Don’t feel bad at all- I’m a single 24 year old and I have a housekeeper come clean my house. If I had a bunch of dogs, a baby, and a gross husband, I’d be far more justified than I am now. 
After we brought the Firebug into our lives, we’ve had less time for everything else - including cleaning. We’ve had a cleaning lady come in every other week since early this year, and it’s been a life-saver. I can economize on many things, but this ain’t one of them.
My favorite new toy is that Swiffer-on-a-stick thingy. You can extend it to reach quite a ways up, and you can angle the swiffer thing in any direction you want. I extend it out to full reach and walk around the house getting everything I can reach up to, then shorten it a couple of feet and do a repeat run getting the slightly lower down stuff. After dusting tabletops with a regular swiffer, I return to the extendo-swiffer and this time dust baseboards and other lowly surfaces without having to stoop and squat.
Continuing on the theme of saving your back, I also use one of those “granny grabbers”, or extendo-grabber things to clean hair off the bathroom floor. I dampen a yard of toilet paper slightly and wad it up. Then I toss it onto the tiled bathroom floor and use the grabber to grip it and twirl it around in the corners and along the baseboards where hair collects. I do this three or four times. Flush the hair-covered wads rather than throw them away, as the hair attracts those damned woolly carpet beetle larvae and you want it gone. It’ll remove 95% of the hair, and you can get into some hard-to-reach places like behind the toilet. It doesn’t replace a thorough sweeping, but it certainly keeps the hair factor minimized between proper cleanings.
Woah teela, that’s a great idea! Now if only I can find my grandmother’s spare one…
Not sure if this qualifies, but regarding overripe bananas: peel, cut into 1/4-inch slices, and dry in a dehumidifier if you have one, and in an oven if you don’t. Makes for a nice snack. Same with apples.
The one I use at work runs in the neighborhood of about $800, but smaller ones can be had for less. Just have to shop around at different janitorial shops.
The suction power of the large one is so strong that it can lift the carpet up off the floor and yes, it can work in the place of a regular vacuum cleaner if needed.
My mother has never been “into” household, and has been sickly or downright sick for as long as I remember. While I personally dislike having “service” (I hate it when my stuff moves around, ok?), I definitely preferred the times when we had a cleaning lady to the ones when it was me doing the cleaning. If it’s too much, it’s too much, and with a baby, dogs and a husband who doesn’t think housework is his, you definitely have too much right now.
Now that winter is coming, remember that making sure your doors and windows (including the ones within the house) close tightly will save on cleaning as well as on the power bill. And check your plugs: those “christmas trees” of plugs upon plugs may be replaceable by power strips, which will be both safer and easier to clean; they’re also a way to easily sort-of-childproof the rooms where they are, since you can switch off the whole strip when not in use.
I have all my TV, cable box, computers, etc on power bars. I like them because you can just shut them off at night, and save a lot of money on your hydro bill. And hydro rates just went up here recently too, which makes it even more important.
I usually get those plastic sheeting window kits, you know the ones where you seal the window with this cling-film type stuff then use a hairdryer to tighten it? My husband wasn’t very enthused at the idea last year. He didn’t think it would look very good, and it wouldn’t make much difference. It looked fine and we were much warmer!
The nice thing about having a housecleaning service is that it helps keep down the clutter. The kids and I have to pick up everything off the floor at least every other week so they can vacuum – part of our ritual called “cleaning for the cleaners”.
I spread plastic wrap over a sheet pan with enough extra to fold it back over itself. I slice the bananas and lay them out on the sheet pan. Fold the plastic wrap over the top of the slices. Stick in freezer. Once frozen transfer the slices to a plastic bag. Use the slices for smoothies (use frozen) or baking (defrost). Save the plastic wrap for the next batch or you can just roll up the plastic wrap and store the slices that way but it’s much easier to pull the slices out of a bag.
I do the same thing with fresh berries that might be getting a little too old and squishy for eating as is. I love using the frozen fruits for smoothies because it makes the smoothie thicker.
Out of the dryer, straight to a hanger. Even tee shirts.
I rarely iron anymore (I’m allergic to ironing).
I’ll put on a pot of coffee before tackling the dishes. I love coffee so it’s my reward for cleaning up.
When baking, an aluminum pie pan below the casserole saves a lot of oven cleaning time.
