Learn from fundies? Household routines?

[annalena]

As I guess some others on here, I have problems keeping my house (apartment) in order. Particulary when I have a lot of time on my hands, as odd as it sounds.

It's so tempting just to do nothing. I don't want it to be perfect, but I want it to be in a state where I can always let visitors in- which is not the case just yet.

Guess I've been eating the bread of idleness. What do you think are some of our fellow fundies' routines I could apply to my everyday living? I mean, they're big on housekeeping, so they should have something figured out?

[Clementine]

I read the Flylady system and adapted it to my apartment and lifestyle. My place isn't sparkling clean (but my bathroom is since I swish and swipe every day!) but it's much better than before.

[annalena]

I tried FlyLady, but the constant emails bothered me.

Thank you though.

[clibbyjo]

I cannot keep up with anything either. I try,it lasts a week or 2 and then its back to the usual state of chaos.Lucky I live in the country and there is not "dropping in" without plans and everyone is afraid of my dogs anyway so I rarely have visitors.

[Katiebug]

I'm not sure how some fundies can seem to spend ALL day cleaning. I work full time and go to grad school at night, have a toddler, we cook all meals at home, cloth diaper, etc. and somehow I still don't spend more than an hour a day on housework. It's usually much less. Our home is in a condition where drop-in visitors wouldn't be a problem, although it's not magazine-perfect. I like having a clean/uncluttered environment, especially with a toddler who gets into everything.

I tried FlyLady but found it to be very SAHW/SAHM-oriented. I also thought some of the "rules" were absurd. I know it's about developing routines and gaining control over a household but some of the FlyLady devotees out there are freaking nuts - it's almost cult-like. And sorry, but I'm not spending $20 on a FlyLady branded toilet brush.

What was key for us was sitting down and making a list of what tasks need to be done daily (washing sippy cups, prepping lunches for the next day, running a load of laundry, etc.), twice a week (Swiffering floors, cleaning bathrooms), and once a week (cleaning floors, cleaning out the fridge, mowing the lawn). Then we divided them up relative to differences in work schedules and hands-on parenting effort. If we both keep up with it, it means that our weekends are free for family time and large home improvement tasks. The fundies would freak at the thought of my HUSBAND doing more housework than I do. :lol:

[clibbyjo]

I am blaming homeschooling for my messy house. The kids are ALWAYS here, so they move the chairs around daily when they play video games(which drives me crazy because they never return anything) and have laptops and workstations set up everywhere so nothing is ever cleaned up because they work when they want. With 2 white dogs and 3 cats the hair situation is hopeless.The only thing that gets done dailt is the dishes and that is because we don't have enough to go 2 days without washing anything.

[Clementine]

I tried FlyLady, but the constant emails bothered me.

Thank you though.

You don't have to subscribe to them. I did for the first year, but mostly I read on her website and her advice was a real blessing when I was in total despair because I felt so overwhelmed.

I started with the Flylady system but just like Katiebug, I sat down and wrote what I needed to do in my home. Now I have a laminated list for every week plus a schedule that I use for cleaning my home in just 90 minutes every week. Including a break. Love it!

[annalena]

I'm not sure how some fundies can seem to spend ALL day cleaning. I work full time and go to grad school at night, have a toddler, we cook all meals at home, cloth diaper, etc. and somehow I still don't spend more than an hour a day on housework. It's usually much less. Our home is in a condition where drop-in visitors wouldn't be a problem, although it's not magazine-perfect. I like having a clean/uncluttered environment, especially with a toddler who gets into everything.

I guess this is the secret. Devoting a certain time span a day and STICKING to it. Now that's easy with a regular life, but not with mine- being in school, several deadlines, working on/off, sometimes 7 days a week, sometimes none, constantly going back and forth between here and where my boyfriend's from. Weird thing also, the more time I have, the less I seem to invest in the house.

What was key for us was sitting down and making a list of what tasks need to be done daily (washing sippy cups, prepping lunches for the next day, running a load of laundry, etc.), twice a week (Swiffering floors, cleaning bathrooms), and once a week (cleaning floors, cleaning out the fridge, mowing the lawn). Then we divided them up relative to differences in work schedules and hands-on parenting effort. If we both keep up with it, it means that our weekends are free for family time and large home improvement tasks. The fundies would freak at the thought of my HUSBAND doing more housework than I do. :lol:

well, I think whatever way works for both of you and is fair considering work schedules, is just fine!

I'll have to adopt an attidue towards household that is "maybe it sucks, but there's no choice". The attitude I have now is "it sucks, nothing too bad happens if I don't do it, I'd rather spend my time differently".

