Clean Freak
One of my mom’s habits that has really stuck with me after she left last week, is the necessity to have a clean kitchen. While my parents were visiting, my mom ensured that the kitchen remained as clean as possible. This meant no dishes in the sink and counters wiped down and free of clutter. Since our kitchen is the center of our home, it makes a huge difference in the appearance of the entire house.
I’ve never been one to do dishes after a meal. Usually, they sit in the sink all day until I load the dish washer the following morning. Lately, I’ve been doing the dishes right away, and as weird as it may sound, I like it.
The clean kitchen obsession has branched off into other rooms of the house, and has me wanting to develop a schedule for the entire house. I figure if I can clean for like an hour each day, I should never really have to do more than just a little touching up here and there. Right now, I know what I want to do, but fitting each task into a day is proving to be slightly challenging. For example:
Should I clean the bathrooms on Fridays in case we have guests over on the weekends?
Laundry on Saturdays so that I can include the uniform that John wore all week?
Vacuum while the girls are in school so that they don’t track dirt in and out of the house while playing?
Once I get that puzzle figured out, I think I’ll be able to maintain a tidy house pretty easily.
While we’re on the topic of cleaning, I want to give you all a warning about a huge Pinterest fail that happened to me last week. Maybe you’ve seen a pin about boiling a cup of water + vinegar in your microwave in order to clean your microwave with the steam. Well, when I opened up the microwave to wipe it down, the boiling hot water in the measuring cup exploded out everywhere, to include my chest. Luckily, I wasn’t holding Juliana at the time, but boy was it scary. And painful! I still have a few red marks on my skin, but I’m just glad that it didn’t blister or anything. On the bright side, my microwave is squeaky clean!
Is there a specific cleaning routine that works for you?
I follow a schedule of sorts.
It’s changed lately since Em started school but it’s like this..
Mon: mine and Maddie’s laundry
Tue: Towels and linens
Wed: Basement
Thu: Upstairs
Fri: Downstairs
Sat: nothing besides the daily picking up
Sun: Em and Mike’s laundry
Sometimes I’ll do the upstairs and downstairs on the same day, it just depends. That means I vacuum, dust, make spot less once a week. But daily I clean the kitchen and pick up the living room and Em’s in charge of cleaning her room of toys daily. I hate feeling overwhelmed and that way I’m not spending ALLLL day cleaning, just an hour or so daily.
Eeek. Glad you’re okay. And I’m a big fan of letting dishes soak, aka not doing them until later.
Ouch! So glad you are okay. I am all about having a clean kitchen, it is a must for me.
It drives me nuts not to have a clean, organized house! Right now, that is my biggest concern with a baby coming, so I’m coping by majorly purging our entire place. I figure the less clutter and junk I have, the easier it will be to keep everything tidy. Of course, this theory is yet to be tested….
I’ve actually used the app Motivated Moms for the past few years. It gives you a checklist of daily household chores to help keep your house tidy. I feel like it’s really manageable and doesn’t give unmanageable expectations. If you don’t want the checklist on your phone, then you can go their website and print off a paper version as well.
If you put vinegar in a shallow, wide dish and heat it up; that cleans the microwave the best. We do EVERYTHING on Saturday morning. Expect the kitchen, which we clean every night.
Ahh, so glad you’re ok! We usually do everything Sunday night but I’m also trying to come up with a schedule for throughout the day.
Um, I don’t? I really should have some sort of routine, but right now I’m just lucky if I do something. I am a neat freak in the kitchen, though, and like to have everything cleaned as I cook. Unfortunately we have too much stuff and not enough room so our counters are cluttered, and my husband just got back from guard duty in which the state was paying for everything rather than giving per diem… so he came home with a TON of stuff… and now I have to figure out where to put it…hmmm.
Yikes! Glad you are okay, and that Juli wasn’t around or hurt at the time! As far as dishes go, I load everything as we use it into the dishwasher, and then run it as we are heading to bed, so I can empty it first thing in the morning. The bigger stuff that doesn’t go in there gets washed the second I am done using it. My mom thinks I am nuts — but I’ll even scrub a pot that’s empty before sitting down to eat! It helps with the after-meal chaos a little bit!
I have the same problem with just coming up with where to start. I just want to keep everything clean and just tidy up. I hate doing dishes as well and have my girls load the dishwasher and it makes things go faster. I can definitely relate to that. My mother does the same thing when she comes to visit. Glad you are ok! I’ve been wanting to try that same microwave thing as well, maybe I will do this weekend as well. I also burned myself with boiling hot water from microwave while stationed at FT. Polk and ended up going to ER. It burned my belly and half of my thigh. No fun at all.