A few months ago, in preparation for our newly reduced income, we canceled our cleaning service. I know, I know, the world’s smallest violin is playing songs of sadness for my incredible personal hardship.
Since then, we have been struggling to get back into the cleaning groove. It is not going particularly well.
The cleaning people came every other week and did a thorough top to bottom cleaning. That meant that ever two weeks, we had to make sure we cleaned up all our clutter. Without the pressure of someone else coming in to clean, we are finding it much harder to motivate ourselves to clean up everything all at once. It also doesn’t help that our efforts are largely in vain if the children are home, because they follow behind us leaving a trail of detritus in their wake.
Also, my own personal deep cleaning does not appear to be as clean as the cleaning team’s was and things seem to get dirty again faster than before. Or maybe I just notice it because I am the one who is cleaning it up now. Actually, I am sure I am noticing more due to the increased frequency of arguments Mr. A and I have had about dumb cleaning issues in the past month.
I really want the house to be clean. I get quite testy when it is messy, not to mention how crazy it makes me when it is actually dirty. Unfortunately, no one in our house seems to be prone to perfectionistic cleaning, so we are left with my best efforts. I confess, by “best effort”, I really mean a mediocre effort that lasts only until I get bored and want to do something else.
I even got a book from the library, hoping it would show me where I am lacking. I never knew how very badly I suck at housekeeping until I skimmed the first quarter of this book. I mean, it is 837 pages long! I don’t know why I thought I would find the answer to a spotless house in 10 minutes a day in there.
Right now, our typical daily cleaning includes the following: picking up toys (all freaking day long), breakfast dishes , lunch dishes, superficially clean up dinner mess and do dishes, clean up toys AGAIN. If we ate something with lots of crumbs, we sweep under the dining room table. Occasionally, if it is really yucky, I will also use the broom on the kitchen floor.
Otherwise, I leave most of the rest of the cleaning (bathrooms, kitchen, vacuuming, dusting, mopping) for the every other week big cleaning. I do the entire week’s laundry every Sunday night. I probably change the sheets once a month, if that.
When I was growing up, my mom had real issues around people seeing our house messy. On some level I really believed that we should be ashamed of our substandard housekeeping, though I now suspect we were really comfortably in the normal range. Some of that anxiety still lingers for me, though, and I half-believe other people are out there living in spotlessly clean houses.
So here is my question, are you really doing more than just straightening up on a daily basis at your house? If you were to be completely honest and rank your average house cleanliness on a scale of 1 to 10, where would it fall?
Let’s put it this way: Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome isn’t just a cutesy name thought up by the Flylady; it describ es my house to a T. AHC factor: 4?
At best a 4, and that is on a good day. If I know someone is coming over I vacuum everything in the house…otherwise, just vacuum the kitchen and living room and hope they don’t need to use the bathroom. You mean you are supposed to change your sheets in between children/animals throwing up on them? Well I’ll be. You learn something new everyday! Laundry once a week at best, sometimes I can make it a week and a half. I NEED the kitchen counters clean so I stack my clutter on the table or the desk. Most of my friends are the same as I am.
Nope. Pretty much straightening up on a daily basis and occasionally cleaning something that is really bugging me. As for the Avg House Cleanliness.. it depends on the area of the house. Our bedrooms are pretty clean but on the messy side (no beds are made). But the LR (incl. DR) and Kitchen are at about a 6. Surfaces are always clean but floors don’t get cleaned as often as they should since both kids are terrified of vacuum cleaner and i hate sweeping.
We have a maid who comes twice a week. She is totally worth what we pay her. On the days in between visits, when the dishes pile up in the sink and I play a game of wills with my husband about whose turn it is, I get despondent that we do not have a full time maid any more. Yes both of us work and yes labor is cheaper here (but not as cheap as in China – wow), but even if I had no day job, it would be very hard for me to give up this service. Very hard. You are brave.
My rank changes depending on who is going to see my house. I have definitely become more comfortable in our day to day mess. And my kids will tell you I am so much nicer when our house is “lived in.” When it’s clean and neat, I’m all satanic about trying to keep it that way!
I never make the beds unless I know someone is coming over for the first time and they will expect a house tour. I even used to tell the cleaning ppl not to make them because why would you? You are just going to mess them up again anyway. Who will even see them?
