Housekeeping Shortcuts

If hiring a maid is out of the question, perhaps you can tackle one project a day? Assign each room a day of the week and clean it throughly on that day.
As far as the papers go, you HAVE to pick them up sometime right? Make a point to place them in neat stacks according to their importance or how recent the project. If all else fails, you can always stuff them in drawers and under the bed. (A little pack rat humor.)

I grew up helping with all the household chores and still have trouble keeping up. After 10 years of marriage and 4 children I finally read "Sink Reflections" by Marla Cilley, aka "Th Fly Lady".

http://www.amazon.com/Sink-Reflections-Marla-Cilley/dp/05...

Now we're getting somewhere.

My best organizing and cleaning tip that is 100% environmentally pure is...

1.)Turn down the lights so you can't see the mess

2.) Embrace the Non-Neat freak in yourself

3.) Remind yourself that in the end, you will NOT be wishing for more time to clean the house!

4) Spend some time in my mom's house and you will realize how truly tidy you really are!!

:)

Don't underestimate the cleaning power of plain water, or a little dishsoap and water to do the cleaning. I have over the last few years gotten rid of about 90% of the cleaning chemicals and toxic things in my home. I use straight up distilled white vinegar to clean the bathrooms because it kills all the germs. A damp cloth of water for my mirrors instead of Windex and dry with a paper towel. I use soap and water to clean my windows and dry them with newspaper because it doesn't streak and no ink marks either. I use vinegar for fabric softener in my washing machine, 1/4 cup is all it takes. No your clothes don't smell like vinegar. I use a small amount of soap and a gallon of water for mopping my floors. A damp cloth for all my dusting, just rinse with water as needed to get dust particles off. I also traded vinegar for jet dry in my dishwasher. In place of dryer sheets, I use tin foil balls. Its noisy but 4 balls about 2 inches in diameter helps keep the static at bay but I also line dry most of my synthetic items. I think that's the brunt of it for cleaning tips.

AS far as cleaning tips as a mom. I clean the bathroom while my kids (1 and 3 years) are in the tub. I'm present and aware of whats going on but they have time to play while I get something done. Otherwise, think in 30 minute increments, I try to get the kids to pitch in with whatever I'm doing. I used to clean the whole house in one day, then kids came and now its one room or one project a day. We have a golden retriever and have lots of hairball issues. Basically, I just vaccuum every 3-4 days. I wish I combed her out more often but that's just not part of the routine. I keep my dishwasher always empty or dirty so we can just keep putting our dirty dishes in throughout the day which helps a ton. Figure out your zones that make you feel like the house is a mess and keep them clean. For me, I need a made bed in my room and a clean kitchen. After that, the bathrooms need to be clean. So every day, I make my bed and try to keep the kitchen clean. Hope that helps some.

L.

I don't know about "100% environmentally pure"--I don't really know what you mean by that. But this is at least somewhat eco-friendly:

I set aside shelf space, and use recycled envelope boxes for sorting the bills/other paperwork. The company I work for uses a lot of envelopes (business size) and the boxes are usually decent, with a decent lid that comes off easily. I write the name of the type of info on the side of the box. The boxes also stack pretty easily on top of one another, too. I hardly ever look at the boxes, other than to throw the invoice in there, but it helps a bit.

I also canceled a lot of my magazine/newspaper subscriptions, since I just don't have time to read, and I got myself off most of the catalog mailing lists, too.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it... if it doesn't look dirty, leave it be.

If you see something that needs cleaning and can be done in 10 minutes or less, do it right away, just that one thing, one drawer, one shelf, one mess on the stove... and leave the rest.

Delegate whenever possible.

Clean alongside your kids, work side by side and talk about....

Lower your standards.

Filing and organizing: I bought colored cardboard folders in different sizes from an office supply store. The kind that are open at the top. Each one is labeled in bold marker - taxes, utilities, school, bank, etc. Then I use the dump method because it's fast. Every paper I handle gets dumped into a file folder immediately or into the "right now" pile which has stuff like bills or papers to pay, read or sign right away.

The best dust rags I've found are old cotton diapers dampened with a spritzed of plain water from a spray bottle.

The dishwasher - I switched to Seventh Generation dishwasher detergent, they have it at our Walmart. It's a little more expensive but I've found I only need half as much to get my dishes clean. I scrape but don't pre-rinse. No film left on my dishes, or bleach smell like the national brand.