[gardenvarietycitizen]

I guess this is the secret. Devoting a certain time span a day and STICKING to it.

Agreed.

In fact, there's one tip that I agree with Teri Maxwell on - the easiest way (for me) to do this (be it for cleaning, or for studying, or any other task) is to use a timer, not the wall clock. It can be an egg timer, or your phone, but the point being you can set an alarm to go off in X minutes.

Then instead of saying you need to do some set amount of work, or read some number of pages, you can say "I will do for X minutes." and there's no need to endlessly put things off by saying "well, I should start at the top of the hour, so, at 3:00... oh wait now it's 3:05, okay, I'll say 3:30..." you can start any time.

Honestly for me it was like magic. Work for those X minutes and then put the task AWAY. But it chips away at it, and eventually you've made tons of progress.

[Rosa]

For me having an evening routine - doing dishes, packing lunches, laying out clothes (this is all from flylady, btw) was the key. Otherwise I started each day having to dredge out from the previous day before I could do anything.

That said, if you're in school & working & living alone, and the mess isn't getting in the way of accomplishing those things (if you have a clear place to work, food to eat, clothes to wear, and can find what you need to get out of the house each morning) there is a lot to be said for squalor, especially if you live alone. When I was working full time and in college full time, I did the basic necessaries (changing the catbox and rinsing out the bathroom sink and doing laundry) and just let the rest slide. Sometimes it really isn't important.

[bananacat]

Do it the fundie way. Have about 10 children and hope that half of them are girls. Beat them into submission, wait about 7-10 years, and then make them do all the cleaning.

[Witsec1]

The attitude I have now is "it sucks, nothing too bad happens if I don't do it, I'd rather spend my time differently".

... I see nothing wrong with this attitude. Of course there is a choice. You just have to figure out which is more important to you - impressing visitors with your housekeeping, or doing other stuff. Personally, I like visiting a home where there's interesting clutter (not squalor) rather than homes where the magazines are lined up precisely on the coffee table.

[bananacat]

Here's my serious advice though: don't try to turn over a new leaf all at once. Find little, tiny, miniscule changes that you can make, and then turn them into habits. If you try to be all perfect at once, of course you will burn out and give out.

I've done this several times over the years and it has worked out well. I used to hang my bath towels to dry wherever I ended up after a shower, and then sometimes I would get out of the shower the next day and the towels wouldn't be in the bathroom. So I decided that I would make a commitment to always hang my towels to dry on the towel rack. The first few days I was tempted to follow my old habit but I could muster up enough motivation to take the towels back to the bathroom. After just a few days of forcing myself, it became my new habit. I've been doing it ever since, without any effort.

I've done the same thing (at different times) with putting dirty clothes directly in the hamper (too many socks that missed the laundry because they were in another room), and putting my shoes in my closet immediately after taking them off my feet (tripped over them too many times). My most recent one is putting dirty dishes directly into the dishwasher and unloading the clean dishes as soon as they are clean.

My apartment is still dirty by a lot of people's standards, but much better than it used to be.

Make a list of all the cleaning things that you want to become habits. Every month or so, commit to making one small change from the list. Don't take on one task until the previous is thoroughly ingrained. Small steps will add up a lot faster than trying to change everything at once.

[CanticleoftheTurning]

Same here--my apartment used to be horribly cluttered, and it's a constant battle even when it's just DH, me, and our three cats. I do work full time and am working on my masters 2 classes at a time, and DH is also a full time grad student and interns and works from home, so we're both busy.

I'm trying to get it visitor-ready, too, even though we rarely have visitors.

I agree with the previous posters--start small. The reason I kept failing previously was that I would make a goal of organizing the whole house in one Saturday, get overwhelmed one hour into it, and let it build back up into a mess again. (depression probably contributed to that bad habit, too...)

It actually took more time in the long run doing 2 weeks' worth of dishes, or laundry, 3 months' cleaning all at once.

I started with the dishes--I run the dishwasher once a day. Sometimes it's better for me to wash the dishes in the morning before work, sometimes I have enough energy at the end of the day to wash them. Even if I just had time to wash one pot or one pan, or even just load and run the dishes, that still helps myself the next day.

Then the next thing I worked on was laundry. Do laundry once a week. It doesn't take long in the large community laundry room--maybe 4 machines at once. And I liked being able to have clean clothes, so that was a motivator.

Cleaning is the tricky one, and I often run out of time to sweep the floor of cat litter or do the toilet--but anytime I have a little bit of time, I try to do something. I'm fortunate it stays clean for a while so I don't have to do the bathroom very often (maybe once a month.)

DH has been doing really good with doing the litter boxes, brushing the cats, vacuuming, and taking out the trash. We just both still procrastinate horribly with recycling because it's a little more inconvenient with the community recycling bin setup.

