Lazy cleaning tips for busy mums
By: zoey
TAGS: chores household housework time saving tips
There’s spotless clean. There’s “I have kids” clean. And then there’s my kind of clean. I am awesome at many things and housework is just not one of them. To be fair, the house is clean; it’s just not very tidy. And by not very tidy I mean that the lounge room often resembles toy-store vomit.
Playing is high on my priorities. As is cooking. What can I say? We need to eat and I do like cookies.
But somehow chores, housework, these things are incredibly low on my to-do list. Mostly because there’s no amount of cleaning I could do that couldn’t be undone by a mere 10 minutes alone with the toddler.
Lazy cleaning days
Sometimes that low-priority housework is just not worth it. (Although when it is these 50 Clever Cleaning Tips from Kleenex Mums come in handy.) I mean, everyone deserves a bit of a lazy day every now and again. Sometimes it really has to be stretched out to a lazy week. On those days there are certain things that need to be done. Dishes every now and again, laundry – unless you just want to lazy-it-up and stay in your PJs all day. Which is really a wonderful homage to the lazy day in general. But the floors, the bathrooms, the never-ending de-cluttering, tidying, bed-making, toy-putting awaying… Not necessary. I embrace the lazy day. Sometimes the lazy day is the only thing that allows me to withstand five-million tantrums in a day.
Lazy cleaning tips: saving time and the illusion of cleanliness
I learned very early on that I could clean up toys every half hour and it was just about as effective as banging my head against a brick wall. Because the more you put things away, the more toddlers like to pull things out. It’s their nature; they can’t help it. So I altered my nature to be the kind of person who does one big clean up at the end of the day when the toddler is either too exhausted to move or is already asleep. That way, at the end of the day, the house looks like it’s been immaculate all day and it’s my little secret.
Veto chores
There are certain chores that I refuse to do. I have an aversion to floors. I don’t know why. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. I don’t like vacuuming, mopping or sweeping. Instead of resigning myself to being chained to a vacuum, I just let the husband know that there are certain things that are ‘man jobs’. Like cleaning up vomit (of the cat and toddler variety), vacuuming the floor, cleaning my car and handling all manner of garbage and recycling.
Child’s play – the cleaning kind
And when in need of back up, I bring in the toddler. A non-lazy mother might refer to this as child-labour but my toddler thinks it’s barrels of fun to help cleaning up. Yes, dishes might take twice as long when she is ‘helping’ and when we are picking up toys she might have the worst case of domestic blindness I’ve ever encountered, but she’s occupied and we are at least moving in the general direction of less mess.
It isn’t cleaning if it’s only fifteen minutes
I break everything down into 15-minute chunks, because cleaning takes hours. If I’m only doing something for 15 minutes it doesn’t count. Yes, to avoid the monotony of cleaning, I even trick myself into doing it while I’m not paying attention. It’s a complicated system.
Mess is just another word for having a good time
I’m a messy cook. My husband is kind enough to refer to me as “an enthusiastic chef”. It’s all about the attitude. I could look at a house with toys covering the floor, a well-used kitchen and books emptied out of all of the shelves and decide that I’m hopeless at housework. Or I could look at all of that and think I spent the day playing, cooking, baking and reading. That’s a pretty good day. And if I really want the house to stay clean and tidy, if even for just a day? We go out. Problem solved.
Are you any good at keeping up with housework? What are your lazy cleaning tips?
zoey
Zoey is the mother of a 2 year old and pregnant with a jellybean. In her former life she bought lots of handbags and an array of high heels. Now she lives in regional Australia and loves it, but still misses her shoes. Zoey blogs Good Goog
Showing 16 comments
Get yourselves a toy rake... Just a re-purposed hardware store rake which can be grabbed to rake all the toys into a pile. It is much easier to pick a toys from a pile than from all across the room, if you are pregnant it saves lots of bending, the kids also think there are less toys to pick up if they are all in one spot! (wish i could copyright this invention!)
This is so me too. House work is so thankless, you do it and you turn around and it just needs doing again! My pet peave is picking up after other people which is pretty much all you do with a toddler! When I was pregnant with our oldest who is 3 we refered to him as Jellybean. Baby two was Raspberry.
and hanging clothes on the line, but it is the putting away that gets to me.
One extra lazy cleaning tip from me though is ditch the iron! My husband wears business shirts but I find if you take them out of the washing machine as soon as the cycle is done, shake them out and hang them on a hanger to dry inside or in the shade you can get away without ironing them. I also give any clothes I buy the scrunch test in the shop and avoid anything that crushes too easily.
