What is your housekeeping routine?

[pecka]

Come on..... love to read about peoples domestic habits.

What do you do to make sure how is tidy and clean throughout the week (or not as the case may be)

Our cleaner comes on Mon, Weds and Friday for 2 hours each time. So it's always more or less ok!

And where we were living before I couldn't get one for love nor money so it is about time and absolutely liberating!

Unfortunately I have no routine whatsoever, which is probably why my house looks like a charity shop.

At the moment I'm trying to decide whether I should just clean and tidy where it shows, or to tackle one room thoroughly, even if it takes all day long (or all week in the case of our bedroom)

My au pair does it.

Okay I will share... No cleaner in this household unfortunately! Usually this is roughly how it goes:

Mondays - clean kitchen/sort laundry (usually end up with about 6 loads that get done over the next few days)
Tuesdays - mop floors/vacuum carpets
Wednesdays - clean bathroom

I have a quick tidy up every evening while DH is bathing DD (i.e. chuck toys and books back in boxes). Everything else gets done as and when.

My house is a slatternly mess.

what I do to try to control the mess, is bark at dp "Don't you bloody dare leave that there, is it dirty? Where do dirty clothes go? Then put it there!"

I invite people round .. which makes me frantically clear up the mess and hoover

and on weds the cleaner comes

What Twig posted minus the cleaner.

Go round everyday after dropping kids to school putting things back.

Bleach down toilet everyday.

Sweep downstairs every day (no carpet down stairs)

do washing and put washing out, and sort and put away everyday. Run dishwasher everyday.

Clean bathroom 3-4 times a week (once thoroughly and the rest with cleaning wipes)

Polish 1-2 a week

Clean floors every other day

Hoover every other day

change beds once a week

at BH's professional attitude
I am such a slut in comparison

Pruni - please come round and see it now. It looks burgled

The secret is to keep on top of it by doing a little ever day,never go to bed without making sure all is shipshape,and keeping posessions and ..things to an absolute minimum.
Also no shoes in house and train your kids that what they pull out must go back.

Housekeeping routine.... pah!!

Easy to sneer but sorted home means there's far more time and energy to devote to really interesting stuff.

I'm not sneering.. I'm despairing - of myself!!

Very much of the school of avoiding making a mess in the first place here.

• no clutter (draconian toy regime and non-hoarding philosophy!)

• do a very little bit often

• don't have a routine, just do things that need doing when you spot they need doing

shove it all in my bedroom and hoover, spend all night once the guests have gone finding my bed under a housefuls worth of clutter

I'll sort you out SJ!
What's the biggest problem then?

I keep the loo/sink/kitchen surfaces clean but like Twiglett, I reserve any proper cleaning/tidying for when we have people round

Also, dh + kids are king of clutter. There's not a surface in this house that isn't covered with either books, papers or just pointless stuff that never gets thrown away.

Just throw it.
That's my strategy.
(Recycle rather.)

For me, the biggest problem is time, followed by motivation ( twig/pruni...me too! and our bedroom is ALWAYS a total pile, cos none of our visitors need to go in there so it is the repository for everything else!!!) followed by having too much stuff that needs sorting before any of it can be recycled/sold/donated/binned...

Sort it!
It will take less time to sort it than it will mildly stressing about it for weeks,nay months.