One of my childhood ambitions was to do no housework.
So now a cleaner comes in weekly, and I use a dishwasher and a laundry basket (the cleaner also does my laundry).
And that leaves me enough time to post here! 
Options
a) Lower your standards. Accept more clutter and grime; it won’t kill you. (I was once hired to clean the house of a former professor of mine, someone I respected highly, before she moved out. She was single, with two pre-adolescent boys and one dog, a lab-mix rescue. After my sheltered upbringing I was truly stunned at how filthy that house was… especially the bathroom. It hadn’t bothered her. She had other priorities.)
b) Pay for or barter with someone else to do it. (My parents, even though they’re only middling middle class, have done this since my sister and I grew up and moved out. It does involve a certain amount of “cleaning for the cleaning lady” which many people find a valuable motivator – that is, you have to put all your clutter away before your cleaning person is scheduled to come vacuum, etc.)
c) Make a commitment to spend X amount of time Y times a week (an hour every Wednesday night, for instance) *WITH YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER *on housework. (obligatory *Free to Be You and Me *link). This works for our house and worked for my parents while we kids were still at home. Three-year-olds complicate matters, for sure, but don’t make it impossible. It can become, like brushing your teeth, simply a habit.
d) Get some tips and books and stuff about making cleaning go faster. Get organized. Make sure you have decent cleaning tools – an insufficiently sucky vacuum cleaner sucks, for instance.
e) Cultivate “maintenance mind,” in which you seek never to put things down where they don’t belong, and make it a game to think of ways to clean with minimum effort as you go along. I like this one a lot. Three-year-olds may frustrate the premise, I don’t know.
Yeah… we’re not there yet. 
Oh, I forgot to add- the magic of wash-n-fold is liberally enjoyed in our household as well. No on-site laundry and the nearest laundromat is quite a hellhole.
How do I keep up with my housework?
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Do things as they come up. If you make a mess or drag out a lot of stuff, put it back before you’re done.
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Do things while doing other things. Instead of just staring blankly at the toaster or the microwave and waiting for it to be done, start the dishwasher. Sweep the kitchen floor. Sort and toss the mail. You know how in retail they say “if you have time to lean, you have time to clean?” It’s true. Do it.
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Clean before you do something fun. If you’re going to fool around on the internet for a while, wash your dishes or clean the bathroom before you do it. Reward yourself with doing something fun, rather than finishing the fun thing and going “oh, crap, look at all this work I still have to do.”
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Make sure everyone in the household is pulling their weight. Even little kids can handle picking up their own rooms and sorting their own clothes. Sure they can. Every little bit helps.
Of course, it helps if you’re like me and enjoy doing housework and house chores.
I don’t. I keep clothes and towels clean and hoover now and then. Every now and then I blitz the place, but it’s never going to be extremely tidy. We have too much stuff in too little space - the living room is trying to be a family room, a study and a recording studio at the same time.
It always looks like there’s tons of washing up because the sink is tiny - it only holds two plates and a bowl - the plumbing is terrible (it takes ages to drain and refill) and there’s only enough space for one pile of plates by the side of the sink. My GF and I both loathe washing up and have had stand-up screaming arguments ending in ‘when shall I move out, then?’ because of the bloody washing up. I would, quite literally, kill for a dishwasher, but the kitchen is so arranged that it’s not feasible.
Occasionally a friend or acquaintance who’s staying over will comment on the mess, and I’ll point out that it’s partly because we keep a futon and several covers available for the numerous people who know us and need somewhere to stay over in central London (which are now taking up half the living room), and that the pile of washing up is from the dinner I made for them.
You can clean a five-bedroom house in 2 hours? What are you, Supercleaner?
It takes me an hour just to cycle through one load of laundry, half an hour to sort it and hang it up, and then there are four more loads to get through in a week! Let alone dishwashing, hoovering, cleaning the kitchen and bathroom, watering the plants, putting away groceries, and this thing called ‘dusting’ that I’ve heard about.
I have tried Flylady, but I found the one fatal flaw with it was that in order to get your schedule of tasks for the day (since I’m in another time zone they all came in a bunch overnight, which also wasn’t really ideal) you have to go sit down at the computer to look.