Our house is maybe at best a 5 unless people are coming over. I vacuum 2x/wk, but hardly ever mop. Kitchen and bathroom surfaces can be grimier than is really okay. I also feel like I pick up toys and put dishes in the sink/dishwasher all day long. I never had to make my bed growing up, bc my mom had had to as a kid and she thought it was stupid, but I started doing it on my own in college bc it drove me crazy to walk in and see a messy bed immediately. Now it just makes a better surface to pile clean laundry on.
Who knew I had so many thoughts about housecleaning?
Why are you calling my housekeeping “substandard”? Now that’s just not nice.
My question is what 1 represents on the scale. So cluttered that you can’t walk through a room? Dirty moldy dishes beneath piles of damp towels beneath empty pizza boxes? Unaccounted for stench? Or are we just talking counter clutter with floors that could use sweeping/vacuuming? I always hear people say that their houses are dirty but it’s hard for me to know what that means and I always fear that it means that there’s maybe some junkmail on the counter and an unwashed fork in the sink — in which case my house is about a -15 (although I believe nothing is currently moldy, damp or stinky).
OH how I wish we could afford the every other week maid. I loved it when we did it for a short while. It kept me sain and DH was happy I wasn’t biting everyone’s head off about the messy house.
I do try to pick things up before we go to bed each night. I try to make sure no dirty dishes are in the sink.
Deep cleaning like the bathrooms comes when I feel like it! Usually once a month or so when the toilets start looking bad. When I do them I might as well clean everything else in the bathroom. But there are only 3 of us so it doesn’t get that bad in the bathrooms.
Laundry I loathe… especially folding and putting up and ironing.
Dusting and vacuuming, doesn’t happen often. THere is always dust on a baseboard somewhere and I hate it! I love my little swivel sweeper. It gets up quick messes and even on the low pile carpet in a fix.
Oh how I would love a cleaning lady or guy!
I think we’re about a 7 most of the time, but when I’m working long hours it drops. The bathrooms we regularly use get cleaned once a week, the living room and dining room get dusted once a week, and the kitchen and dining room swept 2 – 3 times a week. Dirty bathrooms and kitchens gross me out, but dust doesn’t bother me as much so the less public areas of the house tend to go longer between cleanings. When my kids were little, kitchen and dining room floors were swept daily and mopped once a week or so, living room vacuumed 2 -3 times a week and bathrooms cleaned twice a week.
I think a lot depends on the age of kids, and the size of house. I had to spend a lot more time cleaning when I lived in a small house with four young kids than I do now, in a big house with two teenagers.
Oh, I would say a 1 is a 1. Seriously filthy and gross like those hoarding people on Oprah. And a 10 would be as clean as Oprah’s house probably is with an army of people to clean it very day. I remember on one show she said she likes her sheets changed every other day. I change mine once a month, so I assume that means her house is at least 15 times cleaner than mine.
As another Oprah aside, I lost all respect for her after one show where she chastised people for using the bottles that shampoo comes in. She wanted people to swap those bottles out for more attractive decorative ones! Seriously, can we say that she has unreasonable expectations?
I live by this :
Dust if you must, but wouldn’t it be better
Bake a cake or plant a seed
Ponder the difference between want and need.
Dust if you must, but there’s not much time,
With rivers to swim and mountains to climb,
Music to hear and books To paint a picture, or write a letter,
to read,
Friends to cherish and a life to lead.
Dust if you must, but the world’s out there,
The sun in your eyes and the wind in your hair,
A flurry of snow, a shower of rain,
This day will not come back again.
Dust if you must, but bear this in mind,
Old age will come, and its not kind,
And when you go, as go you must,
You yourself will make more dust!
xx
I’m with Anne Richards, do I really want my tombstone to say “She kept a clean house”? Our house is often dirty dirty and cluttered, but I’m not the maid. I used to clean all the time and be ANGRY and RAGE filled all the time about it. So now I give up and am happier even if it’s sometimes embarrasing to have people over. I still have people over. If I invite, I clean. If my husband invites, I don’t clean.