I like the frozen fruit idea a lot. Thanks!
back in the day when we lived in a one bedroom flat in Virginia Beach, I had a system =)
mrAru and I would get up at the crack of dawn, he would make coffee and get ready to go to the boat. Last thing before he left he would make a pot of coffee for me. I would toss the laundry into the tiny washer dryer, and make breakfast. Eat breakfast and clean up the kitchen, putting all the dishes into the dishwasher after emptying it. I would grab a cup of coffee and head to the living room for a sit down and watch something on TV. After the program, I would dust and vacuum the living room, and put the vacuum cleaner and duster away. Grab another cup of coffee, and watch something else. After that show I would tidy the bedroom and strip the bed and change sheets if it was needed. Taking the dirty linens and any stray clothing into the kitchen, tossing them into the washer with the previous clothes, get another cup of coffee and make lunch. Go watch something while eating lunch. After lunch, back to the kitchen to start thawing out or prepping stuff for dinner as needed. Then into the bathroom, clean the bathroom and take any laundry into the kitchen and toss it into the washer. Head back to the bathroom, take a shower and get into clean clothes. Head back and grab another coffee, start the laundry. House is clean, laundry is running, dinner is started, rest of the afternoon is free for whatever. Start dinner at the time needed for timing so we can eat when mrAru got home and showers. After dinner, the dishes go in the dishwasher, the pots and pans and other hand wash stuff gets washed and set on the counter to dry, and to bed. Start again the next morning.
If you do anything in small easy to manage chunks, you don’t get overwhelmed. You can even split it up over several days. My mom’s house, when she didn’t bother having a maid she would do different rooms on different days, though the kitchen obviously got done every day =)
aruvqan, I learned a process that my former landlady and I called “positive procrastination.” We never started and finished a project all in one shot.
Let’s say the project was to paint a room. One Saturday, we’d strip the wallpaper and clean the walls. Next Saturday, we’d tape off the windows and trim. Third Saturday was primer day. Fourth Saturday was painting day. Yes, it took a month to paint a room, but we only spent a couple hours on it each weekend instead of blowing an entire weekend doing nothing else but.
I practice guerilla cleaning. When I walk in the door, the first 20 minutes are spent seeing how much I can get done in 20 minutes. After that 20-minute session of furiously cleaning stuff, then I slack off and get dinner ready. You can scrub down two small bathrooms in 20 minutes. You can unload and reload the dishwasher, start a load of laundry, take out the trash and recycling, sweep the floors, and scoop the litterbox in 20 minutes. Tuesday after work I can vacuum the downstairs in 20 minutes. Wednesday I can vacuum the upstairs in 20 minutes. Thursday, I can dust downstairs… you get the idea.
I break chores up into little bits and do a little bit each day. Then it’s never one overwhelming huge chore that takes all day.
That stuff really does work - we put it on any window that we notice is having a draft in winter. The only problem in our house is the cats - if they get a claw in it, it’s useless.
Aruqvan, that sounds like about a month’s worth of cleaning to me. 
Not really, the square footage of the apartment was pretty small, I think it was in the range of 500 sq feet?
Ha, Pembroke Lake Apartments, 700 sq feet =) Although back in 1988 I seem to remember the place costing us on the order of $590 a month.
Still, as you can see, not a huge place and even vacuuming the largest space [the little hallway towards the bathroom and the living room area] still took all of 5 to 7 minutes. Washing the kitchen floor took about the same. With a swiffer wet mop today it would be much easier =) I found that if you damp mopped every day, all it really took to keep the floors clean was that 5 minutes of swishing about. If you clean up messes as they occur, it really does not take that much time to keep a place pretty clean. I think the most it really took to clean the whole place every day, complete with slacking off for breakfast and a couple of tv shows, or even a movie by cleaning on the commercial breaks was like 3 hours.
Good tips here-
When I put water onto boil for my coffee, I too tidy up around the kitchen. Then I use the extra hot water from the kettle to clean my stone counters. All smears, dried sauce and smudges wipe clean in an instant.
After showering I get dressed in my bedroom,where I use a cotton ball to apply astringent or toner to my face. On occassion, I will dampen an extra cotton ball to do a quick swipe around my dressing table, but sometimes I get carried away and try to dust the entire room with a damp cotton ball
Ha, I do something similar: after I clean my glasses I uses the slightly dampened tissue to wipe the tops of baseboards/radiators. Generally it takes me a couple weeks to work my way around all the walls in the upstairs.
Wow, this really works great, thanks so much for the tip! I was dreading buying a new one as I hate the smell–it seems to take forever for them to stop offgassing.
Here’s another hint to make the shower curtain less gunky and easier to clean…
cut a few inches off the bottom and sides of the thing. It doesn’t have to touch the bottom of the tub in order to work, it REALLY doesn’t! I have found that 6 inches below the top of the tub works just fine. Also the sides don’t have to lap over. If the edge of the curtain just touches the sides of the wall, it’ll still keep the water in the shower and off the floor. All that extra material will keep the thing from drying like it should and create a perfect breeding ground for mildew and crap like that.
So, get out the sissors and hack away!
Sounds like a great life. We are the same except it’s a cat and a dog (they compete on who can puke the most) and the kids are teenagers (that stink more now than when babies). Enjoy it now, the cleaning can keep. A warm baby asleep in your lap is worth more than a lifetime of clean bathrooms.