Confessions of a Crummy Housewife

I am not a good housekeeper.  Let's just get that out into the open.  I am a ROTTEN housekeeper actually.  Oh there is not gross stuff, but there is not order or tidiness either.

Now, I am good at many things.  I can help you paint a house.  Help you write a book.  Can help diagnose your illness, help you train your kids and cats.  I can help you improve your relationship with your sweetie.

I can plant a garden.  Cook over a fire.  Help cure your panic attacks.  Discuss literature, the Lord, and theoretical physics.

I can bake bread.  Skin a moose.  Write a poem.  Deliver a baby.

I can even tie a cherry stem in a knot with my tongue.

But I have never kept a clean house for more than as long as it takes to have company come and go.  Actually there were two times I would clean:  if company was coming or if I was upset.  The kids could see if I was upset so in those "50 year flood" type of time when I cleaned the house spontaneously, they would ask "Who's coming over?".

There is just so many other things that seemed more important.  I spend my time in my head.  My environment just needed to be sterile, not tidy (you might could eat off the floor if you could find it).  I did not care where my shoes were (until I couldn't find them) or if my bed was made.  As long as nothing was on fire or a health hazard, I didn't need order.

I am a grown adult.  It is about time I learned how to keep a house.

I started small--making sure my bed was made every day.  I don't even remember why...one day I got tired of our room being messy and put away a ton of clothes, shut drawers, wiped surfaces.  Made. The. Bed.

And thus it began.....

And every day for the past month I have made my bed before leaving my room in the morning EXCEPT on laundry days when I was going to strip the sheets.  Then I made the bed when they were done.

TWS, with a gleam in his eye, asked if, perhaps, this would carry over into other rooms.  Oh that poor man.  That poor, type A, logistician-by-trade, completely organized man.  I imagine that it was hard to live with his own personal tornado, but he understood that it was not a deliberate thing.  For example, when I get out of the shower and start putting on clothing, my towel actually ceases to exist.  I do not see it.  I do not remember it.  I do not think about it.  It phases out of my existence until it is time for the next shower.  Not on purpose, it just happens.  So I have literally 3 seconds before dressing to remember to hang my towel.  It got to be a habit, so now I do it unconsciously.

WHICH leads me to both my new Word of the Year for 2016 and my game plan:  Diligence.

We, thankfully, just had wonderful company come by, which meant, of course, panic clean.  The rooms were straightened, the floors scrubbed, etc.

Now I just have to keep it that way....which is what I have said before for oh, about 30 years BUT now I have both guilt and a plan :D  TWS never complained about a messy house but he did, after 21 years of marriage, hint that it would be nice.  He is too fabulous for me to deny him, so wishing became guilt which became a desire for diligence for the gifts the Lord gave me which led to prayer which led to plan. (love how that works!)

Because everything is not exactly 100% organized when i am starting, I still have a little backlog to do.  But those will be done on the days of the plan.  I divided the house into specific chores and assigned them a day.  Now, I have done this before, but this time, a)I am starting out after a panic clean and b)I started getting practice by the daily bed making thing.  I have worked out a HABIT, which is what i was missing.  The "bed making" is the starting line for my cleaning for the day.  After that, since I am already "cleaning", it was no big thing to add another chore, for example, sweeping.

Today's chores were:  bathrooms, water plants, tidy, and sweep.  In the span of 2 1/2 hours, I have:  scrubbed both bathrooms (toilets, sinks, shower, walls, floor, counters), washed the dishes (dd's chore but she went to bed feeling poorly last night), baked brownies (for her finals week), swept the house, made the bed, did a light tidy through the house (instead of a deep clean which will happen on the assigned days, for example, today was the day for a deep clean of the bathrooms), took out some trash, read, posted on fb. 

Except for watering plants (which I have not done yet as I need to figure out when citrus need to be watered), I am done with my chores for the day.  I have even painted my nails!


My house is tidy enough for drop by company.  Maybe not "stay for a week company" but definitely drop by company, which frees me up to be hospitable.  Not only that, but the rest of my day is clear!!!  WOOHOOO!!!

I could work on the list for tomorrow, but I am choosing not to.  Today was good enough for today.  This needs to be a habit, which means I will need time for those days when I have appointments or tasks, so I need to get into the "little every day" not "binge clean" which is my usual :)


If anyone reads this and has a trouble area (cleaning, exercising, etc) let me know.  I could use an accountability buddy.  I really want this to be a "thing". :)



My little helper who actually is not as much of a help as he thinks he is ;)