Category Archives: housekeeping

Oct 17 2012

Too Much Stuff: I Want More of Less

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As Americans, we have too much stuff.  During a recent perusal of TV’s less than uplifting offerings, I noticed a running theme.  Hoarders, Storage Wars, Storage Hunters, Shipping Wars, Toy Hunter, American Pickers, Antiques Roadshow are all shows about stuff.  People buried in stuff, people storing stuff, people buying other people’s stuff, people shipping stuff,  people collecting stuff, people appraising stuff! 

I was about to cast some stones on those who have too much stuff, when I looked around my glass house.  I slipped those rocks right back into my pocket. 

The piles of stuff are scattered throughout the house.

Everywhere I looked there were piles of stuff.  Toys, paper, craft supplies, clothes, books, bags…too much stuff.  I blame it on my kids. 

When my husband and I were the only occupants of our house, it was very tidy.  We did have piles of paper but they were small and confined to our desks.  That all changed when we had kids.  Soon, there were diapers stored in nearly every room.  Of course, if you have diapers you also need wipes, a changing table (which is a magnet for clutter) or at least a mat for changing the baby on, and even a tube of diaper cream – just in case.  Oh, and then there were the toys.  The rattling toys, the moving toys, the tummy time toys, the musical toys.

While I took care of my babies and my husband was building his own business, we hardly noticed the piles growing around us.  There was laundry that was folded, or not, and still needed to be put away.  There were toys, which fortunately outnumbered the Cheerios, scattered everywhere.  There were books stacked in every room that served as great little resting posts for the boys when they started to cruise.

Things only got worse when the boys started school.  Now, in addition to everything else we were drowning in, we were also drowning in paper.  Forms to be signed, requests for donations, corrected worksheets with big stars or smiley faces drawn on them, original artwork by my two little masters.  All paper that must be dealt with, eventually.  My house had too much stuff.  I would like to have less.

I decided I would start to sort stuff.  I had read an article on organizing your stuff that suggested separating everything into three piles: keep, donate, and throw away. Having always been a “throw it out” kind of gal, I was surprised to realize that throwing things out wasn’t so easy when your kids, or at least memories of them, were attached to the things.  By the time I was done, the only things in the throw away pile were some old shoelaces, a gum wrapper and a picture I was sure neither of my kids had drawn.  The keep pile loomed high.  At least, I had a decent amount of things to donate.

With the donations given away and the shoelaces, gum wrapper and picture tossed, I still had to figure out what to do with our stuff.  I realized then that my real problem was that I had no place to put our stuff.  Our closets were already full and we really didn’t have much in the way of shelves or cabinets anywhere else in the house.  

I went on a mission to find storage for our stuff.  Quickly, I learned three things about storage.  First, buying things to store your stuff is very expensive.  Two, an entire industry seems to have grown up around ways to store our stuff.  Three, just like we have too much stuff, we also have too many choices about how to store our stuff.  I went home feeling defeated.  I had not come up with a way to store our stuff.  It seemed to me that spending a lot of money on things to store our stuff was only going to encourage us to fill it with more stuff.

I still want to have less stuff, but, for now,  I have been living peacefully with our piles.  From time to time, I wage war upon them and they actually get smaller for a while.  One time, I was even able to see my kitchen counters.  I put a plate down without having to move anything!  That was a wonderful day.  If only it had lasted.

 

Aug 9 2012

Housework

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I was folding the sheets that had just come out of the dryer this morning. They were really wrinkled because I had left them in the dryer overnight, long after the cycle had finished. As I was folding, I remembered that my mom used to iron our bedsheets on an old ironing table at the front door. I briefly wondered how she had the time for that. Then I remembered that she would kick us out of the house every morning with a warning not to come back until lunch and a reminder to drink water from the hose if we got thirsty.

Will these wrinkled sheets make my unmade bed look bad?

Oh, yeah. That’s how she had time.

Jun 21 2012

Learning how to parent my son on the spectrum (mom guilt)

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Last week, Marie talked me into going with her to a presentation by a child therapist on executive functioning (the brain’s ability to organize information and resources in order to accomplish a goal). The therapist focused specifically on how kids with autism spectrum disorders have deficits in executive functioning and need varying degrees of help (even step-by-step help) in order to do everyday tasks like homework and chores. A kid on the spectrum might need a homework problem broken down into separate steps and need reminders about which step to do next. It was at this point that I had a lightbulb moment. Not one of those empowering “AHA! Now I know how to do it!” kind of moments, but one of those stomach-dropping “Oh shit, I’ve been doing this all wrong” kind of moments. I. felt. terrible. My son had been telling us that he didn’t know what to do when we told him to sweep after dinner or when faced with a homework problem and we thought it was just because he didn’t want to do it (he probably didn’t, but the tantrums weren’t solely for this reason). And we responded to his behavior with frustration (and sometimes anger, much to my shame).

