There's a cleaning forum????? Oh my.

I refuse to answer...on the basis that it may incrimenate me..LOL

I too agree not to answer....I don't want my MIL showing up with her infamous white gloves.

On that point, an older member of our community in her 70s that we are friend with was holding Hudson at the school while we were waiting on Rhiannon getting out of school. She made the comment that it has to be hard getting things done between feeding, changings, naps, loves, picking up after the kids and cooking dinner. Luckily Dan was there and it was funny to see the look on his face. He is always after me about the looks of the house, and to hear someone else comment on how hard it must be , and the look on his face was priceless.

Stacie

Score one for the at-home mom, Stacie! My sis is a partly at-home mom in a 4300 square foot home. All cement floors. That's a LOT of mopping. With three active kids and three dogs it's never done. This morning she said she walked around and found 17 socks on the floor. They were not there before school was out yesterday afternoon. She pointed out she has only three children.

Her husband wants to know what she does all day...

I knew I was out of my element when I heard my mom discussing dusting with my good friend, and how they sprayed polish right on their white dusting gloves to go quickly over things. I left the room when they started talking about using q-tips to get into small places....

I think the reason people have the ''calm feeling'' when they come here, is because I was expecting them and cleaned up before they got here. I often invite people over, so I will make myself clean.

I take the 15 minute approach. (laundry, bathroom spot cleaning, vacuuming) Do something for a little while, and you eventually get it done. That said, I'm very big on making cleaning a family activity. Many hands really does get the work done faster (which is why I have two kitchen sinks), and if you draft the people who live there to help clean, it's amazing how much easier it is to keep it that way. You know, people object when someone else comes along and messes up their work! Putting on some music everyone likes and making your focus to have it done by the time it ends, is helpful.

If you have surface clutter to deal with, that's another issue which will require energy in a different direction. (There's also an Organizing forum.)

Keb Mo sings a song that says, ''Everyone likes a party, but nobody wants to clean.'' Oh Yeah. It's much easier to get people to come here, than get invited to their house!

Have company! This is the only way our house gets clean. Then I know the cleaning has to get done....no excuses. Now not that it doesnt get done in a quick job.

I am a stay at home wife, who works has a summer job in out of our gardens. So I have no excuse at all. Didnt inherit my moms cleaning genes either....LOL My MIL used to call me on Saturday afternon and asked if I had my Saturdays work done. I would think "Are you kidding me". Saturdays when our kids were growing up were for basketball, baseball and marching band or jazz band competitions.
Cleaning is just done differently in our household.

The key for me about those paper piles, is dont keep it when you first open the mail if you dont need it. We get so many magazines that we dont order....they go in the trash right away. We never even look at them.

Dusting....I like a Swifer....but it probably just pushes the dust in another direction. Oh well. I am not know as Mrs. Clean. I think during the summer I see so much dirt in the gardens, it doesnt bother me in the house.

Look forward to see how others on this forum clean:)

I hate cleaning too. Which is why, as soon as I could afford it, I hired a housekeeper. She comes every other Friday and she is wonderful.

Before I was able to pay for this service, I was a very bad housekeeper and didn't clean anything often enough except the kitchen -- only because I can't cook if the kitchen isn't clean. But bathrooms, floors, dusting, etc, suffered.

Now, I do my own laundry (she does one load of bed linens & towels when she's here), and try to keep things straight most of the time. Two incentives get my house picked up (organized as opposed to clean): Thurs night before housekeeper comes (she can't clean if everything's in her way!) OR if friends are coming over. Between those two things, my house is usually pretty together.

Not always though, after all, the inborn slob in me has to rear its ugly head sometimes! LOL

"I knew I was out of my element when I heard my mom discussing dusting with my good friend, and how they sprayed polish right on their white dusting gloves to go quickly over things. I left the room when they started talking about using q-tips to get into small places..."

I'm still laughing!

; ) Yes, sadly that's a true story. (I wasn't laughing at the time.)

My mother made me dust the baseboards when I was a kid. You know, I don't CARE about my baseboards, but I do enjoy clean windows. They get cleaned once a year whether they need it or not. I will never enjoy cleaning, but I do like when it's done.

Claire, my MIL is like that. Blecchh.

I've learned to lower my standards. (grin) Actually, I work about 60 hours a week and with Dad gone the farm is all mine to deal with after I leave the office. Add my garden and canning what I grow, helping Ashley with homework, well, there's not much time left. I clean at about 1 a.m.

My kitchen is always pretty clean and my bathroom is too, those are the two rooms that I really hate to have dirty. My floor nearly always needs mopping though, that blasted cat is either shedding everywhere or hacking up a hairball every other minute.

I clean something every night. On weekends I do the kitchen and bathroom. If I spend a Saturday cooking I'll often spend 14 or 15 hours on my feet between cooking, my regular cleaning and cleaning up the mess I made cooking!

