“Cleaning the house before the children stop growing,
Is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing!”
We only make our bed if we are having a party. The bed is where we pile our guests’ coats.
I’m a different kind of hostess–the bed is where I pile my guests.
How YOU doing?
The thing that really bugs me about housework is that, if you do it ‘right’ nobody notices. It’s only when it isn’t done that it shows.
Well, that and the fact that I can’t get anybody to help with it.
I lived alone in a small apartment. This worked for me:
-
Pick a place for everything you own. Everything! If you can’t find a place for it, GET RID OF IT.
-
Every item coming into your home needs to find its place as soon as it comes into the home.
-
Using an item consists of taking the item from its place, using it, and returning it to its place.
-
The dishes are done at the end of each meal or, even better, cookware is clean before you are allowed to eat the prepared meal.
-
Your home should look the same when you go to bed as it did when you woke up that day. If not, then don’t go to bed until it does. Every Day. You might allow yourself ONE weekday of slack.
-
At the end of the week, all that’s left is laundry, sweeping, wiping down the kitchen, and cleaning the bathroom. I spent only an hour or so per weekend on housework.
-
Dirty dishes go in the dishwasher, not in the sink.
My place was always clean and orderly under this plan. If anyone came over, the place was ready at all times.
In finding places for my things, my rule was that it should never take me more than 1 minute to find anything. That was great because I was never looking around the place trying to find that little thing I had misplaced.
I loved living that way. I’m married now. 
Bearflag, can you come teach your system at my house? The toddler and the damned dogs never seem concerned about picking up after themselves, and everyone else must be nagged constantly to do so… and when I had a place for all of my stuff, my niece and her sweetie moved in and bogarted my storage space!
I hate housework. I’m as domestic as a moose, I procrastinate, and nothing ever stays done for more than five minutes. The day someone invents self-cleaning clothes is the day I begin believing in a benevolent God.
Do you have forced hot air heat or central a/c, both can spread dust.
I wonder why these families are that are going to allow dust mites to be put in their beds for research. There isn’t enough money…
You’re right. I have a cleaning lady in once a week but I still have to do dishes, pick up clothings, toys, snack wrappers and whatever else a 12 year old and her buddies can get into in an hour and a half. I leave for work with no dishes in the sink and the counters and floors cleared and I come home to Hurricane Andi blowing everything around. Sigh…
Yes. And Chicken Fingers’ explanation of toilet paper lint makes sense too. As does obvious towel lint.
Its true! There’s no point in making the bed, its a pointless activity
But the coats don’t care if the bed is messy, and none of your guests are going to use it either
I’ll take my chances!
Actually, the unmade bed really pisses me off. You don’t need to tuck and fold and everything, but I don’t want to be tired at the end of a long day and have to untangle a wadded up pile of sheets and blankets before I can lay down.
I didn’t have this problem when I lived alone, I could slide out from the bed and leave it presentable enough for company. The wife leaves them looking like a mini tornado touched down.
This. After I had my daughter and quit my job to stay home with her, I tried to follow a housekeeping regimen that would have made my grandmother proud. About three weeks into it I realized that absolutely no one noticed. So I stopped.
I dunno… if you limit it to a full day of work, one day a week, it’s not that painful. The incidentals (bed-making, dish-washing, laundry, etc), could be done inbetween things, too…
I’m now glad I’m a bachelor, and that housework is a monthly rather that daily chore.
Develop OCD, works for my wife. Besides my motto is: if you leave it long enough it will eventually do itself. Works for me.
Your house sounds the same as mine. I have no idea how two kids and two dogs can completely destroy the house so quickly. Getting them to help clean up turns me into a drill sergeant, and then we all get upset. I’d rather just do it myself. If only there was a house cleaning fairy…
ETA: I really don’t mind doing the laundry or vacuuming, its those damn dishes…
I, like Ferret Herder, already have two robots to some of the work for me, my Roomba and Scooba.
I also never make my bed, making the bed has even less point than keeping a living room clean. At least other people will see the living room and I’d like for it to be clean for them. The only thing ever done in the bedroom are things that mess up the bed, why “make it look nice”?