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Post by momof3boys on Mar 28, 2010 22:14:11 GMT -5
How long do you spend daily cleaning? Maybe I'm spending way too little time? I really don't know.
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Post by moggyfan on Mar 29, 2010 0:28:41 GMT -5
Disclaimer: I live alone in a medium-sized apartment with one relatively well-behaved cat.
Daily? Maybe 20-30 minutes all told (counting sorting & tossing mail, hanging up my clothes, doing the dishes, scooping kitty litter).
Every 10 days or so, I probably spend a few hours doing laundry, cleaning out fridge, dealing with recycling, vacuuming, changing sheets, etc.
Maybe once every six weeks, I'll do a bigger "deep clean" of one room (rotating basis).
However, more people, bigger place, multiple pets (probably) = more time
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Post by lizzie on Mar 29, 2010 3:59:18 GMT -5
I don't currently spend any time, 30 seconds to make the bed when I get out of it, maybe 5 minutes doing the dishes. Like Moggyfan, I have a 'relatively well behaved cat', and he loves to pull himself along on the carpet on his stomach for that full body massage sort of thing, so there is a lot of white fur on the carpet everywhere. And the house is untidy, although not squalid if you ignore the fur, because I try to Eliminate The Evidence with most of what I do. But it certainly could do with a serious clean up, and if it was cleaned, I reckon on 20-30 mins a day to maintain it for me, as well. I am job hunting at the moment, so the kitchen table is always covered with paper, which I am sick of.
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Post by Script on Mar 29, 2010 6:52:27 GMT -5
disclaimer: I am mostly retired and my DearHubby is currently doing a lot of the food shopping and cooking. This is the bare minimum maintenance which I try to do regularly: *unload dishwasher in morning while kettle boils for coffee: maybe 3 minutes? *make bed: maybe 2 minutes? *put away clothes and tidy bedroom: 2 minutes *swish & swipe bathroom after my morning beauty challenge: 2 minutes *clear table, load dishwasher, put away leftovers in evening: 15 minutes +/-. How do I know? I time it sometimes. *open daily mail while standing over recycle box: 2 minutes; bills go in a 'to pay' file right there. I barely have to move to do this. *both DH and I are constantly taking out recycling, garbage, compost. This is a job we both seem to like! Every week I try to do the following: *strip bed, open windows upstairs, fresh sheets on bed: 15 minutes max *bill paying, office work, filing, account balancing: 1 hour +/- This is very important to me, as a retired bookkeeper who had deteriorated at one point into serious financial squalor [much better now]. *more elaborate 'swish & swipe' in both bathrooms, with fresh towels: 15 minutes each I do at least 6 loads of laundry a week. I iron almost nothing. Floors for vacuuming: every house is different due to size, configuration, amount of furniture. If I were to vacuum EVERY FLOOR in my three-story-house it would take about 2 hours total. I never do this all in one fell swoop. I do bits and pieces here and there over time. We have no pets or kids. I guess that I cover most of the whole house about a month. Kitchen floor: I vacuum this far more frequently. I cannot stand the 'crunch' of crumbs and dried food on my bare feet. I try to wash this weekly, but lately have been more neglectful. Dusting............................       don't ask...................... Bonnie McCullough [old fashioned home management expert] says that it takes one hour per person per day, not including child care, gardening, shopping. She does include food preps. She also says that one person can care for a home of four people alone. With more than four she needs help from family or outside paid cleaning service. Her standards are quite high [assumes house in maintenance] |
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Post by mafixit on Mar 29, 2010 10:02:57 GMT -5
my time spent cleaning depends on my physical as well as my mental health for any given day.
I write up a to do list every weekday, set up a 10 minute timer, get things done from my list, take a sitting break and go back at it until I feel I've done enough.
on weekends I might cook, do dishes, or laundry, but overall I try to be carefree -as much as the rest of the family..
granted my house is not always in great shape, but considering that my family (four kids and dh) never lift a finger to help, they don't have any rights to give me grief for things not done..