I never watch television and that helps, I guess. I do try to fit in a 45 minute Pilates video nearly every night, so that's my entertainment.

when my girls were small I used to try really hard to keep things clean, and always failed. I eventually realized that time with my girls was more important and then I didn't care so much. Plus, I grew up on a farm, I'm used to barns and pig pens, LOL.

I've never had a cleaning service and my ex never cleaned anything, ever. he also didn't clean the pool, mow the lawn or fix anything. It took a while for me to learn that I couldn't do everything all by myself, all the time.

Now when Elery is here he helps, but he's mostly here a couple of weekends a month, so that's not a whole lot of extra help.

Annie

Yikes, I feel like a freak...I love to clean!

I have a small house, so it really takes no time at all once I set my mind to it. I just start in one room and work through the entire house.

The one thing I really hate to do is dust. But I think that may be because I have so much to dust (log walls and railings can trap a lot of dust).

My house is not immaculate and I would not eat off my floors, but all in all the house is usually presentable.

Linda

eeek! I can't chalk it up to astrological signs - as my birthday twin Linda loves to clean...Lol.

I used to have a handle on it...even when Will was a baby...but the last couple of years, I can't seem to ever get ahead. It's maddening, because I love the feeling of no clutter cleanliness. It's just not much of a reality.

Oops, I should have said EX-MIL. My current MIL is Elery's stepmom and she's a sweetheart. Also in her 80s so she can't really see the dust anyway. (grin)

Annie

I invite people over, this alone gives me the incentive to get er done!

Then I run around like a mad woman dusting, swiffering, mopping and vacuuming.

I love it when it's all clean. I feel so at peace.

"I've always abhorred routine" That, and your active life will certainly impact your ability and interest in housekeeping tasks. On the contrary, I am shackled by routine when it comes to cleaning and organizing. I struggle to tackle "C" until "A" is done. Also, I like the challenge of cleaning and organizing.

Perhaps if you employ a house cleaning service to thoroughly clean the house then you can engage the whole family and go forward with a clean slate.

I've always dreamed of buddying up with a friend who has a similarly cluttered place. We work together, kinda motivating, at set appointment times, trading off houses. Four hands are faster than two and you can socialize at the same time.

Company! I agree. My sister and I always joke about that.

Unfortunately, I have found routine works best for me. I was thinking about how I got so much more done when I worked full time! I am a SAHM now and if I don't keep myself to a routine, I fall into the "there is always tomorrow" trap.

I have changed the way I clean. Before I would dust every room, then bring out the vacuum and do every room, etc. Inevitably, I would get distracted by something in some room and I never felt that anything was "done". So, now my stragedy is to clean one room at a time from top to bottom. This is so much more satisfying! When I told my sisters and Aunt about my "discovery" they were all like "duh, we have always done it that way". lol

I also challenge myself or time myself. I know. It sounds pathetic because it is - but it amuses me. So, if I put the kid's oatmeal in the micro for 2 minutes, I am like okay empty the dishwasher in that 2 minutes or whatever! I always have something in my hand destined for somewhere else. That is how I ended up going out to the car one day with a dishtowel and my keys were in the linen drawer. Took me a while to figure out what I did!

I guess it's a sickness, but I clean pretty continuously throughout the week. The one room that I get really upset about being messy is the kitchen, so it's never more than five minutes from clean. The rest of the house takes me about an hour and a half to dust, vacuum, mop and scrub because it's only 1100 square feet. Throughout the week, I'll spot clean a mirror here or a table there. The trick that helps me out the most is never walking through the house empty handed. There's always something that needs to be put away, so I grab an item or two every time I move and put them back. Taken that way, I never really have to do a big decluttering on the weekend (which could drive me nuts).

Since I got my shark steamer, I don't procrastinate nearly as much over cleaning the windows. The only thing I don't really like doing is dusting. It just irks me for some reason. I do like it when it's done though! If the house is "dirty" for too long I start to feel like I can't breathe. Yes, I've been accused of being OCD from time to time... :)

Between the husband and the animals, I've learned to live with a little mess. My husband is a "collector." I won't say he's a clutterbug, but he's close. I'm sure living with me is a trip for him as well because I'm so compulsive about putting things away he sometimes complains he can't find things. It's all a tradeoff I guess!

Bri

I call Anna and Natalia..darfc...

But in between the visits I will dust and straighten up, but then again I do not have little ones leaving socks on the floor. The "ladies" do not do my laundry or my windows other than the dog noses, nor my silver and ironing.

Give yourself a big spring cleaning, then do a little each day. Can you get the kids to help?

