thoroughly clean the house and then keep it clean

No, I don’t get angry enough to ever have to count that far before I calm down. I’m talking about picking up stuff and putting it away. One cup in the sink. One washcloth folded and put in the linen closet. One pair of shoes taken out of the living room. One pair of scissors put back in the kitchen drawer. One load of laundry put in the washer and started.

Are there a hundred little things around my house that could be picked up and put away? OF COURSE THERE ARE!!! If I couldn’t find a hundred things to put away, I wouldn’t need this goal on my list at all.

So, I count them. It kinda makes it into a game. 100 things from anywhere in the house, picked up and put away, thrown away, given away, or cleaned, but off of the floor and the furniture. It only takes a few seconds each to count to 100 and then there are a hundred less things to do the next day.

I’m working the system. I know it. I’m getting by with doing as little as possible because it’s freaking hot outside and I don’t want to DO anything.

So I clean the kitchen every day. Yeah, that might sound great, but I know that the kitchen counter being clean and the dishes put away is my Dearest’s standard of satisfaction. In other words, doing that will keep me from getting grouched at. I don’t appreciate being grouched at, especially when it’s hot and I’m tired. But I can’t grouch back because he works outside most of the time. He never asks me what I did that day if the kitchen is clean.

I also try to have some delicious aromas coming from the same vicinity within an hour of his arrival. Then he thinks I’m being Polly Perfect, even if I’m not.

Is that manipulation?

It’s been 20 days and no messes. Even the pool table hasn’t had any laundry piled on it. It’s right across from the laundry room door and became the folding table shortly after we brought it in the house. I still like using it for folding. It’s a good height for me.

I’ve been sweeping and doing my laundry. I empty the dishwasher and Dearest fills it. I take out the trash and clean the bathrooms, and he has been taking his socks out of the family room. His work boots are still in there, but then again, so are my flip flops. I’ve been dusting and throwing a lot of stuff in the giveaway, and I even organized my Art studio.

It’s hard to believe what a difference it makes when the last kid moves out!

Well, we were already planning on cleaning the part of our house that I call “The Tee” this weekend anyway, but then Middle Daughter called to say that her fiancee’s family was going to be in AZ on their way back to NM from UT and wanted to stop by and meet us. They have family here, so they would be in town anyway . . . it’s not like they were going to drive a hundred miles out of their way just to meet us, but still—we wanted to make a nice first impression.

So we cleaned.
And prepared a good lunch.

“The Tee” consists of the front living room, which, as I’ve said before, I call The Peaceful Room; The Family Room; The Library; (those three go from the front door to the back door); The Dining Room; and the Kitchen (which form a T with the other 3, over to the side of the house). We worked all day and I stayed up late last night, as well. The Dearest also cleaned up the Back Yard so they could play golf, and I cleaned up the Courtyard in the front, so …well, it was too hot to spend any time out there this afternoon, but I wanted it to look nice anyway.

We served pulled pork sandwiches, corn on the cob, and quinoa salad. It was all delicious and is now mostly all gone. They liked it! :) We had a really nice visit. Not at all like strangers meeting for the first time.

My bonus is that now the house is all cleaned up from the wedding last month and I can go back to my previous morning routine before I tackle my housework every day.

This next wedding will be in Utah, so my house probably won’t end up being the Staging Area and hopefully I can keep up with it now that there’s only two of us here every day.

Exciting Times. :)

For dinner on Black Friday, we hosted our daughter’s boyfriend’s entire family for a cookout and minigolf (on the 9-hole course we built for her 16th bday a few years back).

It went great! Beautiful, wonderful family, but that’s not what this entry is about.

The four of us (me, my Dearest, the daughter, AND the boyfriend!) cleaned like crazed whirlwinds for a few days before the big First Meeting Event. We ate outside under the gazebo, because it was in the 70’s here that day. Then we roasted marshmallows and starburst in the firepit, and then they all played golf while eating cotton candy. After about 4 hours, when everyone had had enough fun, they trooped back through the house and left.

No one even used the bathroom.

Oh well! The house has been nice and clean all week and if we can keep it that way, I will be able to move on to fulfilling other goals.