So I came home from the presentation and talked to Mark. The next day we talked to another behavioral specialist and we came up with a plan on how to be the organizers that our son needs right now. Since homework is done for the school year we’ll start with chores. We had just added sweeping to our son’s chore list and this had proved difficult. So we thought we’d have to add some borders and break the task down into smaller pieces. This is what we came up with:

This is a grid created with painter’s tape on the floor that he sweeps. He does one section at a time sweeping from the outside of the square to the center line on both sides. At the end he can go straight down the line sweeping the piles into a dustbin. The first time he did this was a total success. The behavioral specialist suggested that over time we remove one line of tape at a time so that the sections gradually get bigger. We can apply this same organization to other tasks as needed.

I wish we had figured this out sooner. I feel like by the time he is 18, if we could have a do-over we’d be much better parents the next time around. Right now, it feels a lot like trial and error, and it seems like there’s so much riding on our getting it right. We’re still learning, too.

 

Jun 13 2012

The New Rules of Housekeeping

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Before I had kids, my house was close to spotless.  With the exception of the occasional pile ( I am definitely a pile person), the house was very neat and tidy.  I always thought it was due to my exceptional organizational skills and efficient cleaning methods.  It really was only because I didn’t have children.

With kids comes stuff, with stuff comes clutter, with clutter comes mess.  Lots and lots of mess.  I am always trying to find ways to get rid of things.  I donate items to charity, give them to friends and family who can use them, and throw out what can’t be used anymore.  Still, the stuff has won out.

Well, the stuff and the crumbs and the dust.

Even though my kids are pretty good about eating meals and snacks at the kitchen table, most of their food still ends up traveling with them.  On night’s when we have rice, Nic always manages to get enough of it stuck to his butt to feed a small village.  If I don’t catch him before he leaves the dinner table, I spend the rest of week stepping on hard, dry rice wondering when the last time was that I hosted a wedding at the house.  Aaron has that uncanny ability to get whatever the condiment du jour is stuck in the strangest places.  I never realize it until I find the ketchup stains on the couch, the chocolate sauce on the toilet seat (don’t even ask), or the maple syrup on my favorite pen.

For the first few years of having kids, I chased around after them wiping up every spill and smug.  I vacuumed the floors and under the couch cushions once a day, trying desperately to stay ahead of the piles of crumbs and colonies of dust bunnies that arose out of nowhere.

Between the housekeeping and the laundry (When they bury me, it will be under a pile of laundry), I didn’t have time or energy for anything else.  It was time to do something radical.  It was time to change the way I did my housekeeping.  I decided to find ways to incorporate it into my time with the kids.  Here is what I came up with:

  1. Sleeves and socks make the best dust clothes.  Why waste your time hunting down a dust cloth or buying expensive dusters when you are wearing a great dust cloth already?  Loading a DVD for the kids?  Wipe your sleeve across the TV screen while you’re at it.  Dust under the dining room table?  Stick your right foot out and slide it all about.  The great part of this dusting method is that your kids can help.  Have them slide along on the floors, surf the coffee table, wiggle their bottoms on the wooden chairs, and your dusting is done.
  2. Wiping up spilt water counts as washing the floor.  I no longer get upset when my kids spill water on the floor, or anywhere for that matter.  As I wipe it up, I have just mopped the floor.  And, sometimes, I don’t even need to wipe it up.  The kids and I have a dance party in the kitchen and before you know it, the floor is sparkling!
  3. Moving things from one room to another makes you look really organized.  Company coming?  No problem.  Give each kid a laundry basket (okay, you might actually have to put the laundry in them away first).  Pick up any piles of books, toys, papers in the room you are cleaning and put them in the laundry basket.  Put all the laundry baskets in your basement, garage, guest room or even the trunk of your car.  Any place the guests won’t be will do.  Now, your house looks neat and organized.  Everyone will be wondering how you do it.
  4. If you can’t see it, it doesn’t need to be cleaned.  Slide things under the couch skirt, tuck them under the bedspreads, place them on the highest shelf.  If things are not in the direct line of sight, people won’t notice they are dirty.
  5. Food coloring in the toilet makes it look pretty.  No one will wonder if the toilet is clean, when they are too busy wondering why the toilet water is purple.  When they ask, just tell them you were teaching your kids how to make secondary colors with food dye.  They’ll think you are clever, and you won’t have to wash the bowl.
  6. Almost any stain can have something put on top of it.  We all know that the quickest way to deal with a stain on a couch cushion is to turn that cushion over.  Well, a similar strategy works well around the rest of the house.  Can’t get that paint and glue mixture off the table?  Put a vase of flowers on top of it.  Handprints all over your refrigerator?  Cover them with your little ones artwork.  No money to fix the burn mark on the counter where you left the pan from last night’s dinner?  You just found a new spot for your microwave.  Why fix it or clean it, when you can cover it.

My guess is that Martha Stewart won’t be offering up any of my methods anytime too soon.  Until my kids are grown, or I get a staff as large as Martha’s to support me, they will just have to do.  For now, I’d rather spend my time with my kids.  That’s a good thing.