Tuesday, August 18, 2015

C.H.A.O.S

... or, as the Flylady calls it, Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrom, which is pretty appropriate, really, since one follows the other.

We've been suffering from a bit of that around here, recently.

Well, to be perfectly honest, we always suffer from it a bit, but these past few weeks, with all three boys at home so much, it's been far worse than it normally is. 

We are not a tidy household. With kids, and cats and chickens, and an allotment and a big garden, and two parents who go out to work it's never all that tidy around here, and I don't mind that. I don't need or want a show home, and with all our hobbies and the limited time we have the cleaning and tidying isn't all that high on the agenda most days.

It does get me down, though, if it gets too bad, and occasionally we reach the point where I just want to get a bunch of big black binliners out and stuff all the rubbish (aka all the toys and clothes and general house 'debris' that accumulates day to day) in there and bring it to the tip. 

Such a point was reached on Saturday evening. I had a busy week at work last week, because the A-level results were out and we've had to man the phones all day every day since then to take calls from applicants ringing around to see if they could still get into the university course they wanted. With that, and the school holidays, the housework dropped off the radar for a bit, and it really doesn't take long for it to get out of hand. Coming back from work on the saturday and surveying the chaos all around us I reached a bit of a low point.

D and I spent some time on the Sunday getting things under control again, but I am hoping to come up with a more sustainable plan, because this 'binge-cleaning' isn't much fun and is also not a real solution because in the long-term you can't carry on like that. 

I used to follow the Flylady programme for a while before I fell of the bandwagon, and I think I might try to do that again. I like the idea of just doing a little bit of cleaning every day, and of focussing on deep-cleaning one room per week. The idea is to work at it, slowly but steadily, and because you are not supposed to get it all done in one day there is less chance of getting discouraged. 

So that's what I'm going to do, and to keep myself motivated I'll also force myself to post about it once a week, on a Tuesday. So here is my first room - the lounge, all tidy and clean again after the weekend - sorry, I didn't take any 'before' pictures, it was far too depressing! :) 


Fingers crossed that this will be how things continue! 

5 comments:

  1. Great plan, hope it works for you. I love the cable reel, makes such a great table. Simple but effective, beautiful.

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  2. I can commiserate as I too have this issue with our house. It's just is and has always been low on our priority list as we have so many other things we enjoy doing. It does get me down sometimes though. I've never heard of this Flylady -I'll have to check her out.

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  3. I hear you. Cleaning is a pain. I like to entertain but I think of the organizing and the cleaning and I'm like forget about it. But I will have to clean slowly as my family is coming over the first time Labor Day weekend.

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  4. I'm a great believer in putting the kitchen timer on for 20 minutes and then concentrating on clearing/organising just one thing for that time. Seems to work for me, although I haven't actually done any cleaning in the last six years as the OH does the entire house whilst I'm at church on Sunday mornings! My "jobs" are more around paperwork and organising, and I spent some time a couple of years ago filing and organising (in those 20 minute bursts!), so it is a lot easier now.

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  5. Sounds like a good plan! I also tend to have cleaning on a low priority but it gets frustrating at times, and I end up deep cleaning for an entire weekend or so. It would be much easier if I got myself more organised and indeed had a structure of cleaning a bit every day.

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