Simplifying Housework

Raise your hand if you'd like to do less cleaning and more playing.

I'll just assume you raised your hand, or you didn't understand the previous direction.

So, how do we do less cleaning? How do we drop cleaning tasks without allowing our house to slowly fall apart? How do we keep a presentable, hospitable home, without feeling constantly overwhelmed by the cleaning & maintenance to-do list?

There are several principles we need to agree on before finding the perfect solution for each of us.
1. Have less to clean.
2. Have a place for everything.
3. Create a daily routine.
4. Keep your servants working.
5. Don't clean more than necessary.

1. Have Less to Clean
Obviously, less stuff means less cleaning. This is one of the reasons we are striving to get rid of unnecessary, unwanted, and unloved things. Anything we keep that we don't need, want, or love is something extra we have to clean and care for.

From our more cluttered days. This room was impossible to
get "clean", and always shut when guests visited
 because of all the clutter in it.

Also, a smaller house means less cleaning. This may not work for everyone, but if you truly need, want, and love the extra space a larger house provides, then you will naturally want to care for it, and the cleaning aspect won't bother you as much as it would if you have too much house and too much stuff.

2. Have a Place for Everything
When everything is put away, where it belongs, it is easy to wipe down surfaces, scrub walls & floors, and deep clean nooks and crannies, because these areas are accessible. The pick-up & put away portion of clean-up can go much faster if you know where everything actually belongs and you don't have to stop and think about it.

This was still from our cluttered days, before we had any children
even. We had way too much stuff, but at least it had a place...
and pre-children it was easier to keep it where it belonged.

Even better is when all family members put things away as they finish using them. This is more possible when everyone knows where things actually belong... though easier said than done with lots of little ones.

3. Create a Daily Routine
This is the big one. Several cleaning tasks must be done daily to stay on top of the grime. My husband and I like the quote that says, "Cleaning with young children still in the house is like shoveling the walks while it's still snowing." Our house feels more like a blizzard than a gentle snowfall most of the time. But there's an important reason to continue to shovel the walks during a blizzard, even though it seems fruitless... Shoveling the walks during a blizzard prevents you from being snowed in.

My brother, D, stuck in a snow bank.

It may be frustrating to shovel the same section of sidewalk over and over again, just like it feels monotonous to wipe down the kitchen table for the 11 thousandth time since you bought it. But shoveling 2 inches of snow from the walk is much easier and faster and seems like less of a chore than shoveling 2 feet of snow.

So, there are several tasks that should be done on a very regular basis so we can stay ahead of the storm. Creating a routine of these tasks can help us save mental energy and stop the "where do I even start" conundrum.

A little over a year ago I found an "Emergency Quick Clean" list from Joyful Christian Homemaking. I was in survival mode shortly after the birth of our 6th baby and this list became my go to when I felt like the house was falling apart. As I gained some level of sanity, I began to modify the list somewhat as I realized that many of the items on the list really needed to be done daily, and often multiple times a day.

And so, my list of "dailies" was born. Since that time, I have begun to train my children in the dailies, and they have formed the basis of our chore rotation. But I will still run through the list by myself when I need things done well and quickly. Here's my list:

1. Move laundry
2. Clear kitchen table & counters
3. Wash dishes
4. Wipe down kitchen table, sink, counters & stove
5. Sweep kitchen floor
6. Straighten and wipe bathrooms*
7. Empty garbage cans*
8. Clean-up pile
9. Put away stray items
10. Vacuum*
11. Fold laundry

Our ideal is to run through this list multiple times a day. We like to associate our chore time with meals, since that is obviously when dishes & kitchen wipe-up need to be done. The starred items on the list are ones that do NOT need to be done multiple times a day, once is enough. We also don't always vacuum the bedrooms daily. The family room is supposed to be done daily, but the bedrooms are only done as needed (see #5 below).

As I said, doing this list 3-4 times a day (including snack) is our ideal. It doesn't always happen that way. But as long as we do it at least daily, we can stay ahead of the storm.

The best part of this list is that it has become so routine that I don't need to think about it anymore. Assuming we didn't do our dailies after lunch, and Daddy will be home soon and the house looks horrible... I know exactly where to start. Go move the laundry, then move on to the next item on the list.

4. Keep Your Servants Working
I've mentioned this before, and I will mention it again because it's an important point. If you were to have paid servants working for you, you would be very displeased with them if they sat around doing nothing while there was work to be done. In our modern world, most of us cannot afford to pay maids and cooks to keep up the house.

