our home and clean every other month. we straighten up to prepare for her - it's not her problem to put toys away so she can vacuum. she doesn't change our sheets or do laundry, but i do that every single weekend. this way, we can stay on top of things much better and cleaning the bathroom on the off week takes a lot less time so we don't mind a quick clean up.
Moral opposition was a joke on my part, but not completely. His hang up is that we're both capable so there's no reason. I grew up having a cleaning lady so I'm used to it- he grew up very different then me. He does a lot of the heavy cleaning, I do the straightening. He doesn't see the need. Honestly, I've told him it's the same as eating out, we don't NEED someone else to cook for us but it's a nice luxury.
Liz- he does do a lot, but I agree with you lol. I might try pushing it more bc I really hate cleaning...
I am pretty uptight about keeping the house clean and don't really find it hard to maintain - it does get messy sometimes and my upstair bathroom could use a scrubbing right now but I always make sure that the house can stay at a level where we can make it presentable with only 10 minutes of cleaning in case of a surprise guest.
We pick up everyday. Everything in my house has a place. All toys go in labeled boxes or the toy closet. I had dh put hooks by the door so that we can pit our coats up along with anything else that needs to go on the car or be returned or whatever.
I clean the kitchen every day as I cook dinner. While water is boiling or something is heating up or whatever, I clean.
The floors are only cleaned twice a month. I keep the mop and a stean cleaner in the pantry and alternate between the two. We have a no shoes policy in the house. I keep a basket by the door. It really helps keep the floors clean. We can walk in white socks the whole day and they don't get dirty- proof that the floors are clean in my house.
I keep cleaning supplies in each bathroom and will randomly do a quick clean after using the bathroom sometimes. Takes like 10 minutes.
I make the dining room and my office off limits so those rooms are generally neat. Just need a quick dusting once in a while.
why does she or anyone in your family need to know that you have hired a service?
loooove it lol! I might try this approach. My mom always says to just hire someone and tell him I cleaned lol! I think after living with me for 5 years he'd know it wasn't me.
We are trying out different schedules right now that have us cleaning certain "zones" of the house on certain days, but not cleaning everyday. I'm not 100% sure this will work. I'm sure it will need tweaking, but when we work together we can have it down in about 15-30 minutes. We work FT so we try to get any "tasks" done as quickly as possible.
So, here's the current plan
Everyday: Unload/load dishwasher; clean dishes from dinner; prep boys' lunches and sweep kitchen.
Sunday: Mop kitchen and halls, more through cleaning of kitchen counters, clean out fridge, gather trash and take out, change all the sheets and towels
A weekday (est. Monday): clean, vacuum and dust dinning room and office (neither of which are used much so this is barely any work)
A weekday (est. Wednesday): clean bathrooms, take out trash
A weekday (est Thursday): clean, vacuum and dust living room and basement (these take a little longer but I ask Matthew to put up toys before bed)
Saturday (must be while kids are awake) vaccuum, dust and clean kid's rooms
It sounds like a lot but it's <30 minutes in most cases if we work together.
And I try to do a load of laundry mostly everyday but sometimes it doesn't get folded until a night when we are just watching tv.
LOL! Definitely this. DH doesn't want to spend his free time cleaning a house, and neither do i! Our cleaning service is worth the money.......
She cleans a few house around the corner from my house so with my luck she'll see a car she doesn't know and ask who it was. I wouldn't want to lie but its just not something I'm comfortable doing.