Hey! A dustpan with a long handle! Now that is smart!
I’ve seen janitors unsing the pivoted commercial versions that flop into a vertical position to hold the “dust” (floor sweepings, actually; more than just dust), but a simpler version for home use would be good. I wonder whether you can get one of those in Canada?
Ok, today I’m going to spend 15 minutes picking up and cleaning in the kitchen, and 15 minutes in the living room. I can do anything for 15 minutes. I think.
I’m sorry. That is much too recursive for my sanity at this hour. 
Ikea is on my list. Just as soon as I get the Mound O’ Crap out of my apartment. The bus that goes past my apartment alos goes past Ikea on Sundays, so I get reminded at least once a week by people carrying Ikea bags.
Thank you for asking, Maastricht! I think people take me more seriously at work. It must be the shoes.
I’m going to spend two or three 15 minute chunks on hotspots, one on each. That’s my goal. Kitchen table, living room table, bathroom.
Oh, and I’ll probably reschedule this Saturday’s plans. I had an attack of stupid and invited a friend over. That was fine, but he wanted to bring his new girlfriend, and I said yes. Now I’m having a fit of paranoia that the house can’t be half presentable for a new person by then.
So, maybe next Saturday.
Are your floors sealed? Mine have a polyurethane coating on them, and if I don’t wash the floors, they get quite sticky and disgusting. As long as they dry quickly, it’s great–leaving puddles for a long time is bad. When I lived in Denmark, many people had unfinished wood floors, and they scrubbed them, too, with a sort of long squeegee thing–you put a rag down and sort of wrapped it around the squeegee part to do the scrubbing, and then changed the rag when it got dirty.
Anyhow, my goals for today are a bit extensive. Since we’re having company tonight, I need to tidy up the living and family rooms (currently covered in Tinkertoys and Playmobil castle thingys), fix a nice dinner while keeping the kitchen decent, and hopefully get at least the kids’ room completely tidied and vacuumed. Also my Friday chore is cleaning out the car, which really needs to get done, but for today that’s optional since I’m doing several of tomorrow’s chores as well (Saturday has long been our tidy-everything-dust-and-vacuum day).
I went grocery shopping last night, and actually put the groceries away when I got home, instead of leaving half of it on the floor for a week. Whee!
Well, I got one of the 15 minute chunks in this morning while the SDMB was down, before I left for school. Now I’m at school trying to figure out if we’re going to work on the other resolution of being a bit more social with my fellow grads this semester, or if I’m going to head home.
My kitchen table isn’t clear, but WOW does it look a lot better!
Tomorrow I do the bedroom, whether I like it or not. The bedroom is the dragon to slay, really. The rest of the house has been cleaned probably at some point since I moved in a year and a half ago - not so the bedroom. Wish me luck, guys. If I can do that, then a bit on the bathroom and actually getting the clothes out of the laundry room and everything in my house that I actually live in on a regular basis will be liveable! Of course, crap is migrating into clean areas as I clean other places because I don’t know where to put stuff, but the net gain has been huge.
Well, I haven’t gotten any actual cleaning done, but hubby and I have made A Plan. We spent probably an hour talking about it last night, and today I’m going to type it all up and make it official. And I’ll get a bin for the bills etc. that need to be saved for this year, but not filed, as you ingenious folks posted upthread.
Tomorrow, if hubby’s feeling better, we’ll spend 2-3 hours cleaning. My main focus will be the bedroom, and the massive pile of clothes I have there…
Most of the laundry away, and while batch cooking (chili, a casserole, corn muffins, and I’m making pizza) I’ve actually managed to wash things while stuff cooked. I hate doing that. I’m proud of myself. I folded fifteen minutes’ worth of laundry, too.
My wooden floors are sealed, too, Nava. If they don’t get washed, grit accumulates fast.
I’ve done everything I set out for myself today but fold the laundry in the bedroom; but I plan to do that this evening while watching What Not To Wear. It seems appropriate. 
I also picked up some clorox wipes at the store to use for the daily wipedown of the bathroom sinks and toilets. Quick and easy, and not expensive – I think I can handle $2 a month for clean bathroom fixtures.
