I Hate Housework

I've had one lens awarded Lens of the Day (not this one). It also won a neat little Purple Star... but nothing beats being featured on Joker Squid!

Joker Squid - The Edgy Way to Clean House

Update: January 26th 2010. I have just discovered that "I Hate Housework" has also won a coveted Purple Star... I hadn't got round to checking my email because I was actually doing housework!

Flylady was great but I could only keep it up for so long before flagging weariness set in.

Start with a shiny sink, she says. Well that's out for a start. Mine's a disgusting brown 1980s thing. Can't shine. Won't shine. So forget that one.

Flylady tells you to get up in the morning and get dressed to lace-up shoes. Fancy being told what shoes to wear by your computer... I'd throw a lace-up shoe right at it and carry on slopping around in my usual flip-flops.

Swish and swipe the bathroom as soon as you are up and dressed. Somewhere between having your morning wee and cleaning your teeth. I mean, who wants to clean the bathroom BEFORE the coffee??

Feed the critters first - ha ha. Nope. Coffee first before anything.

The feather dusters are great and mine are displayed in a large vase where they sit gathering... um.. dust.

The emails were a bit too much and very dictatorial. You'll be just sitting down with a nice cuppa ready to catch up with your Twitters when along comes an email telling you to rush off and put out some fires. 'Fires' being accumulating piles of junk. I'd delete a few emails, including that one and consider the job well done.

The other problem with the emails is that they weren't on UK time so, dear Flylady would be telling me to go to bed somewhere around 3am. Actually, come to think of it, that suits me fine.

"You can do anything in 15 minutes". This is my favourite one and I use it to this day. I can read my Googlemail, check my bank account and sob over my Squidoo stats all within 15 minutes.

Sink Reflections

Body Clutter

Sidetracked Home Executives

Sink Reflections

Body Clutter:
Love Your Body, Love Yourself

Sidetracked Home Executives
(TM):
From Pigpen to Paradise

I was very excited to get my bagless vacuum cleaner. I'd had three upright Hoovers in a row, the same model just different colours and frankly I was bored with them. Nothing to stir the imagination at all. But the new Vax, well that was something else. I forgave the fact that I had to put the thing together myself from a set of flatpack-like instructions. I ignored the way everyone in the house jumped a mile when I switched it on. And I almost, but not quite, enjoyed the way it sucked up the doormat from about 15 feet away and I really loved seeing the dirt flying around inside. So for the first week I was quite pleased.

Then came the first emptying.

Turn the big plastic jug thing, quickly grab a plastic carrier bag... no, no, do it outside. Take it outside and immediately become engulfed in disgusting cloud of dust and skin sheddings (well don't they say that's what most household dirt is?). Manage to shake the clump into the plastic bag. Then realise that somewhere in there is a pony... no, not really, but the blimmin' filter *is* in there. Gingerly feel until I have hold of the conical whatsit. Shake gently while trying not to breathe. Get filter out. Dispose of carrier bag. See that filter is choked up with stuff. Start banging it on the wall and realise the ensuing dust cloud is heading straight for the open bathroom window. Nooooo! Eventually discover the best place is about a quarter mile outside our garden. Bang filter until red in face. When reasonably sure most dust has floated off, put vacuum cleaner back together. Forget to replace filter. Undo jug and put it back together. Have very long shower.

For years and years I have ironed the family laundry. With memories of my granny and her washing drying in a steamy, Rayburn-heated kitchen on a rainy summer's day. She used to run a B&B and she would have all the linen boiled, put through a wringer, dried and ironed by mid afternoon. So moaning about a bit of ironing made me feel a tad guilty.

A couple more kids arrived and the ironing pile began to get bigger and bigger. Pretty soon, I was ironing what we needed when we needed it and it was getting a bit silly. A friend of mine flicked a switch when she mentioned that she never did any ironing. Unfortunately my light was set to dim and it didn't register. One day I noticed that when I took the baby's clothes straight out of the dryer, rather than off the washing line, they were soft and looked good enough to put away without needing an appointment with the dreaded ironing-board. Understanding dawned. The ironing pile was quickly reduced by a whirl in the tumble dryer and put onto hangers or folded. I had so many clothes; so much choice. It was amazing. I have only ever used an iron in a dire emergency ever since.

Yes, yes, I realise that drying on the line is much more eco-friendly than the dryer and I still dry sheets and towels this way. However, I console myself with the fact that the iron used a lot of electricity too... so nah nah to that.

Update: With the increasing cost of power in the UK, I have reverted to line drying. Folding the clothes properly as I take them from the line, ensures that they don't require ironing.

'Crisis cleaning' is another one from Flylady's bag of tricks. This is how it goes (note: you will need a good bottle of wine handy):

You know you have relatives coming to stay but you put off housecleaning until the very last opportunity because you'll 'only have to do it all again before they arrive'. The day before, you are gazing around your home totally overwhelmed by the enormity of the task of getting even the first layer dealt with.

Okay, this is the way to do it. Get dressed in old but comfortable clothes. Put on a pair of shoes (yep, proper shoes). Gather a few cleaning materials - cloths, sponges, buckets, vacuum, whatever you think you are going to need. Make a list of the rooms you have to do and then next to them write the major tasks that need to be done in those rooms. Prioritise and don't get fiddly; no-one is going to notice the tops of the doors and if they do, well they ain't no friend of yours. Oh and make sure your Chardonnay is chilled and you have one crystal glass ready to hand.