I’m sure we can all see the problem with that, right?
For me, the most significant problem with doing housework is that I hate, loathe and despise it. Nothing sucks the joy out of a day faster than knowing that you’re going to have to spend a significant portion of the day cleaning or, even worse, tidying (shudder). And I generally spend about 2 or 3 hours on my “home” days (5 a week) doing just that. Bleeeeargh.
So - first thing - if you are having problems keeping stuff clean and tidy, this is perfectly normal and to be expected. Everyone has a different variation of “amount you hate cleaning” and “amount you hate having a messy house” and if your value of the first happens to be high and the value of the second low then (like me :)) you’re going to have a particularly hard time of it.
Number one most helpful thing I did - I made myself up a “chore board” with magnets on the fridge. On a piece of paper I drew a series of boxes, then I cut up another sheet of magnetic paper into squares with chore names on them. I have a number of games I play with these. The simplest is, I fill up two lines with squares, then I stop. Some chores are worth double squares (mopping or vacuuming for instance), some are multi-items per square (do a load of washing AND hang it out). I’m not allowed to put a square on until I’ve REALLY finished the task (yes, every single sock is in a drawer). Doing it like this, I do tend to do my favourite jobs over and over again, and other things get ignored, but that’s kind of ok, because if the dishes are done and the clothes are away I don’t mind so much that there’s been no vacuuming for two months.
Other times I line up all the non-daily jobs on the left side of the fridge, and I’m not allowed to do any of them again until I’ve done them all and transferred them to the right side (exceptions are daily jobs - dishes, dinner and clothes). This one hasn’t worked so well - I spend two days procrastinating over not wanting to tidy the desks and by that time I have to mop the floor again because someone’s spilt a cup of juice all over it.
There’s also the random method - close eyes, pick a job, whatever it is you have to do it, no arguing.
The point behind this all is - housework is neverending, you never get that buzz of having finished and getting to relax. So you have to invent milestones for yourself that you can feel good about acheiving. I do get a visceral satisfaction from being able to pick up that magnet and plop it on the board that I never get from actually doing the job
Well, I guess I consider laundry, dishwashing, and groceries to be chores other than housecleaning, and we do them throughout the week.
But yeah, I can do my weekly housecleaning chores - dust, sweep/vacuum, wash tile floors, and wash sinks and toilets - in well under 2 hours.
What, are you standing there staring at the machines the whole time they’re running? If you have in-home machines, that’s a horrible use of your time. If you’re using a laundromat, get multiple washers and dryers going at once. And bring something else to work on while you’re waiting, like bills to pay and stuff.
What helps me more than anything else is circuit cleaning. I set the timer on the microwave or my cell phone for either 15 or 20 minutes and bust ass in one room for that time period. When the time is up, I do the same thing in another room. After the third circuit, I set the timer and sit on my ass for a bit. 'Then I start again, until I’ve been in every room at least once. Knowing that you don’t have to deal with the whole goddamn room, just what you can get to before the timer goes, it doesn’t seem like such a huge, overwhelming thing. But if you’re really busting ass, it’s amazing what you can do in 20 minutes. And if you can get your partner to do it with you, you can either work in different rooms or in the same room for half the time.
If you do this a couple times through the week, at the weekend it’s not nearly as big a deal to get things back in shape.
When cooking in the kitchen; clean your dishes/untensils as you are finished using them and wipe down counters. Don’t wait until you are full and bloated to tackle a messy kitchen because it just aint gonna happen. Especialy after a full day spent at work.
99.99% of the time when I’m finished cooking; the only dishe/spots/pans sitting out on the counter are the ones with food in them waiting to be eaten.
This method makes the after dinner clean up seem a little less burdensome. Because all you have left to do is clean the plates you were eating on and put away the left overs. Still a pain in the ass but not as bad if you were to let everything pile up in the sink from the start.
This really helps. Cleaning up as you go along is a lot easier than tackling it all at the end. I’m really bad at doing this in general outside of the kitchen (for example, my clothes and books are all over the place) but when I cook I make an effort to wash bowls and utensils then and there rather than leaving it all for after.
I wait till my mother calls and says she’s coming over, and then I run around like a crazy woman, getting it cleaned up.