I hate cleaning! I want a clean house. I need a clean house. It makes me feel calm and settled. So my house is neat – I like picking up and organizing things. I like to do laundry and so sheets, towels, clothes etc. are washed at least weekly. But dusting, vacuuming, mopping mean someone is coming to visit. Just drop in company can deal with the house as it is. If I could find a good cleaning person I would hire it done. But frankly, I do know how to clean correctly and can’t stand paying someone for a half a** job. I had a friend whose house looked like those the before pictures on Clean House. We all went there regularly and had a great time. Once in a while we would help her clean it up but mostly no one minded her mess. She was a great hostess and made everyone feel welcome. I guess that is what really matters.
most days I’m probably an 8- but then again I have issues- I grew up in a clutter fest and my moms idea of cleaning meant vacuuming! love her to death but housekeeping is not her strong suit- so I’m sure I’m over compensating. I vacuum everyday- clean the bathrooms 2x a week (but my boys are gross) and make the beds everyday- I sweep the kitchen at least 2x a day and mop once a week- dusting happens once a week too. I change the sheets every other week and do one load of laundry a day. my husband is in charge of clutter- he is better at that than I am- it has become easier to do this since all three kids are in school m w and f…..I don’t get much done on the days my little girl is home……
God. We used to have a cleaning person too and she just didn’t show up one day. Poof! She was gone. I think she left the state. Anyway, back when I had her, I was on it. She would give me the one day of deep clean and then I would maintain it at an 8 all week. Now, I’m trying to keep my head above water. I’d say that I’m at a 2.5. Seriously.
We have the cleaning crew every other week, because, without them, Husband and I had awful fights. (And in fact, when we went a month without them coming (because they come on Thursday and both Christmas and New Year’s Day were Thursdays this year) we had a knock down, drag out argument.
I grew up in a house that was ALWAYS disastrously, embarassingly, really, really horrifyingly messy. (My mother is a minister now, when I was growing up she was a social worker, and she worked crazy hours and she is an incredibly giving, compassionate, talented and wonderful human being. She is a terrible house keeper.)
My husband’s mother is an oldschool Polish housewife. You could eat pierogis off their bathroom tile on any given day.
The point of this is, Husband does a ton of housework and never feels the house is clean enough. I do some housework and am grateful it doesn’t look like the house I grew up in. On a Thursday after the cleaning crew, the house is a 10-perfect-everything-in-it’s place. On a Tuesday BEFORE the cleaning crew, it’s a 4. And the cleaning crew is a really important part of keeping my marriage happy.
We canceled our cleaning service too when I started staying home. With the service, I could maintain at about an 8 the whole week. Now, I’d give us a 5. I’ve given up with keeping up with the toy clutter downstairs, but at least it’s downstairs. The 1st floor is usually sort of tidy, except when the couch cushions are being used as a castle, which is most of the time. With two dogs, unless I vacuum and sweep everyday, it always looks like I need to vacuum and sweep; lately if I get to it 2x’s a week I’m doing really good. They should be deep cleaned more, but I can usually only manage to spot clean. Bathrooms probably only get deep cleaned once a month, although I try to keep up with powder room once a week in case someone pops over. I *have* to straighten the bed everyday, it’s a thing with me, but the sheets? Changed about every 3 weeks.
I was raised by a mother that believed cleanliness is next to Godliness so our house is consistently at a 9. I have a cleaning crew that comes every three weeks, the owner tells me she feels like they are stealing from us because our house is clean when they get there but they wash the blinds, hand wash the wood floors and clean the baseboards. Yes I am a clean freak and work full time. I have 2 boys and a husband and we all pitch in. Beds are made every morning. You use a plate or a dish, you put it back in the dishwasher, you spill something you wipe it up. Linens and towels are wahsed once a week, even the dog gets a bath every otehr week (he is a maltese). Vacumming is done once a week and the wood floors are swept every day. We lead an active live, soccer, flag football, church, family nights, etc. But we are all much happier when things are clean and in their designated spot. I would say that not being a pat rack helps.
Probably a 3? I usually clean one room at a time before I run out of energy, so maybe the kitchen will have dishes done and counters clean and the stove wiped and the floor swept, but the living room will be ankle deep in toys and the laundry will be piled up and there will be six half-finished projects on the dining room table. Or the kids’ bedrooms will be neat and the sheets changed, but the bathrooms filthy with toothpaste in the sink. I would say a 2 but the one clean room at a time averages it up to a 3.