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Post by success19 on Mar 29, 2010 10:17:56 GMT -5
Try to vacuum kitchen and living/dining once a week - during commercials of a tv show.
Upstairs about every 2 or 3 weeks.
Dust living/dining about once a week.
Bedroom less often.
Laundry - almost daily - 1 load at a time.
Bathrooms - good scrub once a week - sometimes a bit of cleaning throughout the week.
Dishes once a day usually - sometimes more (don't want bugs).
Trash - about every 2 or 3 days.
Change sheets - once a week - sometimes more in hot summer.
Decluttering - here and there - constant - but get energy surges and do more.
Not sure of the time.
But for those of you with multiple kids and husband and pet and job - I don't know how you get it all done.
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Post by wantinmore on Mar 29, 2010 11:23:57 GMT -5
Hi Momof3boys! What a great thread. It will be interesting to read all the different responses. I am a SAHM with two DDs (15 and 7), DH and 2 Great Danes. Every Monday thru Friday I wake up and know that at least 7 hours of my day don't belong to me. This includes all the chauffeuring, kids school stuff, Dr. appts, shopping, food prep, cleaning, laundry and any "projects" we may have going on. Some of it I love (cooking and grocery shopping) some not so much (all the driving and mopping the floors). I'm with mafixit on the weekend thing. If the rest of the family gets a break, so do I. If I worked outside the home I'm sure some of my "chores" would be adjusted (like maybe the kids would actually take *the bus* to school, novel idea) and DH would step up. We moved last September so I HAD to declutter/desqualor. Having less stuff has helped SO MUCH with day to day living....so right now...(most of the time) my home is at maintenance |
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Post by breakingfree on Mar 29, 2010 13:34:30 GMT -5
I truly admire all of you who stay home and take care of your children and home. Kudos to you! As for me, I do a load of clothes at least every other night, do dishes and put them away every night (or at least they are rinsed and put into the dishwasher). I pick a room that gets a little more treatment each evening, i.e. downstairs bathroom, upstairs bathroom, sweeping and mopping kitchen, sweeping, mopping, dusting the living room, etc. So, maybe 30 to 45 minutes a day I guess. But, my son is with his dad half of the time, and we only have SO's children every other weekend so momof3boys, I might not be a worthy example. One thing that I have learned by coming here, though, is that something is better than nothing. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Do what you can.  BF |
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Post by slothzilla on Mar 29, 2010 14:03:57 GMT -5
I truly admire all of you who stay home and take care of your children and home. Kudos to you! Ditto! I live alone and don't cook much, so I'm not a very good example either. My place was a totally-out-of-control mess until last summer when I was forced to clean it up for an apt. inspection. Since then I've managed to keep it clean and have gradually been improving it even. (although its still far from perfect!) For me, just changing some old bad habits has really made a difference. In the old days, the junk mail just went onto the floor, now it goes in the garbage. If something fell off a table and onto the floor, unless it was a drink or food, it would stay there for 6 months or even a year. Now I pick it up instantly. Now when I go into the kitchen, I take any empty bottles or cans in there with me - in the old days they would just accumulate on furniture, until there was no more room for any more. And now when I get a package in the mail, I throw away the box and packing peanuts first thing, instead of letting them pile up on the floor like I used to do. Books, magazines, dvds, etc. go back on the shelves when I'm done with them, rather than just build up in various piles like they used to. If a pile of stuff does accumulate, I put it all away in a week or so, rather than just let it get buried under more stuff. Now I spend about an hour and a half each weekend on maintenance. I've been able to keep the place consistently clean, and ready for guests (although my closets still need a lot of work, and I still let the dirty laundry build up too much). |
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Post by howardsgirlfriend on Mar 30, 2010 11:45:08 GMT -5
Edited to remove a case of "postous prematurous."