My mother was Mrs. Clean (who couldn't cook)& I developed an abhorrence of it. So I'm a pretty good cook & a lousy housekeeper. I've always felt if you couldn't write your name in the dust, it wasn't ready. Now I have someone who comes in every 2 weeks & cleans for me. Strangely enough, she doesn't do as good a job as I do in those rare moments of insanity when I DO clean!

OMG I hate to clean. My mother was a neat freak. I had to vacuum every day of the week and help her clean on Saturday when I was older. If I didn't do it right I had to do it again.

I am one of those that struggles with clutter. Every now and then I do get the urge to clean and organize but then it just returns. My feeling is a little dust won't kill you.

Linda, I have a log home too but my logs are rounded and hand peeled so dusting won't work. I get out the canister vacuum with the brush attachment and vacuum away. It beats dusting any day.

I'm really happy to know I'm not the only one with this problem.

Tracey

Tracey, your mom and my mom must have been sisters...total neat freak! Although I hated doing it, I learned to appreciate having things in their place and having things clean. That, and I'm a true Virgo, so any kind of organization is right up my alley.

We were poor growing up and my mom used to say, "Just because we're poor, it doesn't mean we have to live like slobs". We had an older home, with older furniture, but it was always neat & clean.

So, I have to say that's one thing I learned to appreciate from my mom, even though it's still not my idea of fun. Routine helps and like Bri, I rarely leave the room empty handed. I LOVE the new Swiffer duster thingies with the wand and Mr. Clean Magic Erasers.

We try to have most, if all of our household stuff done by the weekend so we're free to do other things.

I must be a poor excuse of a Virgo. There are some things I am very organized and anal about but cleaning and home organization isn't one of them.

I love it when it's clean and everything is in it's place but it's that way for a very short time. This house is too small. I will be getting a dumpster this spring so I can get rid of things I don't use or need. That should help.

I think my mom ruined cleaning for me and my aunt. When they were little my mom who is the oldest made my aunt clean the same way. If it wasn't done right do it over.
I tease my mom about it frequently. It's funny she never says a word about the clutter when she comes over.

Tracey

Well, there you have it. My mom was a lousy housekeeper and I would clean before I had friends over because it embarrassed me. So now I really don't mind cleaning, and it still embarrasses me if someone sees my house a mess!

Tracey, I have hand peeled logs, too but I take a rag and bucket to them a couple of times a year. I was not aware that you also lived i na log home. I'd love to see pictures of it sometime!

Linda

Clean? What's that?

anon

How do I clean? Barely ever and not well. I use Shaun's "visitors" method.

"I knew I was out of my element when I heard my mom discussing dusting with my good friend, and how they sprayed polish right on their white dusting gloves to go quickly over things. I left the room when they started talking about using q-tips to get into small places..."

I'm still laughing about this. When I see someone in Target with Q-Tips in their cart I will have to try very hard to not envision them getting the nooks and crannies squeaky clean all over their house :) LOL

I find it works best for me if when I see something dirty to clean it right then. The mood may never return!

I like floor swiffers too and they are reusable. I like that they are quiet- when dh and Dad are watching a movie I'm only half interested in, like last night's Taken, I can swiffer around the house silently and get A LOT done. I spray the floor cloths with a hardwood floor cleaner and go through maybe 20 or so while dong the floors. As good as vacuuming and mopping combined and they pick up tons of pet hair. The dirty cloths get washed to use again.

I try to also break it down into rooms too. As in I will thoroughly clean this one room today and that's it.

And the company over thing always works but not for deep cleaning.

Blueiris I recommend this FlyLady Web site to help you with some ideas on a cleaning system. This approach used to work somewhat for me.

www.flylady.com

I wouldn't sign up for the e-mail list though, I am just not that into it to have my in box fill up with cleaning reminders! I just use the site occasionally to get motivated and to get some new ideas.

My mom had 5 children, worked, and was a very clean housekeeper. We teased her that she even washed the garbage. Well, I am my mother's daughter and think about the teasing every time I wash my garbage!

So this thread came back to life. Sigh. Right now I have five rooms that are clean because I had weekend visitors last weekend. Unfortunately my bedroom is not included.

I started cleaning out my winter clothes and making the big seasonal switchover. I pulled out all the winter clothes and weeded the things I'll never wear again, sent a big pile to the dry cleaner, but the rest are lying on the floor of my room.

I started it in the morning, went off to do other things, went upstairs to go to bed only to find it buried under clothes. I neatly lifted them off and laid them on the floor where they still are a week later. I literally have a narrow path between my bed and the door.

In the little time I have outside of work, I spend most of my time in the garden since there is a lot to accomplish out there before the very hot weather sets in.

Maybe I'll leave the winter things on the floor until it's winter again. I'm sure that will be in the blink of an eye.

Also, my spring/summer clothes shrank in the closet over the winter. How does that happen??