Cleaning is horrible. I thought about getting cleaning gnomes but the budget wouldn’t stand it. I honestly, truly do not know how my mother did it (she had three kids and no job outside the home, I have two and a full-time job, but still, I am nowhere even remotely close to her standard.)
I do just about exactly what you do, except I do 1-2 loads of laundry per day instead of all at once.
I’m always looking for new ideas, but I don’t think I’m gifted in this area.
My husband and I both work fulltime and have two kids, one of whom is a baby. My husband is one of the messiest people on the planet. I like things to be a 7 maybe? But it’s usually a 4 or so. I just can’t do it, I’m exhausted all the time, and I want to do other things occasionally. My husband hates spending money for a cleaning service, but it made me much more sane. Unfortunately, we can’t afford it right now.
My husband visits old people in the community who are having trouble taking care of themselves, and sees lots of compulsive/obsessive hoarders. The stories he tells me are jaw-dropping (I’ll spare you the details). I think maybe our house looks so good in comparison, he doesn’t think he needs to clean!
Those of you who keep your houses at an 8 — how much time do you spend on it? How much time does it take to keep your bathrooms clean, or the kitchen (for real?). I do often wonder if people are just more efficient ’cause I don’t know where all my time goes. It seems like there are people who pick things up as they walk through a room, who put things away after they’ve used them, and people who scatter debris, walk past it a thousand times, and then *plan* a big event around picking it up. (I am of the 2nd type, my husband even more so).
And, the kids are terrible. I notice this especially, because their school is compulsive about having them put away their “works” so the space is always clean and inviting. In their playroom, on the other hand, they pull everything out of the shelves and drop it on the ground, and the place turns into a trash heap. Then, they pick up random things and bring them to the living room, bedroom, office, and drop them on the floor.
bj
(BTW, my house is probably around a 7 after the cleaner comes, once a weak — she doesn’t do a great job, though we also leave a lot of clutter for her to work around, and goes down to a 3-4 on the worst days. It’s usually more messy than dirty, but there’s definitely dirt in places, too).
2 adults, both with full time jobs, 13 month old in daycare and 2 dogs in a 1000 sq foot house. No cleaning service. Husband grew up in spotless house with stay at home mom, I grew up in messy house with 2 working parents. He is more bothered by mess than me.
Public areas (kitchen and living room which are one big open space) a 7 most of the time. I do a 15-60 minute clean up after baby goes to bed every night. My husband does 30 minutes every morning. So we spend an average of an hour a day on keeping public areas of the home clean and tidy. I like not worrying that if we get a surprise visitor the place is presentable enough to have them in. Bathroom only gets done every 2 weeks so that could be much cleaner but luckily the ugly tiles the last owner put in hide dirt really well. God I hate cleaning toilets. We did a major, major declutter when we moved into this house since we had a 2 week old and knew we couldn’t maintain it otherwise. That helped enormously. We basically never unpacked all those little things that need dusting and kept it very, very minimal. That makes things much easier to stay on top of. So we have very little furniture and very little stuff in the main living area.
My bedroom…a 4 maybe? That’s where all the stuff that has no place to live ends up because we don’t spend a lot of time in there so it bothers us less to just throw it in there.
Whenever I do a good deed in this life I ask to be reincarnated as someone neat and organized. And tall. I wish it came naturally to me but it doesn’t. One of the main reasons I prefer to work outside the home is so I don’t have to do the bulk of the housekeeping alone.
oh, and the garage…a -30. It’s horrible. I keep saying we will spend a weekend and tackle it but really…how does anyone with young children find time to do something like that. It feels like an impossible task.
I’d give my house a 9 out of 10. You’ll be a lot less impressed by my cleaning abilities though when I tell you that I have a cleaning lady who comes in for a few hours 3 times a week. We used to have someone come in one full day a week, now we split it up and we find it keeps the house in much better shape to have someone come in to do 2-3 hours every other day. I’m good at tidying, but not so much at cleaning. If I was doing all the cleaning, I’d live in a smaller house with a lot less bathrooms! I do all the laundry though and we change sheets every weekend.
Julie
I can be very inconsistent. I’d say it can go anywhere from a four to a eight. Sometimes I get into a rhythm and can be really good for a week or so, and then I get unmotivated and it falls apart. The kid’s room is consistently cluttered. Laundry often piles up. I do try to keep the downstairs clean (Which in my smallish house is just the living room and kitchen.) But there are days when the hardwood floor is just gross and the dishes pile up.
