Tuesday, 09 February 2010
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Pick Up the Pigsty
Post from MamaTRUE
When I can’t control the havoc inside my head, it’s time to pick up the house.
If anyone had told me before I had a child that laundry took nine steps, I would have laughed. But it’s true.
- Put dirty clothes in basket
- Take basket to laundry room
- Run load of wash
- Transfer to dryer and dry clothes
- Put clothes in basket
- Take clean basket of clothes to bedroom
- Sort into piles for each family member
- Fold and hang up clothes
- Put clothes in closet or bureau
And you know what? It is nearly impossible for me to get all nine steps done in one day. Often, it doesn’t get done in one week. The ridiculous thing is that each action takes very little time. It’s just doing so many in a row that causes me trouble.
Really, cleaning has never been my thing, but I appreciate having a space that’s picked up. Also, there’s no way I’m going to manage to teach my son to pick up after himself if I can’t clean up my own stuff. I feel like a total hypocrite telling him he can’t take out the puzzle until he’s put away the blocks when I’ve got piles of my own books, crochet projects, and other detritus stacked everywhere. So today, besides taking the dirty laundry off the floor and actually getting it to the hamper, I put the sorted laundry away. Then put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Then recycled all but a small pile of the mail. All the toys went in their baskets, the shoes into the hall closet. There was more.
Things haven’t been so great around here lately and the house was a disaster. Today the emotional chaos motivated me to clear the clutter. I couldn’t fix my life, but I could clean it up a little. From room to room, I sorted, put away, and cleared. The house looks much better and I feel emotionally cleaner too.
How does the state of your house affect your mood? Does cleaning help you feel better? Has your attitude toward having a clean house (or your need for it) changed since having children?
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About the Author
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- From: mamatrue
- Name: mamatrue
- About Me: Sonya S. Feher is stay-at-home-mama to Cavanaugh True. She found out she was an attachment parent when she and Cavanaugh were invited to a playgroup full of AP families. Loath to admit she had no idea what AP was, she went home and Googled it. Sure enough, her new friends were right. Since then, she has become a co-leader of the South Austin chapter of Attachment Parenting International, a contributing editor for API Speaks, and a columnist for The Attached Family. She blogs about parenting at http://mamatrue.com and writing at http://sonyafeher.com. You can contact her at mamatrue (at) sonyafeher (dot) com.
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Comments (8)
Well I suppose I'm in the "nesting" stage right now at 5 months pregnant. I've been cleaning everything - dusting the shelves of the laundry room even. I try to do a load of laundry every other day... even if it's a small load. I find (with just two of us) that I can keep it under control that way and I'm more likely to completely sort the small loads. I also take out anything that's going to be hung up in the closet after 20 minutes (from the dryer) and let it hang dry in the laundry room. That adds a step, but makes folding and sorting shorter.
Normally, I hate cleaning. I have a roomba that vacuums daily and that at least helps with the light cleaning. Obviously I break out the hoover vacuum for deep cleaning, but at least I'M not vacuuming everyday this way. We don't have a dish washer, and thus I HATE doing dishes.
I try to keep at least one room in the house absolutely perfect. Not that the rest are horrible, but having one VERY clean room somehow motivates me to keep the others clean as well. Maybe I like them to match, I don't know... lol.
HAHA, your "laundry" list is SO TRUE!! It nearly ALWAYS takes me at least two days to get all the steps done. *Sigh* Nothing is simple after children.
Oh, and I'm like @isumath07@xanga, I try to keep one room especially clean (usually the living room) so that I can at least feel good about that. Plus, it's the room people immediately see when they walk in my door, so I feel better about my domestic self that way.
I used to get overwhelmed too. What I've found to be working over the last 3 months is to set lists for each day of what gets done.
Like Monday, I clean the girls room, and bathroom. Today, I did my room and bathroom and ran my clothes to be folded later on tonight. Tomorrow I strip beds and clean the powder room...etc. Doing it this way makes me have a goal. And guess what? If it doesn't get done this week, it gets skipped and done next week. This way, a week without cleaning a room isn't too bad.
yep. i need help on this one for sure. It most definitely is a major accomplishment if all of our laundry gets done and put away before the hamper is overflowing again. Clean is just not realistic but I try to not A. beat myself up and B. give up altogether.
I can relate. thanks for taking time to post :)You do lose steps when your children get older. First, they have the responsibility to put their own clothes in their own hamper, and then even bring the hamper to the laundry room. Then they put clothes away. Then then can help you start loads, switch loads, put dry clothes in baskets. Then help fold... I think I was about 10wih when I could do it all by myself, and only that late because I couldn't reach the top of the washing machine
I totally feel you on this laundry thing. I'll do everything else but laundry always seems to take a week. lol I have a pile in my bedroom now. lol