This post is inspiring me to take out my recycling when I get home from work...

[Rosa]

and just to reinforce why doing it all at once never works:

"It's like I think that adulthood is something that can be earned like a trophy in one monumental burst of effort and then admired and coveted for the rest of one's life. "

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2 ... adult.html

[Kaylee]

I'm a big fan of FlyLady, so most of this is stuff I learned from her & then tweaked to fit my life. I tried the whole email list thing a few times, still crashed and burned, and needed something drastic to get my house straight when I got pregnant and lost my job. It finally clicked, although I'm still working on decluttering 9got rid of a lot of my stuff, only to realize that my husband is one hell of a packrat, too).

I also couldn't deal with all the emails, so I had them go to a separate account at first, then found I only really used the "Sneak Peek for the Week" which gives the "zone missions". You can get those from her website each week and put them into whatever planner or calendar you use or, if you use the Cozi online calendar she recommends, you can add a calendar to it which puts them all into it for you. (I like Cozi, not so much for the calendar as for the shopping list, which I can use on my blackberry, since I always forgot my paper lists).

Like others have said, start small. Make one change and then add to it once you've kept it up for a week or month and it becomes a habit. FlyLady starts with a shiny sink, and having the dishes washed an put away before bed can be a good starting place. The same could be said for laundry. You could add one task or area in each room of your house, one at a time, to work on and then branch out from there.

The calendar or schedule and routines is a biggie. I made mine up on a piece of paper and posted it by my computer chair, so it is there nagging me, and I have gotten a lot more done since then. List what you do (or need to do) each day. Don't make these huge at first, but it's nice having a list to get through and stuff does go faster because it's like being on autopliot. Mine's divided into Morning, Afternoon, & Evening. You could also do it as Morning/Before Work, After Work, & Before Bed. Beside the daily schedule, I have a weekly plan - list the days and do recurring things like vacuuming, dusting, mopping, washing bed linens & towels, grocery shopping, and cleaning out your car on the same day each week.

Setting aside a goal for cleaning each day helps, too. FlyLady says 15 minutes of decluttering, but some people use 20 or even 30 - just don't get burnt out. You can also go by area, like 1 drawer or one part of a task, as long as it won't be more than you can get done at one time.

The whole thing about getting dressed and wearing shoes each morning does helps (dressed more than shoes, but I broke my toe twice this year, so I'm now on the shoe crew as well). Sounds lame, but I was totally living in my nightgown most of the day (think Misty from Candy's story, but dressing in denim skirts and t-shirts instead of like a girl from a Whitesnake video), so being showered & dressed by 8am has made a huge difference for me. Laying out clothes and planning the day the night before has also helped, and I imagine it is an even bigger help if you're going to work or getting kids ready for school in the morning.

[annalena]

For me having an evening routine - doing dishes, packing lunches, laying out clothes (this is all from flylady, btw) was the key. Otherwise I started each day having to dredge out from the previous day before I could do anything.

That said, if you're in school & working & living alone, and the mess isn't getting in the way of accomplishing those things (if you have a clear place to work, food to eat, clothes to wear, and can find what you need to get out of the house each morning) there is a lot to be said for squalor, especially if you live alone. When I was working full time and in college full time, I did the basic necessaries (changing the catbox and rinsing out the bathroom sink and doing laundry) and just let the rest slide. Sometimes it really isn't important.

Thanks for all your input, guys.

I live with my boyfriend, who has expressed a couple of times he'd wish for the apartment to be more orderly, he also thinks it'd be easier to get our lives in order then (sort out the whole application-job-work-stuff and a couple of other things) and I think he's right.

I actually do have enough time to do it, or we do (he definitely is more on top of it than I am). But as stated before, the more time I have the lazier I am about this. When I rush home after having worked for 10 hours, doesn't make that much of a difference if I work for another 30 minutes in my home. But actually getting up to do it while being at home- now that's hard.

[FundiesInMyFamily]

With 2 white dogs and 3 cats the hair situation is hopeless.

I hear ya Clibby, my white dog has caused me to aquire a vaccuming fetish. I vaccum twice a day and get all excited when the cup gets filled with hair.

As far as advice goes, I'm also an apartment dweller, and I gleaned a little tip years ago somewhere on the internetz... its called the 15 minute pick up. Set a timer for 15 minutes and work your ass off... pick things up off the floor, start a load of laundry, pick up any dishes and place in the sink or dishwasher, just keep going for the whole 15 minutes. You'd be surprised what you can get done, especially in a small space. It always makes me feel better when I don't have more time to devote to things.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

I hear ya Clibby, my white dog has caused me to aquire a vaccuming fetish. I vaccum twice a day and get all excited when the cup gets filled with hair.