The dustbuster... gets all that cat hair, we have one who sheds alot. I vaccuum every other week and use the dustbuster in between to get cat hair and the stuff that accumulates in along the edges and corners of the room.

No shoes in the house. Mud and dirt gets tracked in around both entries where I have a bench and shoe rack. I can pick up the debris with the dustbuster before it migrates to the rest of the house.

Disinfectant wipes in the bathroom. I can make the bathroom look pretty good in 5 minutes with a couple of wipes.

Pyrex storage containers. They had sets at Costco for 30$ and I love them. I'm getting rid of the plastic containers. These can go in the freezer or fridge, have tight lids, can go right into the microwave and you can see what's inside because they are clear glass.

I am a disorganized mess, but I do know about eco friendly cleaning. I use Bon-Ami cleanser (the powder in a can..can't remember the chemical counterparts name) for bathtub and stove and kitchen sink. Simple Green diluted with water for greasy stuff (counter tops, etc), vinegar and water for mopping floors but sometimes I do use bleach and water if there are extra issues. If you have wood floors you could use murphys oil soap. For dusting I use water on a rag. Toilets get the bon ami and if there are stains I'll but some bleach. It drives my sister crazy as she says my house doesn't smell clean. Husband says the same thing. But for both of them the smell of clean is the smell of chemicals (pine sol, air fresheners, etc) and to me that just smells like chemicals. Good Luck.

i don't, LOL. i usually keep things picked up. i'm always carting things from one room to the other when i go places in the house. i have a basket for kids junk for them to take to their rooms.

i don't do a lot of deep cleaning and the house is never top-to-bottom clean all at the same time. that sucks but i am not about to spend hours of the day cleaning everything. start with what bugs you the most. i did read sink reflections, which is all about baby steps toward a cleaner house but it didn't really stick. i did clean my bathroom sink every night but never went farther than that. just not my style i guess.

not much to add other than that simply green is really not all that green.

with your paperwork, i'd at least put them in nice-looking boxes or baskets. it will look better.

can you get a roomba to clean up after the dog?

Hi - the best advice I ever got was to take 30 minutes each day and just work on something. Not the whole house. Just one specific room or area. I am always amazed at what I get done if I totally focus on one room for just 30 minutes. And that is not a huge chunk of time to give up during the day. Also I use a vinegar/water/lavender mix for cleaning counters and lots of other stuff - I buy it from a lady at our farmers market - but I'm sure there are tons of web sites that will have recipes for natural cleaners...most containing vinegar and baking soda.
Good luck.

I feel the same way and have been trying really hard to get better at it. So far I have managed to have..get ready for it...FREE TIME! I know amazing huh? I don't have a lot of advice since I am just starting on my journey to being a clean and organized Momma to 3 and wife, but I can tell you how I started. I found the blog of a woman who herself has 3 kids and admits that she hates cleaning. She is really organized though. Here is the link
http://blog.wantingwhatyouhave.com/

I really liked her help with how to get started on a big mess. She advised getting a laundry basket and going around whatever room (she was cleaning her kitchen) and put everything that does not belong it that room into the basket. Then start cleaning that room. Once you are done, put things in the basket away. I used that a couple weeks ago to get started and did it in almost all of my rooms and it was really interesting to see how many things were in each room that did not go there.I also used a labeler for some items in my pantry (tupperware is spendy, so I reccomend that if $ is tight, get the rubbermaid stuff, I think it works just as well for things like flour, rice etc.
As for the cleaning supplies...I don't really know. I know lavender is used to make a clean freshs scent in natural cleaners, vinegar can be used with baking soda to clean sinks and stuff. Anyways, hope that link helps!

Hmmm... 100% pure. Not sure I can help you there, but I know that we live by Clorox Wipes. I keep a can in each bathroom and in the kitchen. Every day, I wipe down the surfaces quickly after using the "facilities" first thing in the morning.

As for organizing, we use a "three basket" system... Do NOW, Do this week and When you get to it. I have the three baskets on the kitchen buffet top and each night I go through the "do now" and do it- that includes filing it away. Every Sunday, I do the "this week" basket (bills to pay, RSVP's, permission forms, etc) and I do the other basket items when I have 5 minutes to burn (thank yous, return phone calls, filing, placing an order, etc).

