Wendy's HouseKeeping Tips

With a new baby crawling I've learned that having a clean house needs to be a priority. My sister Wendy gave me some advice on how to keep up a home, but unfortunately it was sent to me while I was on my honeymoon and I regretfully had not looked back on those emails until recently. I love the advice she gave, and thought I'd share them.

Sept. 20, 2006

I have been thinking about this a lot recently since Michelle and Jeanette are both setting up their own homes. It is a very exciting time in life and can become even better if you begin by setting good habits that will help your home become all the more smooth and comfortable. Times can be hard, disagreements may happen, but when you are in a peaceful, cleanly and orderly surrounding I believe these happen much less frequently as our surroundings can have a great impact upon our moods and feelings.

There is a time and a season for all things. I realize that there will be times in your lives when you will be very overwhelmed by this or that and that your homes cleanliness and orderliness will not be a big priority. You do what you can and you prioritize. By setting good habits early on in your marriage and supporting each other in these habits I believe that when life's little emergencies happen your home should be able to not become a major worry because you have it in hand.

1. Organize yourself. Prepare every needful thing. Prepare a home of WHATEVER YOU WANT!!! We can make our homes into anything we want them to be. If we want a place of peace we can do it. If we want tranquility, we can have it. If we want fun, we can have it. If we want a house of God, WE CAN HAVE IT!!! It takes work though. It won't happen unless we continuously try to achieve it. Decide what type of home you would liek to have and think about what you will need to do in order to achieve that type of home.

2. Always go to bed with a clean house - it makes getting up so much more enjoyable when you have a clean and orderly home to greet you. It's worth staying up a couple extra minutes to straighten things up and do the dishes. Why start a new day doing yesterdays work?

3. Get your spouse to help you. If you are the only one ever cleaning things, then that is how things will tend to stay. Early on, encourage your spouse to join you while making your house a nicer place to be. It makes it go faster, and is much more enjoyable. Plus, by doing these things they become familiar with how you like things cleaned, where things go, etc. so if it becomes necessary for them to do them by themselves they will be able to take care of things.

4. Clean dishes right away. If you clean dishes right after you use them, or at least put them in a sink full of sudsy water, they clean up much easier. While if you wait it takes longers and can be really embarrassing when company comes over unexpectedly and you don't have a single clean cup to offer them to drink in. I try to make a habit of quickly doing the dishes right after a eal. It takes 10-15 minutes to clean up the whole kitchen after we eat, and boy is it nie to not have to think about what shape the kitchen is in for the rest of the day.

5. It is a lot easier to maintain a clean home then to clean a dirty home. Clean a room and keep it clean!!! Take the time to pick things up and take care of things before they become a major project. I like to take an hour on Mondays and make sure that the front rooms in my home are really clean. After doing that I can keep things picked up and vacuumed fairly easily. But I have to be vigilant. Spending 15 minutes a day on my bedroom keeps it from becoming suitable habitation for the swamp monster.

6. You would be surprised what you can do in 15 minutes. My family teases me about my favorite game: The 15 minutes game. We set the timer and clean up as much as we can in 15 minutes. We all pick an area to work on and try to beat the timer. We can do shorter versions of this (which Ron refers to as the 15 minutes game in disguise) :)

7. Never get mad at someone's efforts to help. True, it may not have been helpful, but don't squelch the fire that lef them to doing it. They did it out of love and were honestly trying to help. So take a deep breath and thank them. If you want them to help you in the future you need to let them know of your appreciation and loe. This includes both children and spouses.

8. Take time to plan. If you have a plan of action you are much more likely to achieve your goals and desires. You will also find that you can get things done a lot more efficiently when you organize your course of action. This goes for food as well. If you take the time to plan your menus, it makes life so much better when we know the answer to that million dollar question, "What's for dinner?" Even if you don't want what you had planned for dinner you have other options to choose from because you have planned ahead for the week, month, year, etc. By having a plan you can then take less trips to the grocery store and avoid spending $20 when all you came for was a can of beans, milk, or whatever. By buying your food ahead of time you can easily shuffle your menus around to fit your cravings because you already have the stuff for another meal. You can also save a lot of money by doing this since you'll know what's for dinner and not be tempted to eat out.

9. Crockpots/Slowcookers are a wonderful contraption. I try to use mine once a week. You can have your dinner done by 10 am or sooner and not have to worry about it all day. It also makes your home smell very incising.

10. My newest discovery is that mornings are not such a bad time to get up. Shocking, I know. It is amazing how much you can get done in the morning, especially before the little ones get up. It really is nice to wake up and renew your spirit before the start of a new day. When was the last time you saw the sunrise?

11. Don't do things twice if you can do it just once. For example: If you open some junk mail, throw it away instead of putting it down in a pile with other things. Deal with things now instead of waiting for them to compile into a huge project. It may seem like a pain to do, but you'll be thanking yourself later.

My mom also gave me some really good advice while I was home. Maybe I'll type up another blog specifically for that later.

As of when I started writing this blog, which was Monday, I actually have tried to incorporate some of the things Wendy mentioned here. Mainly going to bed everynight with a clean house and finding it is a lot easier to maintain a clean home. I started with one room at a time, got it spotless and then the next day moved on to the next. We also had a problem with going to the store all the time and eating out, so we set up a plan for our menus and I've actually been the ones cooking the meals around here, and it's a lot more fun now that I know what to make! I think that hopefully will make me want to cook, and then we won't easily just fall back on the 'eat out' scenario. Oh, and I've also done the point she made about not doing things twice... what a difference that makes in keeping things tidy. Instead of having piles of things from the mail, I just got rid of the junk mail right then. Wow! I fully intend to take advantage of our crock pot this week, and once I get a hang of how I like things done I also intend to get James involved... I've been so good about getting all our dishes done right away, I have to remember he hasn't been 'conditioned' to that yet. :)

Anyways, hope these tips my sister shared give you some ideas too on how to make your home a better/cleaner place. It's definitely helped me already, and its only been a couple days!