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Post by howardsgirlfriend on Mar 30, 2010 11:57:54 GMT -5
I continue to learn how often I underestimate the amount of time chores take. I have DH, 4 dogs, and 4 cats, who regularily use the kitchen/eating/family room/indoor dog park, 1 bedroom, and 2 bathrooms, all with vinyl floors (don't ask about the other 3 bedrooms, or DH's office.) It takes me about an hour a day to maintain these areas: dishes, 1-2 loads of laundry, cleaning up pet messes twice a day, shoveling the cat boxes, sweeping/dust mopping the floors to keep ahead of the tumbleweeds of pet hair, making the bed, cleaning bathrooms as needed, and tidying up. I slack a little on the weekends, and don't do the floors. My pets motivated me to keep these areas down to a level 0--1, because if I leave dishes in the sink, clothes/paper on the floor, small items on the countertop, etc, they destroy them. While I still clean pet mess twice a day, it's really easy, and takes just a few minutes. I have to shovel the cat boxes right before the dogs come upstairs, or they'll clean them for me!  |
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Post by Script on Mar 30, 2010 14:40:18 GMT -5
I continue to learn how often I underestimate the amount of time chores take. Over my years as a 'home manager' or mis-manager, I have had the opposite problem. I think a job is HUGE, when it is actually quite manageable. I now set a time, and it is almost always a shock. Case in point: tomorrow I am having a cleaning lady for half-day [gift certificate from brother and sister]. I did NOT want her spending time doing the stove top or the burner grates [newish gas stove]. I sprayed the grates with Easy Off and left them on old newspapers and an old towel (to protect floor) while I went off to work. I swiped them off, gentle scrub, when I got home. I was out of the house for about 5 hours. *time needed to spray the grates: 10 minutes +/- *time needed to scrub off: 15 minutes +/- I was so elated with this triumph that I re-sprayed one of the really dirty grates, and will swipe it off again later. Little Ninja has the '15-30 minutes' rule: all these ghastly jobs take little more than that.....or something........does anyone remember exactly? |
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Post by momofgirls on Mar 30, 2010 19:58:01 GMT -5
I unload and load the dishwasher while making dinner
I process the mail as soon as I bring it in
I pick up when I talk to my sister on the phone
I do the laundry the best I can
I clean the bathroom when it bothers me
Most days it does not seem like I spend dedicated time cleaning, I try to sneak in what I can when I can.
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Post by mrsmess on Mar 31, 2010 1:55:21 GMT -5
Prezzana I am the same as you in that regard....I tend to put things off for ages like dusting or floor mopping, and then wonder why I did when they are so quick to do really.
These are things I do everyday:
pack son's lunch for school
ensure teenage daughter has lunch organised
shower (and once a week scrub tiles while I am in there) and squeegee water off after.
wipe over bathroom sink area
unload 2 dishwashers in the morning...
start stacking dirty breakfast dishes
clean breadboard after breakfast
tidy beds
every few days I will strip sheets of one bed to wash (out of total 5 beds in house) This way they all get washed over time.
wipe kitchen bench and sink area numerous times a day in both kitchens
put clothes or towels in washing machine
hang out washing on clotheslines outside
when I do sheets and towels they go in dryer
vacuum some part of house most days
clean toilets when they need it (we have 3)
rubbish goes out whenever bins get full
food shopping
food preparation for dinner
pick up son
cook dinner
put plates in dishwasher
clean stove top
Clean pots and pans if possible or leave to soak sometimes
I need to work on cleaning out the fridge more often and wiping the shelves in there...that is a weak point of mine!
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catbiscuit
New Member
Joined: March 2010
Posts: 51
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Post by catbiscuit on Mar 31, 2010 18:29:04 GMT -5
Hi Everyone! Hmmmm, interesting question! My housekeeping times range from a big fat ZERO hours a day to 24 hours straight depending on who is coming to visit Admittedly it is usually zero most days then I will have a head snap and go flat out for 10 hours til it is sort of tidy again. It also depends on how long I can procrastinate and find other things to do. Absolutely no consistency whatsoever I'm afraid! Catbiscuit |
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