Yeah, I used to have a rule that I was not allowed to eat until all the prep dishes were clean. I should do that again.
I have two jobs, lotsa hours per week. So, I don’t do the best job. One reason is that I have this bad perfectionist habit of not wanting to do a job unless I can do a perfect job. Since I rarely have time to do a perfect job, I have had to try to train myself to ALLOW myself to do jobs in phases.
A couple of things I do:…
One is a “trick” I learned while waitressing and that’s “never go anywhere with your hands empty” (I know, bad grammar). So, if you are heading back to go to the bathroom, grab something that’s supposed to go to that part of the house. Also, have a “to go basket”. Instead of having to run back and forth putting stuff away, you can just dump everything in a basket as you go, and then take the basket around and put stuff away.
The second thing I got from my mom, it’s called “commercial cleaning”. Even if you’re exhausted and can barely move, try to get up during the commercials (while you’re watching TV), and do a few chores (empty the dishwasher, put on a load of clothes, vacuum a small patch of carpet, etc). I have TiVo, but I still sometimes make myself do commercial cleaning, or I’ll put it on hold and give it a few minutes.
Oooh, I just thought of my other trick. It’s called “the 10 Minute Rule”. I know, when ther are kids, two jobs, and so on, a person is often exhausted at the end of their workday. So what I do is give it 10 minutes, if I still feel like crap after that, I let myself quit, but often, it’s enough to motivate me to do more.
Sorry that’s not much, I hope that helps.
That is what I used to do when I wasnt handicapped -
I would get up in the morning, use the john and grab the collected dirty clothes and take them into the kitchen [we had the tiny apartment sized stacked washer and dryer. Honestly, it held 1 days worth of clothing for the 3 of us living there as 1 load] Shove the laundry in and start it. I would put the dishwasher contents away as I made breakfast. Eat breakfast while watching tv, and enjoy a second cup of coffee. Head back into the kitchen when the wash cycle beeped done, clean up after breakfast and shove the laundry into the dryer. Head back into the living room, dust and vacuum while listening to MTV [have to love the late 80s, they still played music =)] then have another coffee.
Head into the bedrooms, drag the comforters over the beds quasi-neatly, run the vacuum around and open the blinds.
Head into the bathroom, give it a good cleaning, ending with a nice shower and into fresh clothing.
Back into the kitchen to decide what to make for dinner, and snarf down lunch.
3 people [me hubby and a buddy] in a smallish 2 bedroom apartment.
It also helps if you dont tend to have a zillion pieces of clothing - Rob and John were still very navy, they had a seabag of uniforms, and about a seabag of civillian clothing each. I had about a seabags worth of clothing at the time myself. Even today I can understand having huge amounts of clothing - I had 6 identical sets of work clothing that I cycled through each week [when I still worked in a call center] a couple of fairly dressy casual stuff and one fairly formal outfit. Sweet Jebus, my mom has a walk in closet the size of a small bedroom of clothing. And you know, she wears maybe 7 or 8 outfits of them and the rest sort of hang there ignored.
Of course not. But it still means that there’s no way the housework can get done in an hour or two.
See, the thread was asking about housework in general, so your post confused me.
Actually, that is one thing that helps me - invite houseproud friends over, and suddenly I have motivation to run around tidying. 
See, I have the same problem as Aspidistra - I just don’t care enough to do housework that I hate. My partner cares even less and she really is a bit of a slob.
Can you get calorie counters that you carry around with you, like with pedometers? I think that would give me encouragement.
One way to get around the Flylady computer problem is to use a tickler file system instead. You take a file system, any file system, and list all your chores in individual cards or papers. I have a 3 X 5 card filing box, extra large, and I list things by what needs to be done, and how often it needs doing. For instance, dishes need to be attended to every day. Even if the dishwasher isn’t full, I need to load in any dirty dishes. I generally check to see if I need to do a load of laundry every other day. I don’t just put housework on these cards, I also write down my appointments and crafts pill-taking and even outings, so that I’ll be sure to do them. I got this idea from Sidetracked Home Executives, or one of the other books that those sisters wrote.
