Have you ever heard this saying: "Keeping your home clean when your children are growing up is like shoveling snow during a snowstorm." I love that! I told my husband this morning that sometimes I feel like I'm holding up a drinking cup and trying to catch a tidal wave! :) Well, it's not always that bad. And it can be peaceful and you can have a relatively clean home even if you have a lot of children.
FOCUSED CLEANING:
In my 15+ years of being a mother with children at home, the type of cleaning I find touted by all of the "experts" is one version or another of "focused cleaning". Focused cleaning is when your goal is to clean ONE spot and you work like crazy to NOT let yourself get distracted. This is when you heard your mother say "If there's no blood, I don't want to hear about it!" Hahaha, my Mom really did used to say that!
This is when, for instance, you've just finished a meal and it's time to clean up the kitchen. You try and just focus a good 15-30 minutes and get the whole kitchen finished, top to bottom. This is when lists and routines are essential. You know the drill: Mondays-Laundry, Tuesdays-Errands, Wednesdays-Bathrooms, Thursdays-Floors, Friday-Free. That kind of thing. There is plenty about this kind of cleaning on other websites, so I won't go into too much detail here. If that system works for you, enjoy it while it lasts!
I have had some success with these kinds of routines, and they do have a place in keeping a home clean. The problem I run into with this type of cleaning is that no day with children is ever perfect. It's rarely predictable, and almost never goes exactly how you plan. Your 3yo son is throwing up on "errand day", your 8yo wet the bed, but it's not "laundry day". You had to run errands on "bathroom day", so now all the bathrooms haven't been cleaned for 2 weeks. And on and on, you get the idea.
So I have spent hours and hours, I couldn't figure the total if I tried, making lists and schedules, plans and routines, trying to create the "perfect system" that will work for my family. But it is not to be found. There's just not enough predictability. Even if you do, by some miracle, feel great on "mopping the floor day", and you work like crazy, likely your 15yo son will walk in with dirty cleats and ruin your carefully mopped, perfectly clean floor. Or your toddler will slip on the wet water and cut his head! So it can be very discouraging to try and stick to a perfect schedule.
Don't get me wrong, kids needs predictability and schedules. We have a pretty good daily routine at our home that is followed 90% of the days. But that said, to try and cover the whole home following a "perfectly scheduled" routine when kids are in the mix, well that's just insanity! If any of you do this perfectly and you have more than 2 kids, please email me and tell me all your secrets! In the meantime, let me tell you how I've coped with this situation.
PINBALL CLEANING:
The next type of cleaning I've affectionately named "Pinball Cleaning". I'd like to say I invented this strategy, but most mother's do it to one degree or another and just don't realize it. This cleaning style is a type of controlled randomness, that I've been "perfecting" lately. Think of the name: "Pinball Cleaning" and you probably already have an idea of what this is!
Imagine one of those pinball games that you used to play in the arcades. There's a little ball in that bottom corner, and you pull back on the stopper and send it flying! It bounces here and bounces there, getting you points like crazy all over the place. But it doesn't get stuck in one area for long, and it always ends up returning home, to rest for a moment, and then be shot out into the action again!
Well, pinball cleaning is like this. You touch one area here, one area there, just like a pinball does. It's a way to take advantage of the fact that your day is often chaotic and interrupted! Why fight it? Let's USE it!
Here's how it works:
1. Set a timer for 15 minutes, and pick a room to be "Home Base". This might be the room where your children are playing, it might be the front entrance of your home, or maybe the kitchen. I usually choose the kitchen because there's always something that needs to be done in there!
2. Look around the room. What is the most obvious problem that needs to be done to make that room look presentable if company was on it's way? Get busy on it! Start tidying, cleaning, dejunking, whatever you see that needs to be done the most in that room. Here's a good guideline if you're not sure where to begin:
a) Floors First
b) Flat Surfaces Next
c) Hidden Areas Last
3. Now here's the key that makes pinball cleaning different than regular cleaning: When you come across an item that goes elsewhere (which you certainly will if you have kids), grab anything else you can fit in your hands that belongs in that direction. Now pinball-bounce to the new workplace (the place where that item belongs.) Drop off items along the way, then start the cleaning process again in the room you are in now. (See #2) Spend time in that room just like you did at "home base", then move on to the next room, and so on. This way you are "touching base" in lots of different rooms & areas of your house, and getting the most obvious, needed things done in each room.
