Hellobee Boards

@Mrs. Sunshine: I agree! These tips are all helping me even though I'm staying at home with our LO. I find cleaning the house (apart from running around with the dyson stick) the hardest thing to fit in! Weekends are our only real time and that's when we have quality time with DH.

I lowered my standards! I try to keep the kitchen clean throughout the week. Friday night I pick up all DDs toys and DH vacuums Saturday morning. I'll dust every other week and bathrooms get done during nap time. Laundry is a weekend affair that DH and I tackle
Together. I'm happy if one floor of the house is clean at a time. I can't seem to get the entire house clean at once.

We couldn't justify the cost to hire a cleaning person. I think a big factor for us is that we don't live in a big place, only about 1k sq.ft. so the space is more manageable. I do a couple small chores in the morning before going to work (dishes, trash, make bed) and divide up the chores during the week. I am able to work out during my lunch break at work so I shower there. I consider me time working out, doing whatever on my commute to work (I don't drive) and reading at bedtime. I try to simplify the cleaning so it's quicker to do I also do lots of crockpot meals so I'm not really spending time cooking.

Housecleaner every other week, and I wfh once or twice a week and will fold laundry and clear clutter during conference calls.

@Pancakes: @happybaker:
Amen! Whether you SAH or WOH, keeping the house clean and doing everything else you want to do is hard. I've done both in the last year and both had their own challenges in how to keep things clean and keep myself sane and be a good mom and be a good wife. And I don't even cook! Now THOSE women amaze me. The ones that actually make dinner the majority of the week. And work. That's superwoman in my opinion.
To answer your question:
Im now back to SAH. I try to just go with what will make me happy each day during naps and after he goes to bed. Some days cleaning truly does make me happy. I just get the urge and clean the bathroom or reorganize my drawers. Or I just feel super motivated and energized so I plough through a ton of items on my to do list. Other days I feel super lazy and just want to lay on the couch and watch hours of TV before bed. I just do whatever makes me happy in those moments. Life is too short. I always do the minimum (which in my opinion is clean up the kitchen at the end of the night, or at least load the dishwasher).

I do have a cleaning lady once a month or so for the serious deep cleaning. I try to schedule her to come when we'll all be out of the house so I'm not stressing about naps, staying out of her hair, etc. So sometimes it's once a month sometimes we go a little longer than that. I understand it's expensive to do on a regular basis. But maybe if you got one just to do a "reset" of the house, you'll feel it's easier to maintain. Then maybe have her come quarterly? Or as a gift to each other for birthdays or anniversary?
Just brainstorming some ideas

We have someone clean our house every other week and she also changes the sheets. I do laundry once during the week and then on the weekends. I clean the kitchen each night when my husband does bath and bed...by clean I mean load/unload the dishwasher, wipe down counters. When my daughter is in bed, we both go around the house and just pick up all our crap...which basically means we throw all of her toys in the playroom and shut the door. I could not deep clean the house on my own. I also get a little depressed that we pay someone to clean our house and three days later you could not tell! But for those three days I'm really happy!

I'm *hoping* to WFH 2 days per week once I go back, so I'm thinking it'll be easier to clean, do dishes and laundry etc on those days

@.twist.: I know, we're terrible! I'm like, "I don't need to vacuum the stairs, we just did that a couple weeks ago." When we all know it was a couple months ago.

We try to upkeep a reasonable level of cleanliness by making basic clean up a part of our routine (wipe down kitchen and do dishes immediately after cooking or eating, pick up LO's toys every night, that sort of thing). We keep a vacuum downstairs where it is easily accessible and use it almost everyday in the living room and kitchen. The bathrooms are trickier, I try to do them when I have time on weekends, but basically I leave it until it is bad enough to bug me. I dust every few months when it gets obvious.

We could definitely use a deep clean, and I have toyed around with the idea of hiring someone, but our house looks mostly ok as is, so I always end up deciding not to.

@HappyBaker: I suppose I live in squalor too, since I have never wiped down my baseboards (with the exception of the kitchen 20 weeks ago) in the entire 3.75 years of living in my house.

Dh and I are fans of the 15 minute blitz. After bedtime is a good time for that. Just do as much as you can together in 15 minutes - it's surprising what you can do in that time but it isn't a huge commitment. Even if you do it every other day, it keeps up with most things. In that time one of us can do dishes, wipe down table and counters, and move laundry, the other can clean a bathroom (Windex wipes, Lysol wipes, Clorox toilet bleach, wipe around tub run, change towels - super basic). We prioritize kitchen, laundry, communal spaces like guest bath and living room. Our bedroom is usually dirtiest but no one sees it but us so whatever.

We will often dump clean laundry on our bed so we will chat and fold before we sleep which is a nice way to catch up. We keep a hamper in the hallway by the washer so if it's full one of us throws in a load as we pass. A load usually gets done every day. We do toy pick up with DS as part of bedtime routine so his bedroom isn't a disaster and we will usually gather all the toys into a bin in his play area at some point mostly because he plays better when he can "discover" them again in a box the next day. Our bedroom or DH's office becomes the "dump" area if we just have to keep some junk stowed until we have time to organize it.

Usually once a week DH or my mom vacuums and my mom or I wipe the hardwood in the kitchen and the gym mats in DS' play area.

DH is assigned to taking garbage and diaper genie to the curb and I am in charge of emptying all the waste baskets inside the house. That's just once a week too.

Meals we try to keep stuff on hand for DS so we can get him fed fast. Frozen peas and carrots, nuggets, meatballs, silver dollar pancakes, yogurt cups, fresh fruit, batches of soup or all in one meals - things we can thaw or nuke and throw on his tray in under 5 minutes. For us we keep easy staples - always hot brown rice in the rice cooker, pasta and sauce, frozen meatballs/sausages/pre-cooked meat, frozen veg - and some kind of salad green or crudité veg. Unless it's a crockpot meal, I usually don't want to cook something that takes more than 30 minutes on a weeknight.