That’s all I got done today, but that was only because I have a sick daughter who needed my attention, a busy husband who needed my help, and an assignment to the Rez that took me away from home from 3:00 in the afternoon until 10:00 at night.

I am doing great working the alphabet into my daily chores! It has been really fun and I can get up from writing at any time and go do one or two jobs and then get back to work. In the past, I would try to assign days or times to things when I thought I could work it into my schedule, but this way, I need no schedule!!! I just DO something.

I’ve been working like this for almost a month but because we were out of town for half that time, and then we had our niece staying here, the house doesn’t exactly look a lot different yet, but that doesn’t matter. I know my new system is working and it helps me sleep at night.

When you sing, you begin with ♪’Do Re Mi’♪ (♪Do Re Mi♪). When you clean, you begin with ABC (ABC?), Yes, ABC . . . thank you Julie Andrews. :)

“The ABC’s of Cleaning the House“

Silly right? ha. You haven’t read the rest of the ridiculous story yet.

A lot of what I clean seems to start with just a few letters. C, for example: closets, cabinets, couches, chairs, counters, cobwebs, clutter, clothes, courtyard, and ceiling fans. That doesn’t lend itself very well to the use of the entire alphabet, so I spent most of yesterday afternoon thinking up names for my daily tasks that can start with all 26 letters.

That wasn’t all, though. I could only have one word or phrase represent each letter so that when I’m tearing through the house, doing my ABC’s, I can remember what was what. That means I also needed EVERYTHING to fit into the 26 categories represented by the alphabet. Almost all of my letters give me a 5-minute chore to do.

I was tempted to title this entry JOY, because that is what my adventure in cleaning was today. First, I spent a good deal of my morning sorting all the tasks into their various letters. Then I typed up a very attractive little poster, made 5 copies of it, and taped them to the insides of a few cabinets so I’ll have easy access in case I forget what the next letter stands for.

Because of the prep work involved, and having plenty of other things to do with my day, I didn’t actually get started cleaning until after 4:00pm, but by 5:30, I was already to J! I did K after we got home from going out for Friday dinner, and then had to stop because it was family time. It was so fun, I can hardly wait to get started again tomorrow!!!

Should I share what my categories are? Probably. I think it would help others, but not right now. My document isn’t on this computer and I’d much rather copy and paste than to sit here and type it all again.

Yesterday was a good day for cleaning! I think Spring has sprung around here. It was in the 80’s and I was workin’ up a sweat, getting the Peaceful Room, the Family Room, the Dining Room, the Kitchen, the Art Studio, the Library, the Hall, and the Laundry Room all tidied up. Did all the dishes and a big load of sheets and towels, too.

Then this morning, I had a rather tense talk with my youngest daughter about how she can help keep our home clean, especially if she doesn’t want specific assignments. All she has to do is clean up after herself. That alone would take care of 80% of the mess around here. I did it all yesterday while she was at work, but seriously—she works at the theater AS AN USHER. She knows how to clean! If she can sweep up popcorn, she can certainly carry her shoes to her bedroom and her apple juice cups to the kitchen.

Really, I just need to stay on it. We all need reminders. After all, that is why this goal is on my list.

This is an area that gets cleaned a lot, but I needed to post a picture of what I want it to look like because sometimes my Dearest thinks my little mail table is a good support against which to lean his tools. (((eyeroll)))

So it’s “thoroughly clean” now and all I have to do to keep it that way is mop up his dusty boot prints every day and stay on his case about where he leaves the tools of his trade.

Wow, it’s been a year since I posted an entry about this, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been cleaning every day, or just about. I haven’t really re-done anything in a while, so no new pictures until now.

OK, so this closet was designed to be a coat closet, but I live on the desert floor and there are not a lot of coats in my house. This closet did contain a large snow coat, which I put in one of those bags that sucks all the air out and now it is in another closet with the sleeping bags. Also found in there were a couple of cutie little pink windbreakers from when my youngest daughters were three and five. They are college age now. ;p

I had been using this closet to store gardening supplies, but we got a deck bench, so I put all that stuff in that, had my Dearest build me a shelf for my tote bags right in the middle, and moved my tutoring box in there, too.

I love it, and it’s a great feeling of accomplishment to get all that work done. :)