4. When the timer rings, take a 15 minute break if you need it.
5. When the break timer rings, head back to "home base" (image the pinball going back to the beginning place, ready to shoot off again.) This "returning to home base" keeps this random cleaning session somewhat focused as you head back to the room where you began. It also gives you a moment to check on the kids, and take a break if needed. Remember, during the cleaning session, you are moving quite fast, like a pinball, so you will get your exercise too! (I'm actually pinball cleaning as I type this, and I'm typing in my blog on all my 15-minute breaks!)
Here's how a typical real-life session of pinball cleaning went for me today:
- Start in the kitchen. Begin clearing dishes off the table & loading the dishwasher.
- Come across packing tape. Head to the office after a quick glance for other things that belong in the office or in that direction.
- Drop off daughter's slippers in her shoe-bucket, some garbage in the trash, head to office and put away the tape. Start working in there. Straighten the tape drawer, find a vase that belongs in the kitchen. Finish straightening the drawer (don't put down the vase!), then look around for other kitchen or on-the-way items, grab the glass that was left out by someone, grab scrap papers from off the desk, then head back to the kitchen.
- Drop off some garbage in the kitchen garbage can, put the glass in the dishwasher, put the vase in the cupboard, resume clearing the table. Throw leftovers out to the cat, tidy the back porch a bit, grab the plate one of the kids left outside. Head back to the kitchen, put away the plate, resume clearing the table.
- Clear a few more things and put in the dishwasher, notice 6yo daughter's headband on the kitchen floor. Call her in to clean up her headband and clean up the rest of the kitchen floor as her consequence for leaving her item out. Pickup an item that belongs in the master bedroom. Grab other items that belong that direction. Head to my room.
- Tidy a bit in there, find a letter that belongs in my treasure box file, and head back to the office, quickly grabbing the 2 mugs from my master bathroom counter. Drop off the mugs in the dishwasher, put the letter in my file in the office. Begin working on the office table.
- Clear off most of the office table, find book that belongs in 12yo daughter's put-away drawer, grab that and some garbage to throw away and head back to the kitchen, dropping off the book along the way.
- Back in the kitchen, drop off garbage and proceed to finish wiping the table & the counters. Notice spice cabinet open, and crumbs on the shelf in there. Wipe down the open space on the shelf and close the cabinets. Put away seasonal plate and straighten that cupboard while you're in there. Timer goes off.
- WHEW! Time for a break! Head to office to type, check on kids along the way. When timer goes off, begin back at the kitchen.
Earlier today I did a session which led me downstairs to my son's bedroom where I rebooted laundry, turned off lights, cleaned up the downstairs bathroom, took garbage outside, picked up some items in the garage while heading through it, got some charity items, put them immediately in the car, which I cleaned up a bit while I was out there. Etc, etc. . . You can see how this can help you really make a dent when it seems like much of your home is in disarray (like every morning after the "hurricane" has left for the bus!)
So, that's your new idea for today! PINBALL CLEANING! What I love about this is that I can get really bored with the same old routine day after day. With this method, you never get bored! You never know where you'll end up or what you'll be doing! The key is to hit as many rooms as possible and get done the most amount of "little things" possible. This is not the time to begin completely overhauling a closet (focused cleaning), or sorting all the seasonal clothes (more focused work). This is the time to get lots of little things done all over the place, and to have a little adventure while you do it. Yesterday I was doing this, and I came across a book we hadn't read for awhile, so we sat down and read it as "part" of our "pinball cleaning". What fun for the children (and a nice sit-down break for Mom!).
This technique makes a fun little game out of the tedious daily chore of tidying and organizing. It's great for the kids too. When they call you for something they need, you don't mind that you are being "interrupted", because you can just continue your pinball cleaning wherever the child is. Interruptions are obsolete! Potty time? Wipe down the bathtub. Bath time? Clean the mirrors and sort the magazines in the bathroom. Kids on the trampoline in the backyard? Pull a few weeds. Somebody fell down? Hug and comfort, use it as a break, then start up the vacuum with that child helping with their toy vacuum.
And on it goes. Controlled randomness! Love it! Mom gets a lot done, the kids are taken care of, and Mom gets a lot of exercise, too! What better way to spend the morning? Give it a try!
ENJOY!
