My Clean House

Post 21: I love my house even more when it is clean!

I am definitely considered a clean person. Not that I am perfect by any means, but my dirty house is definitely way cleaner than a normal persons house from my experience.

A lot of times I actually enjoy cleaning. Again, not always, sometimes it is just a pain in the butt, but most of the time it is a great stress reliever and an easy past time. This kind of falls into my love of organizing, which is definitely one of my favorite activities. An organized house is one big step towards a clean house.

Having a clean house is not always easy to achieve. I am a busy person, especially on the weekends. When we moved to our new house I spent quite a bit of time reading about cleaning and a couple places suggested cleaning during the week. Well I tried that and it just doesn't work for us. I can do laundry during the week and that works pretty well since the family room is right by the laundry room, so I get through laundry well. But I am just too tired to clean the bathrooms or vacuum or dust during the week. I would rather try to focus the energy I do have on interacting with the puppies or going to the gym.

The other obstacle is breaking out the chores between Dylan and I. This is something we are still working on.

The Yard: I do poop patrol, Dylan does mowing and trimming. We both do the weeding. Next year when we have a garden, that little plot will be all Dylan since he wants a garden and I do not. We'll see how the shoveling goes when it snows. The plan is for Dylan to do most yard work since I took over laundry.

Laundry: I do the laundry. Dylan will help out when I ask, but I usually keep that to a minimum. I am just much better at laundry. I get through it faster and I fold much better.

Vacuuming: This is Dylan's weekly chore, but I will do it sometimes when it really needs to be done more often (shedding season) or I will do it when Dylan is gone and I want to jump start our cleaning, or if someone is coming over.

Bathrooms: This is my bi-weekly chore. It sometimes becomes more like every 3 weeks, but ah well.  Because I also tend to clean the kitchen on cleaning day (see below), and that can take awhile, where as Dylan's vacuuming and dusting is shorter, we have switched this up once. Overall it stays with me though.

Kitchen: This is by far our biggest struggle. I think because I am much more of a clean person and Dylan somehow manages to not see the mess, this is where the issues are. Our goal was/is to have the kitchen clean every night before we go to bed. This doesn't happen nearly as often as I would like. Part of the struggle is the cooking vs. cleaning. Right now, Dylan is supposed to do the cooking and the cleaning. I know that sounds really unfair, but hear me out. First, Dylan likes to cook and he like variety. If and when I cook, I cook pasta. I could (and did for the majority of college) eat pasta every day. It is easy and quick. I am starving when I get home, so quick is key. Second, I clean as I go when I cook. I make sure everything is soaking or rinsed off when I am done cooking and before I eat, because otherwise it sucks to clean. Dylan does not do that well. He just cooks, plays his iPod while he cooks, then eats right away, so nothing really gets cleaned until a couple hours later when he goes to clean it. So it really isn't fair for the other person to clean when one person cooks. Third, I don't really like cleaning pots and pans or cooking really, so if I really had my choice, we would go out. We are still working this out and decided we will reassess after my cousin and his girlfriend move out since that will arrange our cleaning schedule a bit.

Then on the weekends and nights when I have time/it really bothers me, it falls to me to make sure the kitchen is fully clean. Dylan isn't great about wiping down the counters on a daily basis, so that falls to me. I also make sure all of the other stuff that gets put on the kitchen counters get put away. I go through the bills/coupons pile to get rid of old stuff, put away the shred stuff and other items that need to go in the office. All of this is fine by me (well except the counter wiping off) since I know that I see these messes better and I do a much better job of putting it all away.

Dusting: This is generally Dylan's chore, since it coincides with vacuuming, but again I do it a lot when it needs it more.

General pick-up/putting things away: This is generally both of us. It depends on how we set up the cleaning that week. Most of the time we will go through the first level and pick up/put away everything, then Dylan will start vacuuming while I go and take care of the kitchen. So then Dylan will take care of the upstairs when he goes to vacuum up there. (there really is never much upstairs to pick up since the dogs play downstairs mostly and the clothes usually make it to the clothes hamper).

I think that is the sum of our cleaning routine. Always a work in progress between the seasons changing, the dogs and when we have people over. Right now it is especially clean since my grandparents are coming over on Monday and we cleaned on Friday (we didn't know for sure when they were coming over).

Love my clean house!