One thing I’ve figured out since having kids. My parents house growing up was always spotless. We all had duties that we had to do religiously. Once a week I had to clean my room plus two others. Everyone did every saturday morning. I got jealous of the kids who watched Saturday morning cartoons because I was always cleaning house.
Anyway, what I have come to realize is how much easier it must have been for my mom to keep the house clean when NO ONE WAS EVER THERE. My mom worked full-time, my dad was usually out of town. My sister and I spent from about 7:00am to 6:00 pm in childcare. The only meal had at home was dinner. Then after dinner it was a bath and bed by 8:00. Not a lot of time to mess up the joint. And then 1/4 of the weekend was spent cleaning it anyway. Now, my house (I rationalize) is “lived-in.” When I am a basically SAHM (who works part-time out and part time in the home) my kids eat three meals a day here plus snacks, have “school” here, play here, have their friends over here (we rarely had friends over, we just roamed the neighborhood freely) have their dad and grandfather’s over here frequently, the house gets way more messy than my mom’s house ever had the chance to be.
So, all that is to say, I’ve learned to give myself a break.
Keeping house is on my list of personal failures. I hate it. I don’t do it well. I don’t want to do it at all. I barely beat the mess beat down below the level of filth. Okay that might be a slight exaggeration but not by much.
I would say we are a 9. I do clean most of the house everyday, but I have issues! lol I know one person that is more over-the-top than me, but most people don’t clean as often including my sister who says I don’t live like a normal person.
I think there are people all over the spectrum, it doesn’t make you a good or bad because anything in any extreme can be cause conflict.
I’d say we vacilate between 6-8. If anyone is coming over I fly into a cleaning frenzy because I’m so embarrased by a messy house. If we have a party, the house has to be at least a 9 for me to feel okay enough to relax. That said, now that I’m working more I often do leave dirty dishes in the sink overnight…but then hate seeing the mess in the morning. I agree though that with 2 small kids I’m tired, just too tired to get up off the couch and do those dishes some nights. I’m an organizer and so a “clean up” is usually quick since everything has a place in my house, and most with a labeled spot…to help my not so clean husband. Maybe that’s a little OCD?! Scrub the bathrooms 1/wk top to bottom. At this point, I HAVE to vacuum each night under the table because my son is much like Pigpen. Luckily my kids fight over the kitchen vac that we have hanging in the kitchen, so they help a bit.
Ours is a 6 or 7, usually, with the bedrooms probably 5 or 6. Right after my sister and I get through cleaning I’d say it’s a 9 or 10, because once we get started we can’t stop until everything is spotless, but that doesn’t last more than a day. The thing is, we aren’t home a lot to actually mess it up, and we don’t have kids who will do the messmaking for us. My sister is at school full time and I work full time so when we’re home we tend to sit down and stay put, meaning our mess is pretty localised and easy to tidy (my computer room is always my messiest area; her bedroom, where she studies, is my sister’s worst spot).
The part of the house inhabited by my housemate, her daughter and their pony-sized husky mix is 3 at best, just because my housemate works full time too, but has a three year old and a great big dog to generate mess that she has no time to clean. I fully expect that when I become a mum, unless I can really justify the expense of a cleaning service, the house will be let slide a bit in favour of spending time with my kids. There’ll be plenty of time to scrub the baseboards once the kids grow up and leave home!
I know Debbie already posted a poem (Debbie, I may have to print and hang that, somewhere!) but I love this one, and I just can’t resist sharing it–
Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
hang out the washing and butter the bread,
sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.
Oh, I’ve grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
and out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
but I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.
I would rather cut our grocery budget than give up my every two to three week housekeeper. She’s supposed to be every two weeks, but between holidays, illness, and her fear of driving in icy/snowy weather we’re averaging every three weeks.
We both work full-time, our daughter is almost 3, and we have a huge (100 lb) dog. We both hate to clean, but only I hate a messy house.
We start out at about a nine after a visit and get to about a six before she comes again.
I get really anxious if the house is a mess…so here is how we try to keep things under control. Each room gets a more intense cleaning once a week…and it takes about 30 min. a day. My husband and two girls (aged 6 and 12) both help.