Go to the first room... maybe the kitchen. Put on some loud music and set a timer for 15 minutes. Tidy up like crazy. Do as much as you can but stop as soon as the timer goes off. Move on to the next . room. More music, timer on for 15 minutes.Tidy as much as you can. Repeat in next room. That's 45 minutes of hard and fast clearing up.

Now stop, take a 15 minute break. Have a glass of chilled Chardonnay, check emails and Twitters but remember to set the timer.

Okay, either go to the next room and follow the instructions above or go back to the first room and start the 2nd layer. In the kitchen this means wiping down worktops, then quickly the front of the cabinets, appliances, etc. Stop when the timer goes off. Move on. Again, after 3 rooms, stop and have a glass of wine. The final 'layer' in each room is vacuuming followed by dusting last (the vaccuum cleaner always chucks out dust, however good you think it is). Use your feather duster and shake it outside every now and then.

In this manner you can get the whole house reasonably clean and presentable in about half a day. Looking at it another way, you have probably finished off a bottle of wine by the end of it and couldn't give a bugger what the house looks like anyway!

Photo courtesy of TheCulinaryGeek under the Creative Commons license.

In fact, over the next ten days, I'm getting a whole new kitchen. Oh bliss. I'm calculating how long before I have to clean it. Given that the cabinets are cream gloss and I have kids, I'd say, ooh... about ten minutes.

Cleaning ovens isn't such a great idea anyway. If you leave it long enough it all starts to burn off and you can just brush it out. It was only around March, after living with current oven for almost 8 years, that we discovered the drop down door was removable for cleaning. Ahhh.. no longer would I have to dig around in that disgusting channel with a knife and kitchen paper, trying to remove the build-up of gunge. Yik.

Anyway, at the same time I managed to damage the setting switch with a steam cleaner and it hasn't been the same since. The most spectacular thing it does is to short out so that the whole house is plunged into darkness. The wails of dismay as computers suddenly become unconscious and Hannah Montana disappears off the TV screen are worse than the fact that I can't see where to put the very hot casserole I just took out of the oven. Carnage. It's like Halloween sometimes!

Kitchen renovations in full swing and we have dust everywhere. Nothing can stop it. We are more or less open plan downstairs so there's not much to be done. The first few days I tried to keep up with it, I really did but I got busy doing other things and now it is about an inch deep over everything. Surprisingly the ex-kitchen is pretty clean considering what's being done to it. We are stuck in a waiting phase at the moment because the units won't be ready for us until next week.

I suppose I should get off the computer and go dust? Should I? Do I have to? What would you do?

From the relatively easy kitchen renovation we were having (a bit like an easy birth without the squelchy bits), we've now moved onto this... this... mess. The walls were replastered yesterday while I was working in another room. The plasterer yelled his goodbye and I emerged to find this!

Three hours it took me to clean it up. And there was more to do this morning when I realised there were lots more little stuck bits of plaster on the floor tiles.

It's bad enough guilting yourself into cleaning but when you are forced to do it... well, I think it should be a human rights issue!

Found a great idea yesterday and, given all the work going on at the moment, turned out to be very useful when cleaning the kitchen floor - where there were still smears and bits of plaster left over everything despite all my best efforts.

I use a mop and sometimes cloths and sponges to clean, but this lady recommends using heavy cotton towels for cleaning. Whole towels, not cut up ones. It worked - first I used it to get the plaster mess off the remaining, soon-to be-gone, counter tops then the window and door and then the floor. The towel really shifted it quickly and I was able to run over the floor with a mop and there was no remaining trace of plaster dust. Throw the towel into the washer and it's done.

She has loads of great tips, including why using microfibre cloths may not be such a great idea. Click on the banner, then on the 'Cleaning Tips' tab to find out.

Finally Organized, Finally Free for the Home is an amazing collection of 2,175 organizing tips, ideas and techniques to help you organize your home, your office and your life! Clutter-control tips for every room in the house. Time management systems to help you gain extra hours in your day. Super ways to organize the paper monsters in your life. Ideas and systems to keep you motivated, and so much more! Visit: Get Organized Now!

PS In the UK we spell 'organised' with an 's'. I have used both to keep us all happy and organized.

1. Wash the dishes. Just do them, it will make you feel better.
2. Make the bed. You never know who might visit and take a peep.
3. Quick clean of bathroom/s. Ditto above, minus the final 'p'.

1 Drying the dishes. They're clean; what more d'you want?
2. Dusting. Open the windows if there's a nice breeze. Spray some lavender polish into the air. That'll do.
3. Laundry. Wait until there is nothing left to wear (check your husband's wardrobe if there's nothing in yours, failing that, then you'll have to start wearing the kids' clothes) then make an effort and do all the laundry in one go.
4. Fridge. Explain to anyone who'll listen that there's a biology experiment happening in the fridge and it's best if they don't open it at all.
5. Kids' rooms. Don't touch 'em. Shut the doors.

Always remember these six important rules when asking a man to do something:

1. Make sure the man is conscious.

2. Crash the hard drive on his computer and line the bird cage with the sports section.

3. Be brief! Limit your nagging harangue to two, three hours, max.

4. Reward him for cooperative behavior. Offer to cook him something that doesn't have a peel-back cover.

5. Punish him when he refuses to cooperate. Microwave his remote on high power for 55 minutes. Rotate 1/4 turn, and microwave again for another 35 minutes.

6. Use "would you?" or "will you?" instead of "you'd better" or "do as I say and no one will get hurt."