But most of us do have several servants in our home. Thanks to these servants I can simultaneously launder clothing, wash dishes, cook dinner, vacuum, all while sitting on the couch reading stories to my children. Several of these servants you may have picked up on right away, but others you may be scratching your head on. I am blessed to have a washer, dryer, dishwasher, programmable oven, crock-pot, and a robotic vacuum (my Christmas present a year ago... my husband knows me all too well). These servants can be real time-savers if we use them. But if we let them sit, without working, the chores just get more and more backed up, and we avoid them more.

Don't let the dishes pile up in the sink for several days. Even if you only fill the dishwasher every three days (we fill and run ours at least twice daily), it can be loaded with dirty dishes as you go so the sink is usually empty and the dishwasher will be ready to run when it is full.

Don't let dirty laundry pile up and sit for days or weeks. As soon as you have enough to run a load, start it.

Look around your house and see what other servants you might have that you are not putting to work.

Our oldest three daughters learning to move the laundry.
They were barely 4, barely 3, and 17 months in this picture.

Servants Part B

If you have a large family, like mine, or any children at all, you may be neglecting a wonderful source of energy. Children can, and should, be trained in life skills such as laundry, cooking, and cleaning. It is usually easier to push them aside and do the work ourselves, especially when they are small. But if we can take advantage of their natural desire to learn and do what we do, they can gain valuable knowledge. According to "From Pampered to Productive: Raising Children Who Know How to Work" by Debbie Bowen, most children at least 8 years old can be expected to be fully responsible for their own age-appropriate chores, provided they have been properly trained before-hand.

From personal experience I can tell you that my 7 year old can do every item on my list of dailies unassisted. She is way too young to do all of them at once, and they are not done as well as I would do them, but it is not unreasonable to assign her one or two of them, and expect her to complete them "good enough" with minimal supervision. My 6 year old requires a bit more supervision to complete the tasks to "good enough", but she is also capable of doing every item on the dailies list.

My 5 year old is too small to efficiently do most of the tasks on her own, and her attention span is too short for some of the longer tasks like folding laundry. But if I stand by her side, she can rinse dishes and hand them to me to load in the dishwasher. She can sort laundry I have folded. She is learning to wipe down table & counters, and how to sweep the floor. I am usually there with her to point out areas she missed, or finish up behind her, but she feels like she is contributing.

Even my 3 year old twins are expected to help where they can. They can load utensils into the dishwasher if I hand them to them. They can drag laundry hampers to the garage and help me move laundry (this is one reason we got a front-loader, and no pedestals.. the kids can reach to help). They can pull leftover containers out of the cabinets so I can fill them with leftovers, and then they can put them in the fridge. They can move the chairs out of the kitchen to make sweeping easier. They can sweep up large crumbs with a small hand broom and dustpan. They can carry tied up bags from bathroom garbages to the big garbage can in the garage, and they can put new bags in the garbage cans.

Chores for children or youth do not have to be boring, frustrating or stressful for either of you. If you continue to work with them, they can become a wonderful bonding time.

5. Don't Clean More than Necessary
This is a tricky one. I've seen many cleaning chore lists that give housewives a short list of cleaning tasks to do each day. The cleaning tasks are rotated for you, so if you simply follow the list, your house will always be clean, right? The biggest problem with these lists is that they are not tailored to your specific home and situation. Some cleaning tasks in my home need to be done more often or less often than mentioned on these types of lists. Instead, I have found it more effective to stay on top of the dailies, and take note of extra things I notice that need to be cleaned, adding them to the "weekend work" list, or just doing them ASAP if they are a short or urgent task. If I don't notice that something needs to be cleaned, chances are no one else in my house will either, including guests.

Theory in Practice
So, assuming you now have less stuff, there is a place for everything you have left, you have a list of dailies to get your home looking presentable, you have identified your servants and know how to get them working, and you have committed to only cleaning what is necessary, how can this help you to simplify housework? How can these principles save you time and energy?

To answer that, I decided to do a little experiment. For most of one day, I allowed my children a day off. We didn't do our dailies after breakfast, or after lunch. I didn't even make a snack, just allowed the kids to get whatever they wanted. I didn't remind them to put away one toy when they finished playing with it before moving on to the next. And I didn't stop them from doing crafts in their bedroom (usually not allowed), and leaving paper scraps through most of the house.

I wanted to know how long it would take me to get the house looking completely presentable, assuming I had started with snowed-in-blizzard-disaster-mode and assuming that I had distractions, rather than help, from my children.

Tomorrow, I will share the photo-documentation of my cleaning efforts. Stay tuned!