I made a list of all the rooms/areas of our house (bathrooms are grouped together as are some other areas to get to 7) and assigned each a day of the week. Then I wrote out 8 jobs for each area. I bought a pack of poker chips at the dollar store and numbered 1 to 8 on 8 of them and put these in a bowl. On each day, we pull 2 chips and that is what we do. The girls don’t seem to mind since there is an element of surprise as to which job they’ll get. For example, today (Fri) is the family room. And the jobs are: dust, vacuum, clean glass on French doors, put away any DVDs, tidy up computer desk, make sure computer games are all put back, fill printer with paper, empty pencil sharpener! I also take a quick inventory when I am cleaning each room to make a grocery list (like in this room, printer paper, pens, etc). Now, when they were younger, I did something similar but geared to their age. I traced each girl’s handprint onto construction paper and cut out 7. I wrote a job on each that I thought they could handle….and put a big heart on one as a ‘day off’. Then I put these into paper lunch bags..one for each girl…and labeled them “Helping Hands”. Each day, the girls pulled a hand out to help.
Dishes: We put any breakfast dishes in dishwasher in a.m. No one is home to each lunch…and then dinner dishes are put in dishwasher to be washed all at once.
My 12 year old does her own laundry when she gets home from school as needed…thank God my DH does the ironing! That is one job I hate.
Reward: Each girl gets allowance weekly and doing their chores are part of getting their allowance. I tried not to tie work to money, but this is the only system that works…and we have tried a lot of allowance systems over the years.
Have you ever seen flylady.net? A little corny, but I must admit this website was my salvation for getting a handle on decluttering, etc.
Good luck..looking forward to reading any more ideas.
Eh, I hate housekeeping. I admit that I like it when my house is clean. The funny thing is a clean house to me is a messy house to my mother. So it’s hard for me to rate where I’m actually at on the spectrum. What I constantly fight is clutter…it’s the one area that baffles me. I don’t understand how it gets the way it does and how to fix it. It’s like a weird geometry problem. I mean, I know why my kitchen floor is disgusting. And I know how to fix it, even though I don’t want to. But the clutter? BAH!
So maybe we ride at about a 6?
My house is a 2. I know people who really live in squalor, and our house isn’t that bad.
That said, we’ve lived in our house for 8.5 years. The kitchen floor has been clean exactly 3 times. When the tile was first laid, when I was trying to induce labor by scrubbing floors, and when we thought we’d been reported to CPS by someone with a grudge against my parents.
The cup that Alex is drinking out of at the moment has some sort of sticky food residue goo on the outside because my FIL is home, and he feels dishes are his responsibility, but is a poor dishwasher. (This is the second time she’s drunk out of this cup that I’ve noticed the same sticky goo on the outside.)
I once noticed that our dishwasher, which is used as a drainer and emptied only irregularly, was completely covered in a thin skin of black mold. MIL (who insists on being the washer when FIL is not home) opened the dishwasher and put more dishes in 2-5 times a day (she can’t stand to see a dish in the sink) and never noticed that the white parts were all black.
And yeah, I’ve still been in houses that were filthier than mine.
I’d say we average a 6, with it never getting much worse than a 4 or better than an 8. Clutter is my enemy. The cleaning is all based on if I see it, I clean it. I don’t have a schedule or a plan. If I could pick up with that ease, it would be nicer.
Vacuum the one carpeted room 1/week. Sweep the laminate floors at least every 3-4 days, every day when I am feeling good or dirty. When I notice crumbs, I sweep. Wash the laminate floors…I hope 1/month. The bathroom is usually 1/week, but I forget to change the hand towel. Make beds? rarely, maybe when (new) guests are going to see the room. Change the sheets…oh that’s not one of my strong points. Probably 2-3 loads of dishes a day. I hate hand washing. I try to deep clean the kitchen at least 1/month, but it is easiest to invite someone over and then I clean everything.
My office is the catch-all. I am bad at leaving things on the kitchen island. I try to pick up kids toys, but honestly, I hate it.
My in-laws, RIP, kept a 1 house. Bugs, clutter, dirty, unwashed, uncared for. They were evicted too often to really collect true pack rat level stuff. So my husband never thinks our house is dirty. And never thinks it is really clean.