It feels good to start making progress on the mess, and work on developing new habits in the meantime that will (I hope!) keep it from getting as bad again!
I have a shopping list - for the week. I’ve never ever done that. It’s probably wrong and incomplete, because I don’t know what I’m doing. Still, I’m going to shop for the week.
Over the Christmas-New Years period, I managed to do a lot of basic cleaning, a lot of decluttering (still a lot more to go - but comparing then to now, it’s a huge difference). I have the very beginning of a plan (I’m not good at making lists) and hopefully, I’ll learn to use it. So far, it’s stayed pretty good.
I have the Home Comforts book, and I don’t like it very much. It’s comprehensive, but not really all that useful.
Also, www.organizedhome.com is a website worth glancing at.
Well, the kids’ room is neat, and we vacuumed everywhere except the schoolroom (too much–do it tomorrow). The Tinkertoys and stuff are picked up. Once I get everything off the coffee table, we’re pretty set, except that I need to make the dining table nice too. Right now it has used placemats and crumbs. Oh, I should sweep there too.
Also, I have two loads of laundry to do today; the 3yo had an accident this morning in bed–her first since starting to wear underwear overnight a couple of weeks ago, yay. So her bedclothes are in the dryer now, and I should do another load too.
I like this thread. It’s motivating me to be a more competent housekeeper, and I have to say that I am always much more cheerful in a clean home. When it gets really bad, I get very grumpy. I don’t usually like to spend tons of time cleaning, but I sure do feel better and more accomplished when I do.
I’ve decided on a plan:
Every day I’ll do the minimum maintenance stuff (bed making, load of laundry if needed, tidy up kitchen, wash dishes.)
Monday through Friday I’ll also do 15 minutes on de-junking (this is hard for me, strong packrat genes and upbringing) plus 15 minutes on a ‘generally neglected task.’
Saturday I do the household shopping/errand running so no additional tasks other than dropping off the Mon-Fri de-cluttering gleanings at the Salvation Army collection box/library book donation/the day-care center/wherever as appropriate.
Sunday I will put in 15 minutes on ‘paperwork’ --weed out my file cabinet/file new stuff/pay bills/toss built up junk mail/etc.
I feel good having a plan, even though I’ve barely started yet. 
Today’s ‘declutter’ target was the shelves in the top of my hall closet. Would you believe I found 8 pairs of mittens to donate? Plus a couple of odd ones. And enough knit hats and scarves to outfit a platoon.
Tonight I am going to wrap a towel around my broom and ‘sweep’ all my ceilings and the upper edges of the walls. How in world could I not have notices all those cobwebbs before???
And…
Hooray to all of us!
we may have messy houses now but we’re making progress!
Yes. Thank goodness you said this. What I need to do is teach the dog to pick up any and every random thing that is on the floor and bring it to me, at which point I will put the item away and he will run off for another item. He’s a dog that needs a job. And I’m a person who needs help cleaning. I started training him last weekend. I told him to ‘fetch’ and he grabbed his dog toy. Good! I put that away and told him to fetch again and he looked confused. I pointed at all of the shoes, scarves, tupperware, socks, mail, books on the floor and told him to fetch again. He just stared sadly and intently at his dog toy bucket.
So does anyone have any encouragement or helpful ideas for me and my cleaning goal? 
I have ‘shined my sink’ every evening. Well not exactly shined but did the dishes. It’s getting so that last night it took such little time that I started to look for other stuff to wash and I’m planning to tackle some kitchen spots tomorrow. I opened all the mail right away and will file the fileable stuff tonight. I’ve been wearing my retainers and moisturizing my hands every night. I also picked out next day outfits every eveing. I’ve been drinking more water. So it’s been a pretty good week.
Tonight I’m making curry for the weekend. Tomorrow - floors (ugh). Hate doing floors. And continue working on my menu plan. Also laundry and a walk. Sunday’s ironing. Those are the ‘musts’ but I have other things that I’ll pick off my list to do.
Oh, and revise my list If I were to get into the habit of doing that daily, that would be aces.
Morning! Today I’m going to tidy the livingroom. I got the bedroom much more tidy yesterday. The livingroom’s where all the serious clutter lives.
