My cleaning routine

I was chatting with a few friends the other day about keeping up with cleaning when you have a baby or young kids at home. Before having Jacob it was simple for me to set aside 4 hours once a week to clean the whole house and a few hours another day for laundry. Now that we have Jacob that isn't realistic for me.

I feel like my house is at an ok level of cleanliness most of the time. I am not good at major cleaning projects like blinds, washing walls, scrubbing kitchen cabinets etc but I think my house looks relatively clean to anyone who doesn't live here.

Steve and I both like to live in an organized home and feel overwhelmed when our house gets to the point where cleaning feels daunting. I am thankful to be married to a man who not only appreciates a clean house but contributes to it!

Here are some of the ways we keep up with our house:
I do laundry about every 2 days. I don't wait until one of us is out of underwear or socks I do my best to always be one step ahead with the laundry. Since I am home a lot it's easy to throw in a load or 2 every 2 days and get it all put away that same day. If I don't have time to fold the laundry when the dryer is done I always put it on my bed so that I am forced to do it before i go to sleep.

Dishes- we run our dishwasher at night most of the time. Even if it isn't totally full we usually run it. I hate having dishes piled in my sink and often I won't have time to do the dishes during the day and will only get to it once J is in bed. If I think I will have a full days worth of dishes in my sink because my dishwasher is full (or almost full) and needs to be run before I can unload my sink dishes into the washer I will not be happy. If I run it at night I can unload it first thing in the morning before getting caught up in the daily routine.

Floors- I have a little hand held vacuum that is hung in our kitchen on the wall (it's between our buffet and a corner so that it's not seen). I use it DAILY. No joke. We don't have carpet on our main floor (just 2 small area rugs) and I feel like I am always seeing hair, crumbs and dust bunnies in corners and under my kitchen cabinets. I grab that little vacuum, whip around the main floor with it and it's done. It probably takes me less than 5 mins. We mop our floors usually every second Sunday. If Jacob makes a mess on the floor we wipe it up with water and I spot clean often but a major mop doesn't happen more than every other week. We vacuum our upstairs (which is carpeted) each Sunday as well.

Dusting- I dust probably every second day. We keep a micro fiber dust cloth in a drawer of our tv stand for dusting. It's easy to grab it and wipe down any dusty surfaces on our main floor regularly. We have a lot of dark wood furniture and it shows dust like crazy! Not to mention that the heat from our tv and other electronics seem to attract dust and our tv stand always looks dusty...it drives me crazy! I dust our upstairs once a week.

Kitchen- I am always cleaning the kitchen. Every day while Jacob is in his highchair I wipe down the counters and the stove and scrub the sink. We tend to pile random junk on the end of one counter so I declutter that on the weekend....or at least I try to. Hehe

Bathrooms- we have a toilet brush in all 3 bathrooms. I scrub the toilet with the toilet brush every 2-3 days (mainly because they will get pink coloured lines or rings if I don't keep up with it). Once a week I clean the counters, toilet seats, sinks, mirrors and floors.

Kid mess- toys...toys everywhere. I hate when Jacob ends up with all of his toys out. We recently bought a storage unit for J's toys from ikea. It is 2 cubes high by 4 cubes wide. 6 of the cubes have bins in them full of toys and the other 2 we use for book shelves. When J wants toys he gets 1 or 2 bins and that's it! Once he is done with those toys they get cleaned up before he gets new stuff out. Steve or I clean up his toys and books once Jacob is asleep too. By the time we sit down to relax the house is in good order and we aren't waking up the next day to a disaster. Any toys or books Jacob plays with in his room are tidied before he goes to bed so that we aren't tripping over them in the middle of the night.

Sunday- ...I kind of hate our cleaning time on Sunday each week but I also know it's necessary for my sanity so I suck it up. Steve's days off are Sunday and Monday. Since church fills a few hours on Sunday morning we use the rest of that day for cleaning and chores so that on Monday we can just have a family day. The routine is that I vacuum upstairs and clean the bathrooms and Steve mops our main floor (every other week). Once I am done vacuuming he hauls the vacuum down the stairs and does our area rugs and stairs (if needed). We also do our decluttering on Sunday and that usually means some filing...I hate it so Steve does it. :) Steve also cleans our shower once a week while he showers. I also dust our upstairs every Sunday. If it isn't a mopping week then Steve will often take Jacob to the grocery store with him and pick up whatever we need and then I can clean without having to deal with Mr. Jacob. We don't really use any chemicals for cleaning. We use Norwex cloths for almost everything! Works great and there is little hassle.

"There's a place for everything and everything has its place." This is true in our home. We know where everything goes. When we buy new stuff we talk about where we will keep/store it. I don't like clutter in our home so I do my best to avoid a lot of it.

I think that's it...it seems like a lot when I read it over but honestly it doesn't feel like I am cleaning all the time but it DOES feel like I have a handle on it.