help - spending all my time of cleaning

wealldeservepretty

Hi all; I work full time, and on my days off, I feel like all I do is clean.  My husband does clean, too, but I feel like we are doing something wrong, because I feel like all my spare time is devoted to keeping our house clean - i.e. laundry, bathrooms, kitchen clean up, decluttering, etc.

Any tricks you use to keep yourself from being a slave to cleaning?  TIA for your insight... 

toothpastechica

First of all, I gave up the dream of living in a spotless house all the time, we set aside a day to clean (of course things like the dishes ect get done on other days too), and do all the major stuff on one day, each doing certain chores. The rest of the week I don't bother making a huge effort unless guests are coming over, then I;ll enlist H to help again.

There is always going to be more to clean, so basically we just set a limit on it and choose not to worry needlessly about something that is never going to be 'done', because as soon as its done you have to eat or something and it gets messy again anyways. We are fairly neat people to begin with though...no promises when kids are in the picture!

cjcouple

Set a chore chart and no matter how tired you are after work, stick to it.

Two small chores a night, plus one load of laundry and dishes/wipe counters...whole thing should take about 45 minutes per night but spread out.

Chores are:

Clean bathroom (2 days) this takes the longest

sweep/vacuum/swifer

dust/windex/wipe down appliance fronts

Strip bed and remake

sweep again

I fold my load of laundry at night while watching a show.  Takes 10 minutes. Without kids you can probably even get laundry every other day. 

I also will take one weekend day a month and hand wash my floors and reorganize my cabinets.

hth 

If you stay on top of it, it can stay pretty tidy. there are lots of chore lists on pinterest but here is a sample

 

 

selenavaz

What I do is, I do a bit of cleaning everyday. Like I clean up the kitchen well before I sleep so I do not wake up to a mess. And also I sort out the laundry clothes daily. This keeps most of the mess at bay. So on my off days I dont have too much task apart from the weekly cleaning. Doing a bit regularly is the key of not wasting your off days cleaning.

Malvagia

toothpastechica:

First of all, I gave up the dream of living in a spotless house all the time, we set aside a day to clean (of course things like the dishes ect get done on other days too), and do all the major stuff on one day, each doing certain chores. The rest of the week I don't bother making a huge effort unless guests are coming over, then I;ll enlist H to help again.

There is always going to be more to clean, so basically we just set a limit on it and choose not to worry needlessly about something that is never going to be 'done', because as soon as its done you have to eat or something and it gets messy again anyways. We are fairly neat people to begin with though...no promises when kids are in the picture!

 

This is basically what I go by.  When we moved into our house I was unemployed.  I spent all that time cleaning, organizing and looking for work.  When I finally got a job I realized that my standards had to go down otherwise I would drive myself crazy.  We wash dishes everyday but I spend about 45 minutes a week doing chores.  The less you own the less there is to clean.