I HATE to file, so I put all of the items that need to be filed in a drawer (bank statements, investment statements, paid bills, etc) and spend an hour filing papers one Sunday each month. This way the papers are in one (nonvisible) place, but they do get put away in a somewhat timely manner. We have a small file cabinet in our den closet.

OMG I think we are twins seperated at birth! Seriously I TRY to follow flylady.net and not beat myself up during the majority of the times I don't. I've tried scheduling what parts of the house I vacuum. The entry hall and family room where the dog is allowed everyday and then a specific room on a specific day (example, tuesdays is my daughters room, Today the master and master bath).
My brother found a video on Youtube about folding clothes.....Needless to say I'll be watching this thread closely :-)

you got a lot of great tips I would just like to add that those big bags of baking soda you can buy at sams club or costco go great with white the distilled white vinegar, to replace comet in bathtubs, sinks, toilets even just splash with vinegar and than sprinkle the baking soda and scrub. you can also add it to laundry for an "oxy clean" effect. and Poor it down a clogged drain followed by vinegar for a replacement for drain-o (followed by HOT water, not BOILING water as its bad for the plastic pvc piping)
Another thing everyone should know about white vinegar and cleaning, stay away from stone products... marble, granite, slate, it eats them away. I used to keep a squirt bottle of it on my marble countertop, until I moved it one day and noticed it had leaked and I had a Giant Circle etched into my counter...
As far as getting the cleaning done, I am a horrible house keeper so once every few weeks I pop in a dvd to keep the big kids busy while the baby sleeps and I CLEAN for about 2 hours, lol my house is rarely clean but its not too dirty under the constant mess of 3 lil kids and 4 not little dogs...

Frankly, we don't. We keep talking about hiring a housekeeper every couple weeks but haven't done it yet. We just try to keep our heads above the laundry pile. If you can afford it, there are lots of environmentally sound cleaning companies.

Enlist your kids in helping. They can clean up toys (with a little help maybe) and can help with laundry.

Make meals in bulk. Double or triple recipes and then freeze in family sized portions. Each frozen meal in my house is usually dinner one night and then also lunch the next day. A simple reheat on the stove is all. We also tend to do most of our real cooking on the weekends and then put a couple things in the fridge for early in the week and more in the freezer for another day.

Grocery shop online. I haven't done it, but others swear by it.

Depending how your dog sheds and your flooring, invest in a roomba. Anything less than a dyson won't work for our house, but that's the first thing I'd buy if it would work for us.

Also, as someone else mentioned, if you "pre-shed" the dog, that will make what ends up in your house much less. We've used a number of dog brushes and grooming tools over the years and the furminator is by far the best we've used. We spend maybe 10 minutes outside with the dog once a week (she sheds all year long) and there's WAY less dog hair in the house.

Go introduce yourself to Flylady! She'll help you take the baby steps needed to get organized and she's a lot of fun. She has helped me immensely. The best thing is? She's free. :D Of course, there are little Flylady themed gadgets you can buy to help you with your baby steps, but they aren't necessary. Just cools. :D http://flylady.com/

I know where you are and it really does help. There's six people in here, so endless laundry & dishes, 3 cats & 4 children to vacuum up after, etc. Her system is amazing.

instead of doing dishes once a day I do them for very short periods of time almost after each meal. It seems to go by quicker and my son is far more patient with me spending 15 min on dishes instead of more than an hour.

I also vaccum every day...I also have 2 dogs that shed horribly so this cleans up the hair quickly instead of doing it once a week and needing to spend more time going over the same area. So it takes me about 10-15 min every day instead of an hour once a week.

I only do one load of laundry a day, and I try to do it every day, so that it doesn't pile up to being several loads all in one day. So the amount of time I spend doing laundry everyday is about 20 min instead of an entire day.

I cook one very large meal once a week and freeze extras to pull out for lunches and dinners other days of the week. This is usually a soup, stew, or something similar. When my son was just starting to eat I would freeze his pureed veggies in ice cube trays so that it was already in serving sizes and very quick to warm up (30sec) for his meal times. Now mostly I cook one veggie a day and use left over veggies for the rest of his meals.

