Simple Living Manifesto No. 27
Posted on September 10th, 2011
Today’s assignment:
Create a simple system for house work. Another example of a simple system is clean-as-you-go with a burst. Read more.
I can break my system down into a few component parts:
- I live in a small space, so I notice messes.
- I don’t like messes, so when I see one, I clean it up (or instruct the person who made it to clean it up).
- I live in a small space, so the capacity for messes usually doesn’t exceed my capacity for cleaning them up.
- There’s no schedule for cleaning, but I generally clean the bathroom twice a week, vacuum twice a week, dust several times a week (Pea helps with this), and clean the kitchen multiple times a day.
- Laundry is easy to keep up with when you don’t have an excessive amount of clothing AND you have adequate storage for clean clothes.
- Laundry is even easier to keep up with when you have no “intermediate storage” for clean clothes. No laundry baskets: clothes go straight from the dryer/line to the wardrobes.
And there you have it. The biggest problem with living in a small space is that one mess can quickly take over, so we all I have to be vigilant.
Categories: Simple Living Manifesto, Simplifying
I find it much easier to stay on top of cleaning now that we’re in a small space, but truthfully, I still hate cleaning. My biggest issue is (and always has been) paper clutter. I usually recycle junk mail immediately, but my son is an avid artist and creates paper clutter quickly. He’s good about picking up though. I need to find a system that works and stick to it, that’s my biggest, ongoing challenge.
Pea doesn’t have a prodigious art output (yet?) but I have a large document box I keep her art in and it’s up on a shelf on a bookcase. (The really good stuff gets displayed or framed.) That way, it’s out of sight and I can cull it when she’s not around.
I so miss cleaning like that, but with work… not happening. I do clean when I come home at lunch, but that leaves me feeling like I don’t get a break. And when I get home, it’s a question of clean or play with the Babby. Then clean or work. Then clean or exercise/clean or do a personal project. I run a pretty tight ship so things are pretty clean, but now that I work, the bathroom and some other things have certainly suffered.
At the same time, some things I’m doing more of because I feel this intense pressure to “keep up” with the SAHMs in my social circles so I try like the dickens to do everything they do AND work on top of it. Possibly because I have this secret fear that people think less of me now that I’m working a real job, mainly because I think less of myself.
And I think less of myself for *not* working outside the home. Ah, irony.
Its a lose-lose situation, I think. At work I feel guilty for not spending more time on my clients’ cases, and at home I feel guilty for spending too much time worrying about work and not doing enough with J. And then I always feel bad about the fact that the apartment never feels completely clean or picked up. Ugh.
I totally understand where Christa is coming from. I feel like I’m always dropping the ball with something, even though I’m so busy I can hardly see straight. In my case, I dislike cleaning anyway; my working outside the home just gives me an excuse to not do it. If I stayed home, no matter how exhausting it is to be with my own personal children all day, I would think less of myself if the laundry, bills, cleaning, cooking, shopping didn’t get done. Not to mention, I’d feel more pressure to have the kids enrolled in every activity. Unlike my SIL, who has her kids in swimming, karate, dance, piano, soccer and baseball (which I couldn’t afford with two incomes, let alone one), my kids get to pick one thing each season, because I simply can’t get them to everything.
I think when you’re a SAHM, you feel the intense pressure to be “super”–kids in every activity, a spotless house, always put together, angelic children. For those of us who work, yes, I want to be super, but I realize I can’t be, and most people don’t expect it of me. And when Chewey dropped the F-bomb, I had the luxury of blaming preschool!
Cleaning is my nemesis. I would like to be like Oprah who has someone change her sheets every day. I actually used to derive a little pleasure from cleaning but, now, being so busy…it’s last on my to-do list. I have to ask though…how and why do you clean you kitchen every day? Cheers!
Hi Karen:
Thanks for the comments! I wish I had someone to wash/change my sheets every day, too – oh, wouldn’t that be heavenly?
I clean the kitchen because I’m constantly in it; it’s small (part of the loft) and because I am a little OCD when it comes to kitchens. Trust me, when you don’t have a lot of space, it’s easy to keep counters clean and dishes done/put away. Also, I have a really good sense of smell, so a dirty dish in the sink will drive me crazy!