If you want to set up a tickler file system, I advise getting either a 3 X 5 or 4 X 6 card filing box with the same size cards, and 43 index cards of that size. You need 1-31 for the days of the month and monthly divider cards. This way, you can file your appointments or whatever that take place in 3 months.
The Chore Board sounds quite workable, and I think it would also be a great way for the whole family to divvy up chores. Everyone could have his own sheet of paper, and his own goals, for instance one line of regular chores and a couple of non-daily chores each day. Non-daily chores that had been done would have to be put aside in another area after each day, and the magnet could not be used again until all of the others had been done. A benefit would be that those who started chores first could claim the chores they like best…or at least, hate the least.
I have tried various ways of keeping up with the housework, which all worked for me depending on my schedule. By far the easiest was to set aside 15 minutes each day (in the morning, before bed, or whenever works for you) and straighten up. Put away clutter, wipe the kitchen counters, do the day’s dishes, whatever needs to be done. Since it didn’t pile up it was much easier to take care of it all.
Sometimes I let things go for a week (or two or three), and then I have to do all the straightening up on top of scrubbing the toilets and doing the laundry, and that can be intimidating. So I would make a list, prioritize it, and then blast good upbeat music (I always started off with the Vanilla Muffins’ No Punk Rock in My Car so that’s my official cleaning song). The music kept me going, and every time I completed a task I would reward myself (with a cigarette, so that’s bad, but you could still plop down on the couch for a 10 minute rest).
I have found that having decorative items (bowls, baskets, boxes, etc) that double as clutter catchers works very well for me. All my incoming mail goes immediately into small box I keep near the door. Then when I have time to sort it, I do. Likewise, I have a serving tray in my bedroom where I empty my pockets. Every so often, I’ll go through and put items into their proper places. It’s sort of like having a junk drawer in the kitchen. I have several clutter catchers in the house so that stuff looks neat and organized instead of having crap spread out over the counter tops and coffee table. Then when you do a really deep cleaning, you can sort those things out.
Do as you go, do as you go, do as you go. Both the dishwasher and handwashing will work better on dishes that haven’t had time to dry up; folding clothes and putting them away or in the ironing as soon as they’re ready is more efficient and leads to less wrinkles than creating a mountain of dry clothing.
My 3yo nephew is very good at putting things away; he needs to be reminded but he does it. Of course, one of the reasons he does it is because he sees his grown-ups do it.
Oh, lord - housework!
First, set your priorities. I decided some time ago that the dishes and laundry take precedence. I can live with a gritty floor, but not green fuzzy dishes.
Set up a consistent routine for you. For me, it’s doing the dishes in the morning before I leave for work. Yes, there are advantages to doing them after dinner, but I do not have a dishwasher so it’s not a matter of loading and running a machine, I have to stand there and actually do stuff. large lumps get scraped and the dishes put in the sink. In the morning I do them. (Exceptions for, say, baking with molasses which MUST be cleaned immediately) Find whatever timeslot works for you and stick to it.
Laundry - I don’t have a washer and dryer at home, so I wash every two weeks. It takes me as long to do 6 loads as 1 at the laundromat, so this works out. Meanwhile, I have a designated spot for dirty laundry so while it accumulates the spread is limited and relatively neat.
When trash is full the mess is bagged and set by the front door. Whoever goes out next takes the bag and dumps it in the dumpster. As we compost kitchen scraps and recycle cans now we actually don’t accumulate nearly as much as we used to, and it doesn’t smell so funky.
I try to set some time aside to work on the rest of it, but working two jobs and caring for a disabled spouse makes that a little… challenging. Having inherited some stuff from my mom, and my dad unloading more stuff on me before he moved to Buffalo, what headway I’d made on the clutter was lost and frankly, I haven’t been up to dealing with it but I’m getting there. The thing is, while there is clutter and some dust there is nothing unhealthy - no discarded pizza boxes festering under the couch, no rotting food, no fermenting laundry, etc.
Frankly, I need to purge some stuff and organize some of the rest. Yes, I’m a packrat. I have just accepted that and the fact I’m going to struggle with it for the rest of my life. Working for a landlord has been eye-opening - as cluttered as my place is, there are people FAR worse. Truly unhygenic stuff. ::::shudder:::.
I try to do Flylady, but I’m too depressed.