Ha! Someone else out there who feels a sense of... satisfaction seeing how much stuff got sucked up in the vacuum! I am not alone... :D

[annalena]

... I see nothing wrong with this attitude. Of course there is a choice. You just have to figure out which is more important to you - impressing visitors with your housekeeping, or doing other stuff. Personally, I like visiting a home where there's interesting clutter (not squalor) rather than homes where the magazines are lined up precisely on the coffee table.

Well I'd like to get my life in order. ;) Also ,my boyfriend has (as stated before) mentioned this more than once, that he'd like for us to have a cleaner apartment.

I mean I've been at the point where I could literally not see the floor anymore, for a long while, like half a year? It wasn't pretty. I'm better than that now, but there is room for improvement...!

[annalena]

and just to reinforce why doing it all at once never works:

"It's like I think that adulthood is something that can be earned like a trophy in one monumental burst of effort and then admired and coveted for the rest of one's life. "

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2 ... adult.html

Haha, this is just SO TRUE !!!!

I thank you all for the good advice. I agree it has to be the small things. Sometimes I think ( just like on the blog!) I'll magically transform into a superhousewife-chef-organizer, but it just doesn't happen.

The only chore I actually enjoy is cooking. BUt not every day! I mean, I do it a lot of days, but, I don't enjoy it all the time.

I will also try the timer! Excited to see how that goes for me. Will try it right now with my job applicatino. :)

I've also already worked on decluttering, not that I was hoarding, but i'ce always been told you never throw gifts away. That led me to keeping every piece of clothing my mom ever gave me, stuff that was like 11 years old. I gave away A LOT (or threw away)

Being showered and dressed by 8 am sounds like a plan! I mean, when I stay home, what I do a lot of days due to thesis-writing, I only ever wear sweatpants. Cause it's comfy. And I'm not willing to change that;) BUT a nice top, hair in order, and basically looking like I'd be ready to go to work (minus the swears) could make a big difference .

Particulary since I'm a morning person and most productive in the early hours.

The 15 minutes timer- work your ass off- sounds GREAT. So I can trick myself into doing it, cause it's only 15 mintues! It's like nothing! So much time for fun left!

Anyone tried InnerKiddies on here? i tried it, I like the idea, I think there's a lot of truth to it, but it didn't actually help me.

[gustava]

I live with my boyfriend, who has expressed a couple of times he'd wish for the apartment to be more orderly, he also thinks it'd be easier to get our lives in order then (sort out the whole application-job-work-stuff and a couple of other things) and I think he's right.

Well, then, hand him the damn toilet brush and tell him to get scrubbing. Really, ya'll, your posts sound as if they've been written by every SAHD and SAHM we've ever snarked on. Look at your pronouns: FIRST PERSON SINGULAR: I, me, me, I, I, me ... where are your male helpmeets, for those of you who have them!?!?!?!?

OK, erecting barrier of brooms, mops, toilet brushes to hide behind until the furor passes.

[annalena]

Well, then, hand him the damn toilet brush and tell him to get scrubbing. Really, ya'll, your posts sound as if they've been written by every SAHD and SAHM we've ever snarked on. Look at your pronouns: FIRST PERSON SINGULAR: I, me, me, I, I, me ... where are your male helpmeets, for those of you who have them!?!?!?!?

OK, erecting barrier of brooms, mops, toilet brushes to hide behind until the furor passes.

No, seriously, don't get me wrong- he's defo the one to do more around here. So he can actually ask me to put in the same effort he does (in a healthy range, of course): I'm the one who slacks here.

[princessjo1988]

I love this thread!

I am the world's worst housekeeper (or at least it feels that way sometimes!). I just find it really uninteresting, and when I do it, I get really picky, so tasks take me a while!

I get my hubby to wash up, which would be fine, but he won't wash up everyday. Frustrating... to me! I try to vacuum the main area every 2 weeks minimum, but have been known to forget, or ignore. :shifty: We have a TERRIBLE clutter problem - we both tend to hoard, particularly paperwork. :doh:

I had never heard of FlyLady, so thanks so much for the recommendations. I love having something to follow (vs coming up with it myself), so this might work for me. And having it computerised is awesome too. :)

[booksnbeats]

I am kind of an on and off "housekeeper" (I'm living alone right now) but setting a certain amount of time helps. I also like to entertain myself while cleaning whenever possible. Like, I love to clean while having Hoarders on in the background (better for something like sorting, since you don't want to feel bad about getting distracted). Otherwise listening to something like This American Life or your favorite podcast makes cleaning awesome.