I didn’t wash the last dishes before bed, but that was because I’d already washed 6 loads of dishes. Dishwashing was monumentally unattractive at that point. I’ll wash 'em in a few minutes. After tea.
Today I’ll do my daily chores plus tackle picking up my office, which is an unholy mess. I’ve also got some laundry to do; I did one load last night and still have that to fold, but in my defense, it was after midnight when it finally got dry and I just wanted to go to bed at that point.
I realized something this morning, too – Papa T. does four major tasks around the house: dishes, paperwork/bill paying/sorting/filing, trash, and laundry (and a fifth, yard work, in season). And he’s very, very good about getting those done, even though he doesn’t like doing them. So it’s glaringly obvious that I am the person falling down on my job(s) around here. I don’t like cleaning any more than he likes doing trash, but it’s not fair to him to watch him do a bunch of tasks uncomplainingly and then do nothing myself to help out.
So I complimented him on his ability to keep himself motivated; now I just hope some of it can rub off on me!
Good morning! My jobs for today are to tidy everything back up again after the guests last night (not too bad) and clean up the schoolroom properly. We need to dust and finish vacuuming. I promised the girls they could polish the TV cabinet, which they are looking forward to. I’m working this afternoon, so I’d better get started, but first I’m going to make cherry muffins.
We had a nice time last night, but their oldest boy (7) kept running to the bathroom. We thought maybe he’d gotten too much to drink and his parents said he’d been fine all day right until they left to drive to our place. Then on the way out the poor kid threw up on the sidewalk. I sure hope he wasn’t in the first stages of some horrible virus that will knock us all out too. I scrubbed the toilet and stuff after they left, but was completely wiped out and went to bed early, leaving the dishes for my husband.
Don’t know how brilliant it is, but:
My system at work is that I keep a steno book for my to-do lists. (I also have other kinds of lists in other steno books, but we’ll ignore them for now.)
Each week, I write a new list. Sometimes I do this on Friday afternoon; sometimes I do it on Monday morning. Doesn’t matter.
New page, new list: “To-do, week of 1/21” (or whatever)
I start by reviewing the previous week’s list – if there’s anything not yet done, I carry it over. Sometimes things get carried over multiple times, if they’re not urgent – I’ve had “big-picture thinking on art, covers” on at least the last four lists. Sometimes I carry something over once or twice if it gets bumped down as a priority. Sometimes the carrying over makes it clear that I’m procrastinating, and it serves to shame me into doing it (that would be you, “write to Jean W.”).
After I look at the previous week’s list, and cross out the stuff I’ve done and copied onto the new list the stuff I haven’t, I put a line through the entire page.
I then leave the notebook open to that week’s list on my desk, where I can add things (if necessary) and cross them off. I don’t remember to cross off every day – so sometimes there’s a very satisfying session of “done - done - done - done - done” when I do check things off.
The point: It’s always a one-page (or less, usually) list – an achievable amount to get done in one week. Sometimes I break out sublists (an item might be just “edit stuff for 05” or an actual list of the articles I need to make sure I do), sometimes I don’t.
And I don’t pad the list by putting on stuff I do regardless (“water plants; go to production meeting”) or things that I’ve already done, to make it look like I’m doing something (“review solicitation letter that Eric just dropped on my desk and asked me to look at” – I revise the damn thing and give it back to him and it never appears on the list at all, because it was a quick 15-minute job).
But there’s always a list, and I always get through the bulk of it, because the list is realistic.
I’ve been thinking I need to start doing this at home. I sporadically start an ongoing to-do list – but it turns out those just get long and nothing happens, and I stop looking at them. I’ve got a bunch of stuff I need to do both with housecleaning and homemaking, and other stuff IRL (“apply for a passport”).
So – I’m going to go buy a steno book for home, and make a ten-item list each week, not bother to list the stuff I don’t have a problem staying on top of (“do laundry, water the plants”) and put on the things that I do, both that I “should” be doing weekly (“vacuum”) and those that need to be done at this particular minute (“feed the houseplants, mop kitchen floor”). IOW – writing a list to cross things off doesn’t work for me as a motivator – writing a list to keep my priorities clear does.
Damn, that turned out to be three or four cents’ worth – sorry to get so long-winded… (obviously this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while).