Tuesday 5 February 2013

The worst housekeeper




This is a prior warning: This post is primarily about housework. If you are a man or have significantly better things to do then I suggest you stop reading now.

I've never been a good housekeeper at all. In my opinion if your house isn't being featured on hoarders or you don't have an order on your front door from the health department claiming you a notifiable health risk then you are pretty much good to go.

My sister is a scary neat freak and when she would tell me I should be like her I would tell her straight "Toni, I'm creative and we all know creative people are somewhat eccentric, it just adds to their charm". 

It's always been one of my biggest fears to live in the suburbs, driving one of those mum cars and cooking a Sunday roast while my husband watches some kind of sporting game. At least by being creatively untidy I was distancing myself from that 

So when I got married I knew what I was getting in for I just didn't realise quite the degree of it.

So welcome to my new life which includes ironing the dishcloths, scrubbing the floors at a minimum of once a day and doing things I consider really really boring. Like taking the fan apart to clean it 'properly' once a week.

I mean who does that?

Well me apparently.......

There are things I have always loved and done. I always make every meal from scratch including bread, yoghurt etc and making all my own cleaning products and soaps. But that stuff is fun. making your own cleaning products is pretty much the same as being a scientist ;) Wonder if I could get away with adding that to my CV....

And now I find myself in a dilemma. How do women married to men equally as fastidious as my husband actually manage to get everything done?

I went onto some homemaking websites and they suggested making a routine like cleaning the bathroom every Tuesday etc

Cleaning the bathroom once a week, I mean like I said I was never Martha Stewart before but that's kind of gross.... Maybe I wasn't as bad as I thought.

My dear husband offered to get a housekeeper for me but having some stranger in the house all day is really something I am not willing to compromise on.

I need to be able to eat ice cream out of the container, in my pjamas whilst watching my big fat gypsy wedding reruns without being judged. 

Anyway if anyone has got any advice on how to become a housekeeping extraordinaire then please let me know by commenting or emailing me. Go on you know you want to!

It's time for me to get pudding ready for bed now, hope you all had a super happy day!

xxxx




6 comments:

  1. Funny! Does the sofa or kids suck you in?! lol

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  2. Both! My little boy as at the age where if you put away one thing he will pull out ten more! It's best to blame the baby really, that's what they are there for ;) xxx

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  3. My family fears me...I clean every single day. I think we need a balance don't you? Somewhere in the middle would be just fine.

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  4. I wish I could live in the middle. But unless it is clean how his 'Mama' would clean it then it's just not clean. His Mama gets up at the crack of dawn to hang out all bedding to air,scrub every inch of the floor and bleach every single surface within reach. If our house doesn't look like a show home then it's not clean. I am not really complaining though, he asks very little of me apart from this so I should consider myself lucky.

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  5. Subhaan Allah, I typed a complete answer to this and then lost it - Qadr Allah. Then I thought, never mind, maybe I wasn't meant to leave the comment. Then I thought, perhaps you'd better make the effort again. SO....www.flylady.com
    When things got totally ridiculous for me, I went to fly lady. I actually shined my sink!

    BUT what I realized was more important than anything else was storage. If you have a place for everything and everything can easily go in its place, then life is manageable and things can look tidy and be tidied quickly bi ithn Illah. It is when I have things that don't have any designated place that I end up with a pile of stuff that I cannot face and that taunts me until I am forced to do something with it...which is always a miserable thing. Turn those jobs into "zany zapping zip-arounds" where you sing a nutty song, twirl and swirl about, and just get one room done at a time quickly, madly, and with lots of self-entertainment. Perhaps make up a jingle with the words storage, storage, storage - minimize, minimize, minimize - rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!

    Okay, I'm off to ignore my unmade bed and that pile of stuff that has no designated place...

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  6. I take a lot of pride in my housework, and I enjoy cleaning, but I have never scrubbed the floor before, I just use steamy hot water with a touch of bleach and some detol and I mop the floor vigorously.. And fast too.. You could also invest in a hand dust buster, I use it everyday I also do once a week deep clean, under the beds, vacuum everything even curtains, polish the glass and furniture, keep a rubbish bin in every room so If any rubbish hits the floor you can ask your toddler to pick it up and throw it in the bin.. Also it's not a bad idea to wake up early and clean that way you can get everything done before everyone wakes up.. Good luck.

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