Showing posts with label House. Show all posts

Our Cleaning Routines And Habits

Someone once asked me how I "do it all". Five young kids seems like a lot, and I think they were wondering how I keep the house running, homeschool the kids, and still find time to blog and read and all that.

My answer to the "how do you do it all" question is the same now as it was then - I don't.

At that time especially, I let certain things around the house slide in order to fit everything all in. But the other day someone made a comment about how I manage to keep my house so clean, and I realized that somewhere along the way I got back on top of the housekeeping. For the most part. I still feel like I don't keep the house as clean as I would like it to be, but for having five kids it's not too shabby.

(I would show you better pictures, but the thing that has to slide now is this blog - taking pictures takes time! Maybe I'll do a quick house tour on Instagram later this week.)

Anyway, I thought I would share a few of my (very basic) cleaning routines and habits that have helped our house not be the disaster you might expect it to be with five little kids!

Sweep the floor and do the dishes every day.

For me, I feel pretty good about the state of my house if there isn't visible dirt on my wood floors, and if the kitchen sink and counters are reasonably clear. After every meal I wash the pots and pans immediately and clean out the sink, and I think that helps me never have too much of a disaster in the kitchen. I usually end up sweeping once a day, usually sometime in the morning while the kids are doing bookwork. There is a lot of dirt in the mountains! These two things are the bare necessities of cleaning for me.

Have the kids pick up their toys at set times during the day.

Every morning before breakfast I ask the kids if their rooms are cleaned up and if their beds are made. I also ask them to clean up toys before lunch and/or nap time (I only have one kid who still naps, but nap time is still clean up time).And then I'll have the kids pick up before dinner so everything is reasonably clean before bed.

Straighten up clutter before bed.

Before Derek and I head up to bed each night, we usually start the dishwasher, pick up any toys that were missed, and straighten up the living room. I'll straighten up the books in the school room, put any stray dishes I find in the kitchen, and just generally do a quick declutter. Since we do this every day it usually doesn't get too bad, so this takes us maybe 5-10 minutes.

Vacuum and clean bathrooms around once a week (or as necessary).

Over the course of a whole week, I'll usually do a quick vacuum job and rotate through cleaning all three bathrooms. Sometimes these things need to be done more often, but I get to these chores at least once a week.

Dust and wash windows every 2-3 weeks as part of a whole-house cleaning day.

These chores are usually part of a whole-house cleaning day every 2-3 weeks. Some people rotate through different types of chores each week on a looping basis, but I like to have the whole house clean at once in a while. So every few weeks I'll do a good declutter and try to clean as much of the house in one day as I can. I try to do this before we have guests over for dinners too (though that doesn't always happen).

Do a little bit of laundry every day.

Laundry is the one chore that never ends. I usually throw a load in at least once a day, and then the clean/dry clothes sit in baskets until I get a chance to fold them. I hate folding laundry, so I'll usually save it up and do it all once a week, when I have a mountain to deal with and it's very overwhelming (but at least I can do it while listening to an audiobook, right?). Thankfully Derek helps me so much with the laundry though - when he has time he will fold a bit of laundry each night, so sometimes I don't have to tackle my weekly mountain of laundry!

And one final thought that helped me a lot...

Realize that real people live here.

When I was first married, I used to get very uptight about keeping the house looking good all the time, until I realized that I do not live in a show home. A real family lives in this house, real people. Real children eat at that table and spill their food sometimes, those real books stacked in the corner are really being read, a real dog leaves his hair all over everything, a real toddler is potty-training. Though I still breathe easier in a tidy house, and I try my best to make sure our home environment is generally clean and comfortable, I've loosened up my standards somewhat. Better a happy family in a messy house than a stressed-out family in a show home. There is a little made-up proverb for ya.

How do you handle housekeeping routines?

Where My Babies Slept (Nursery Tour)

T-minus 8 days until we close on our new house! I wanted to show you the last corner of our first home before we leave it.

This room is one of the harder ones to leave. It's gone through many transformations over the years, from blue airplanes, to pink and purple flower garden, to orange and turquoise ocean-themed, to coral and mint florals. Each of my babies have slept in here at one point or another. This is how it looks right now, how I decorated it for our last baby, Georgie. It's hard to leave it, especially since she turns one year old in a couple weeks. I labored over that quilt when my belly was so big I couldn't pick up the needle when I dropped it. I rocked her when she was only as big as a loaf of bread, right in that chair.

The only thing missing is the rows of family photos that were on the wall right above the bookshelf - I took pictures of it before I took them down for showings, but I accidentally deleted the photos, so aside from one photo from my phone, you'll have to use your imagination. Still, I'm glad I found time to snap a few more shots of this room amidst all the packing that is happening this week. I want to remember the place where each of my babies slept.

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That's it, guys! Our whole house, all the rooms in our first home. We've had so many milestones here, so many good memories, and a few tears. This house has been good to us, and the Lord saw us through it all and blessed us here.

Goodbye, First House.

You can click the button below to see the entire home tour. Now, on to our next place! I'll share "before" pictures of our new house in about a week or so!

The "Master" Bedroom (Before We Move)

This house will officially no longer be ours on Friday. I thought I better get a move on and show you the last couple rooms!

This is our "master" bedroom. I put "master" in quotes because it doesn't have a bathroom actually attached, but it's the biggest bedroom in the house. It's gone through a few transformations over the years, and this is what it looks like now, right before we are about to leave it.

This wall color is a good example of how a color can be scary until it's finished, just like our house color. When we painted the outside of the house gray, we were afraid we made a mistake until we added the white trim. When I painted this room "Ice Cube" by Behr, I was afraid I had made a mistake! I wanted something that could feel airy, but could also feel cozy, and when I got this color on the wall it just felt...chilly. But I persevered, and once I added all the furniture and wall decorations back in, it hit that balance of airy and cozy and colorful that I was going for.

I'll probably go with a different color in our new master bedroom, because it's much bigger and I think this color would actually feel cold in that room. But here, I've enjoyed it!

I don't have a linkup going anymore, but PLEASE comment below if decide to join in and show us your home!

The Boy's Room (House Tour Part 5)

Out of the whole house, I think I had the most fun decorating the boys' room!

Before I started, I got inspiration to do a camping/mountains/outdoor/adventure themed room for the boys, and it just so happened, that after I decided to do that, I realized that Target had come out with a line that fit with my vision perfectly! Can't get better than that.

I painted the walls a Behr color called "Campfire Ash" - a very appropriate name for a room with this theme. It's a very pale, neutral gray. The boys' room is one of the only rooms in the house that gets warm light, so the gray actually worked in there without being too cool (I'm not a fan of grays in rooms that already get cool light).

In the pictures below, you might also notice that one side of the boys' bookshelf looks funny - that's because when I was almost done painting this room, I let Wyatt take a nap in there. There was a can of paint with the lid on, and a brush in there with him. I honestly didn't even think about it since the can was sealed, but I went in there later to find my little boy covered in paint, paint on the carpet, and paint covering one side of his bookshelf. I had to scrub to get it looking this good! We had a lot of paint mishaps during our remodel. I was not happy at the time, but it's a funny memory now! Look at how little my babies were in the last pictures!