When we were selling our last house, I kept it at a 9 all the time and bumped it to a 10 for showings. It took 20 hours a week. I never sat. I proved I could do it but I felt brainless and chased. I hated it.
I work a rotating schedule nightshift. so I have 1 week on, 1 week off. This was a work week so the house downstairs is a 4 and upstairs a 3. Next week downstairs will be a 8 and upstairs a 5. I have a lot of paper, book, mags, games clutter. We are a family that loves reading, writing and playing board games. I could really use a cleaning service and we can afford it but I feel freaked out about strangers in my house when I am not here.
We live in an old house and have done a lot of restoration work on it. 3 years ago we had the paint stripped from the trim in the main living areas. Everything from those rooms had to be removed and stored in the garage. When it was finished and ready to re-inhabit I realized that I liked the airiness of a more Spartan look, so I left about half of the “stuff” in the garage. Our house is in much better shape now. It has really helped us in dealing with clutter. With less stuff it is easier for everything to have a place and also things look really out of place when left out. With less clutter we also are more likely to actually get to the real cleaning part.
Also, since my days of living with roommates and sharing a bathroom, I have become conditioned to not leave personal items out. Cosmetics and toiletry items are not kept out in the open. Towels are always hung. It really bugs me when toothbrushes or other items are left out.
My weak areas are laundry, dishes, and piled up mail. I get really frustrated by the endless cycle of it and never seem to be able to do it consistently enough that I don’t end up with a big pile up. Also our garage is a dumping ground. It is a 2– messy, packed to the gills, with no way to walk through it.
Our house really fluctuates. Some days it is about a 6, other days worse, but I can’t really gage where we are on the scale. I have some areas are that efficiently used and maintained, other areas that are just a mess and a few corners that are really a disaster (not to mention the basement). Also, I come from a packrat family, so there’s more junk around than necessary. That’s a constant project, but I’m making slow progress. Not to keep keep bragging/harping on her, but Flylady philosophy has made a huge positive difference in the way I upkeep the house.
I used to feel really terrible about having so much clutter and mess, but I’ve learned to let up on myself. Now I follow a few basic routines (a la Flylady) and don’t worry so much about the rest of it. And now, keeping up with those routines makes me feel settled and relaxed because I’m regularly cleaning and clearing. And the house feels better too. Now I actually enjoy doing dishes and laundry – I know! Crazy, huh? But I still get a little nuts sometimes with stuff I can’t feel like I can throw away. The office is amazingly bad.
I love this post!!
I honestly don’t know the answer for us. So much to say…
Before our weekly cleaning service (started a few months ago) we were probably a 5. Now we’re probably a 9 after the service (sweet, sweet lady who we all love, adore, and appreciate) leaves and a 6 on the day she returns. We should probably only have her come every other week but we (hubby and I) are happier when she comes every single week to bless us.
I am a RN and did home care for a long time. 60% of people live in filth, 30% of people live trying to keep up (ranging from 4-7), and 10% of people “have issues” (taken from previous posters) and have meticulously clean houses. It was always enjoyable visiting those with issues.
Take into account that I was visiting a particular population. Although I would travel our entire city and surrounding suburbs, all of those folks had some type of health issue, from surgery to chronic illness, that required medical care at home. That does not describe most of us responding to Amber’s question.
Traci
I have issues! I need clean floors, to the extent that I vacuum every day and mop (by hand) twice a week. If I scrub a baby wipe across the floor and it comes up dirty, I can’t deal. If my kids’ white tights have gray soles at the end of the day, I can’t deal. So I wash the floors a lot.
That’s my thing; everyone has one. I need clean floors. I pick up toys and vacuum every night. The floors shine. I’m happy.
I also can’t handle piles of clutter on tabletops. I like clear surfaces. I do a lot of picking up.
I’d say my house is a 9. You can eat off my floors. And then I’ll follow you with a baby wipe.
This is fascinating! Seeing that the people who are way clean spend so much time on it makes me feel better – I feel trapped at the thought of spending an hour a day on the cleaning, so that makes our messiness feel more like a conscious choice. (rationalize! Plus, I think I’d be cleaner if it didn’t all fall to me, but that’s another division of labor/gender stereotypes/SAHW-WAHW convsersation.) I really don’t have a good idea of what the different #s on the scale represent, but our place typically:
- has some dirty dishes in the sink (no dishwasher). I wash them when there’s no more room for new dishes, or at the first hint of odor.