I'm TERRIBLE at organizing my office...so I'm hoping to get a couple of hints from other moms on this one!

This is a great question...I look forward to following up and seeing more responses.

EDIT: my SIL uses flylady.net (or is it .org??) not sure totally...but she uses fly lady for getting organized!

Instead of just vacuuming up after the dog has shed, try a preemptive strike! A daily brushing or grooming session will capture much of the loose fur before it is shed all over your house. I know it seems like extra work, but 5 minutes with the dog can save you from having to do up to 50% of the vacuuming you currently are doing. Besides, it can be an experience both you and the dog enjoy. When I had a Chocolate Lab, It seemed like I could re-coat a small dog every day with the fur he shed. I found that he would let me vacuum him with a soft, nubby rubber attachment that fit on my vacuum hose. It took some time for him to get used to it, as he had previously been afraid of the vacuum, but he grew to love it.

Realsimple.com has tips for organizing and such. But I see that you have a few suggestions for Flylady.net. You should listen to them!!! LOL Flylady gives you morning and bedtime routines that make your days go more smoothly and more organized so you have more time and energy to do the organizing. your house didnt get messy all in one day and it wont get clean all in one day. She gives daily missions that are no more than 15 mins. long to organize parts of your home. Its not hard but it does take a little effort and if you stick with it the results are noticable and amazing! If you sign up for the email be prepared for either a lot of email reading or deleting tho I will warn you! I think it is worth it to read other peoples experiences tho and to have the missions and reminders right there when i check my email :D And i agree that a Roomba may be an excellent idea!

You're not alone by a long shot! I have had to learn these things, too, little by little, for years and years. My mother (who, if she were still living, would have her 106th birthday in the spring) didn't know how to do anything when she was married, either. The one thing she apologized profusely for when her daughters were grown was that she didn't teach us good housework habits. I think she was so busy getting the hang of it herself that she wasn't good at passing it on.

BUT - nobody's born with this knowledge, either! So don't kick yourself too much. The fact is that you know you need to know more speaks well of you!

I haven't read any of the other answers, so maybe I'm repeating someone else, but I think Flylady (www.flylady.net) would be a very good site for you to visit. Organizing and cleaning habits are taught in small steps, with LOTS of encouragement. You can follow their daily to-do (and how-to-do) list until you are confident enough to adapt it to your own life. There are a lot of e-mails you can subscribe to, IF you like, in connection with the site; the volume may seem overwhelming, but personally I enjoy zipping through them all and finding other nuggets of good advice.

Once you have an idea what to do and how often, you'll be able to find the products you want. I'm slowly looking for environmentally friendly products myself, too, although I'm not advanced enough to give recommendations.

Hope this helps.

I would make a family cleaning day but instead turn drab to fabulous! Make it a game. Put oven mits over your feet and help the kids skate around one way while holding there hands move to only one way to move the fur to won side. Or do things to music one person will do things to the beat each time it is there turn make it fun!

As far as cleaning products go I use White Vinegar and Liquid Dish Soap for most things. I fill a bucket with hot water, add a squirt of dish soap and a glug of white vinegar. It works wonderfully!
As for keeping up on it all. I have no idea. I'm looking at last nights dinner mess and know that it won't all fit in my dishwasher. Some days I just can't bring myself to deal with it all.
Sad thing is, my office is my home. I have to keep it looking nice for the twice a month someone comes in. *sigh*

I don't have time to think about environmentally clean anything. i am also afraid of bathrooms. so while i am was not born with the cleaning gene there are some things i am religious about: I clean my bathrooms every other day. I was dishes as they get dirty and put them in dishwasher so my sink is always empty. i clean my fridge once a month. i vacuum twice a day. I do laundry every day. These are things that I hate doing but I do them because they bother me when undone.
I do floors once a week (I hate doing them by the way).
I cook every day from scratch.
And I get 1 project done a day. For example today was bathroom cleaning AND filing my kids' schoolwork.
Yesterday I clean drawyers around the kitchen (that was my 1 day project).
Tomorrow, if it is not a snow day, I plan on going through my kids' clothes, clean, rearrange and get rid of old/small ones.
By the way, I don't spend my whole day cleaning. I start at 5 am and by 11 usually I am done. Kids get home from school around 3. By then dinner is ready. So aside from feeding them and doing homework we spend time together.
I