How great is this chat? I found it on Pinterest when I was looking for printables for my Home Management Binder (blog post coming soon) and feel like I need to tape it on my fridge as soon as I get back to Sicily. I'm sure the whole house cleaning process as outlined here would take me
Since moving to Sicily and having a child, the house cleaning and home management tasks have mostly settled on my shoulders, and I'm always eager for advice as I learn this "art of homemaking." (I would have laughed at that expression before, but now I am convinced it is an art... and I don't know how to be artistic yet!)
I'd love to hear your favorite house cleaning or home management tip. What do you do to keep a quiet, clean home?
"I would have laughed at that expression before, but now I am convince it is an art..." Me, too! Becca, what a great find on Pinterest! Although I am too ADD to do the entire chart in one day, maybe just picking three items from each of the boxes everyday would help me stay focused. :) Loving your blog! Hope you have a great weekend.
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ReplyDeleteThis chart is just what I needed today! We are hosting a party tomorrow night and I have not done any cleaning, so I'm blitzing it tonight!! This will help me stay on track, I think :) Miss you, friend! Looks like you've been having lots of fun!
ReplyDeletePS Here is my cleaning tip... we do not have a dishwasher so we do the dishes by hand. I try to do all of the dishes every night before going to bed so that they can dry overnight and I can put them away before going to school in the morning. For some reason it is a task that I enjoy doing, probably due to the instant gratification of completing a menial task! It also helps the kitchen to look less cluttered when the dishes are put away and the sink is empty, which appeals to the neat-freak side of me. Of course there are only two of right now so we shall see if I keep up the good habits once the baby is here :)
Love this tip, Ab! Usually I do all the dish washing at night while Elliott spends an hour or two with Lena before bed (the only time he gets with her during the week). This works well for both of us and I love having a fresh, clean kitchen each night! Sometimes it takes me awhile to get around to putting all the dishes away the next day, though. :-)
DeleteYou are right - homemaking is an art! I'm learning as I go, too. I tried a "chore chart" like that, but found that it wasn't my style at all. Seeing all those tasks on one page like that stresses me out because there's no way I could get them all done in one day! I grew up with something like that. We didn't have an actual chart, but my mama had in her head a list of what we had to do every Saturday. We'd get up early and immediately start cleaning, and continue until the afternoon. Of course, some Saturdays I got to be a kid and do kid stuff, but most of the time this was how my Saturdays went, and I HATED it! I vowed not to do that when I had my own house. But you know what? In the beginning, that's exactly what I did! Now, though, I clean throughout the week. I just do a couple of things every day of the week. One night after work I'll dust, one night I'll clean the bathrooms, etc. I do at least one load of laundry pretty much every day. And the dishes get washed after supper every night (we don't have a dishwasher either). I still have some cleaning to do on Saturday, but I don't have to do it ALL on my day off, and its so much beter! (:
ReplyDeleteNikki, this is just what my mom did too! We called them "Saturday Morning Jobs" or SMJs, and we did them every Saturday from about age 4 until we left the house for college. Now, just like you, I try to do a few tasks each day, and it works better so that I can have the weekends to relax with my whole family together (or at least all 3 of us, haha) in a fresh, clean house.
DeleteOh that chart is so cool, thanks Becca! I actually printed it out and went through all the tasks that applied to me. (I didn't do the "If you have time" part.) From start to finish, including minor interruptions from my two boys, it took me 2 hours. Not bad, because I have the rest of the day to have fun with them!
ReplyDeleteThe only glitch I noticed for using the chart in my own family is that I got the various boxes done before the laundry was actually ready to be "switched." So I am technically done with all the check-off boxes, but only on my second load of laundry (with mountains more to do.) So if I can find a way to modify the chart to fit my laundry style, this will be a definite "go to" in my daily chores.
Wow, it only took you 2 hours?! And it's only 10:46am when you're commenting? You're a rockstar, Stacie!
DeleteAnd baseboards... those get cleaned a couple times a YEAR in my house...
Uhm...not a rock star, just a small house! :) (And I was definitely working up a sweat while I worked. I guess I combined my daily exercise with the chores, LOL)
DeleteOh, and I wanted to add: I didn't dust my baseboards. I mean really, I can't do it all in one day, eh? LOL
ReplyDeleteI love this chart! Like you, it would take me all day! And I normally divide tasks throughout the weeks and always save some for the kids on the weekends. But like you said, this is a great list to keep me moving when I'm not sure where to start or where to go next!
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