My best lazy "cleaning" tip:t
Rather than doing the ironing, folding and putting away of clothes each time the washing's done, I have a shelving unit set up in the lounge with a basket for myself, one for hubby and one for bub. Clothes get sorted into the baskets as they come off the line and can get picked out as needed. None of our clothes need ironing apart from hubby's work shirts which he does himself at the start of each week. Works a treat... it's still neat and tidy, but saves a lot of time and energy.
LOVE THE fact I'm not the mother of children who suffer from domestic blindness and industrial deafness ! indeed indulge the inner sloth in you occassionally, how long would our sanity last with out it?.
when i pick up after the kids through the day i put things in washing baskets to be put away properly at the end of the day... it keeps the house looking tidy and if i'm not to tired at the end of the day it all gets put away....
Housework has officially been classed as a swear word in our house! One thing that I try to keep 'semi respectable', with the help of my girls (yes, I reckon kids should most definitely learn at a young age to 'help out around the house'/ 'do their fair share'!) - is the area's of our house that can't have a door closed on them! Example; The kitchen, dinning room, lounge room/ hall (oh, I suppose you can close the bathroom and the toilet door/ but I like to have them 'decent enough' that if some one dropped over, & needed to use the loo/ wash their hands~ that they aren't going to run screaming past me- & out the front door, because they encountered anything 'unsavoury' or 'grose' in either of the 2 rooms!).
When I say to my girls; right... it's time to clean the 'L' they know I'm talking about those 'exposed/ open' living area's - that a potential guest may see [the kitchen/ dinning room, lounge room/ hall way- in our house, is the 'shape of a letter 'L';]. That's for those guests who 'just turn up, and son't bother to ring first! sometimes we haven't tidied up and I think, 'hmmmmm... oh well, now you'll just have to suffer my messy house because you didn't ring, and give me time to straighten up'! lol :)
i think this is good, but there are several things i focus on particulary - as long as we got clean food, clean clothes, the trash doesn't overflow everywhere, the animals are clean and the bathroom and toilet are clean i am otherwise pretty relaxed. Every so often I do a "chuck out session" where I go and spend 15 minutes straightening something out, and the kids get paid pocket money to vacuum and mop and keep their room reasonably tidy (keep dirty stuff out of there so that it doesn't get turned into a cesspool of cockroaches and stink ...)
This is soooo me! I, also, do enough to get by. I thought I was abnormal and alone on this!
My stragety is to tackle various things through out the week. For example, I may vaccuum and clean 1 bathroom one day, when needed, and do laundry when there is 2-3 loads. Just breaking it up throughout the week works for me.
I too absolutely do not like doing floors as well. I have my son do chores such as, drying dishes and cleaning out the cat poo; But, I also give him an allowance mid-week.
"A clean house is a sign of a wasted life" a lazy malinger would have come up with a disgusting quote like that.
People have evolved from being cave dwellers and sometimes a quick clean up will help you enjoy life that little bit more
hi I'm a mum, who looks after my 3 grandkids & I find it very hard to keep on top of the house work, so any new ideas are really great for me
scary clean houses belong in style magazines, and it was the bane of my Mums Group days that the other Mums in our randomly selected group were insanely anal … i continually pleaded lack of furniture and sent us off to the playground.
my 'trick' is to pick a small area to straighten up; the kitchen bench, the bathroom sinks, a drawer that hasn't closed properly for weeks! then, if i'm feeling energetic and outdoorsy, i prune my garden and stick the greenery around the house in massive vases. voila!
dust only reaches a certain level anyway …
I'd LOVE to be like this more and in many ways since becoming a Mum I am, but part of me feels like I cant breathe when its all cluttered and messy. And then like today when I am so tired its the thought of all that high maintenance house work that makes me lose my breath...
You nailed it Zoe! I might just print this out for welcome signage when people arrive at my home...
I do what I have to do, which is just enough to keep me going without looking lazy. I have found that 'housework' never goes away so why waste time on it?
Love it, Zoey. I saw a sign a while back that said, "A clean house is a sign of a wasted life" - yes, there are better things to do than clean.
I am actually loving it that my kids are now old enough to take on many of the cleaning (or at least tidying chores). And no I dont feel an ounce of guilt, as I wrote in a recent post about "what are you doing for your child that they could be doing for themselves", I spoke about the favour you are actually doing your children by letting them help you!