- has clutter on ‘unused’ surfaces that obscures most of the surface, but which is structurally stable (i.e. it’s not piled all that high, because we don’t want to deal with things toppling over.) Part of the kitchen counter is clear, as are the stove, couch, bed, etc., but the coffee table, dresser top and desk are all buried.
- gets vacuumed/swept once every 2 months; there’s only one rug, and hardwood floors get swept in pieces as needed. I don’t mop unless there’s a need, so it’s a once-a-year thing if that. Usually when we move.
- things that aren’t regularly used get dusty – probably cleaned every 6 months or so?
- bathroom gets spot-cleaned as needed (every 2 weeks? Shower/tub MUCH less often), but def. gets that dustiness that bathrooms always seem to develop faster than the rest of the house.
- sheets are changed every 3-4 weeks, pillowcases more frequently. Bed is unmade.
- cat pans get cleaned 2x/week, and have an odor-blocking thing too.
In writing this out, I realized that I’m still where I was in college, slightly messier than I was as a teenager. Clutter is workable, though tidiness is aesthetically pleasing; smells are unacceptable, as are bugs.
I try to remember that many people I know have the ‘oh no! too messy! can’t have people over!’ fear, but when I go over, I don’t find their places to be anything particularly bad. As my partner says, if we all stopped the frantic cleaning when other people came over, we’d be able to know what ‘normal’ cleanliness levels are, and we’d be able to relax a lot more.
I still cheat and use the cleaning lady every other week, but with 4 kids, 2 dogs, 1 cat and 1 husband it does get cluttered in between times. I’d put us at a 6-7 most of the time. There is a great book called “Sidetracked home executives” which I like. I used it religiously before the cleaning lady. It is kind of like “flylady lite”.
We’re probably at an 8-9 if not for the dogs. But we fight about it, because he is OCD. Just had this conversation with my mom, because I cancelled the cleaning service we had last year (may be making 2 daycare payments soon-updates coming). I NEVER have more than 2 loads of laundry to do at once, and it all gets put away immediately. I clean the kitchen before going to bed, and that includes sweeping. I sweep the rest of the house most mornings before work. I mop the floor with a cleaning rag and get the baseboards at the same time, used to be weekly (Sat am), and will be again now that I’m done with the service. And I never leave the beds unmade (hey, it’s about protecting the sheets from settling dust, etc.) Yet J thinks I’m a slob.
He also cleans daily, so it works out. Though I do feel a little unappreciated.
We hired the cleaner after we adopted because I couldn’t keep up, but the frustration was constant about the details she missed, and I think it will be better doing it ourselves. My mother insists that a cleaner is a necessity and is trying to talk me out of the cancellation. But, like Carosgram, I know how to clean and am not happy spending my money on people who make me feel good for 24 hours until I realize that they skipped the corners and the upper shelves. And the ceiling fans.
~lmc
I will add that, it works for us because we do put things away after use, pick up as we walk through a room etc. Thus, we can still spend our weekends hiking/dancing. We’re not always cleaning. I tend to think that we both learned the clean a little every day technique from living alone as adults. My impression is that my friends who have never lived alone struggle with this more than we do.
But, as I said, we still argue about it. But I think that’s mostly about the dogs. My dogs. Sigh.
Oh Rayne, I think I’m going to make a sign out of that for above the sink:
“I am not the maid.”
That’s perfect.
And seriously, what is it about housework and fighting? Maybe it’s that most men want us to serenade them and throw flowers when they remember to get their dirty underwear actually in the hamper, instead of on the floor (just like the applause they want for changing a dirty diaper). But it’s always a source of friction.
For us, with a toddler, a working mom, and a chronically ill husband, we waver between about a 3 and a 7 most of the time. Right before Shabbat (Friday afternoon) we sometimes hit an 8, but it never lasts more than 15 minutes.
[...] other day I left a comment on American Family’s blog in response to her question; How clean is your house. Really it’s not dirty-but [...]
I’d say our house is a 9. We have no dishwasher, but other people living in the house, so dishes get washed pretty quickly. We like uncluttered surfaces, and I’m fabulously lucky that my husband helps with the housework. But our real secret is our electronic maid Rosie (a Roomba…)