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)

If you just leave dust alone,it only gets so deep,then it stops.Kind of like pubic hairs knowing when to stop growing.

cat 64, I no longer bring work home (hurrah!) If you do then I think you are excused any cleaning!
Children in bed by 7.30pm, start dinner for self and DH if not already eaten, hoover then. Honestly if I don't do it and anyone has been in the house at all the floor is a mess.
Takes about 10 mins.
If you like I will time myself tonight and report back.....

I am a SAHM now, but even when I was working full time with 2 DSs I still vacuumed the downstairs daily, it took about 5 mins to give it a quick going over.

The bottom line is...

I hate housework. I don't like living in a pit, so we don't live in an absolute pit - or not by my standard - but housework is not top of my Exciting Things To Do list.

Cooking, yes. Sitting around with a gory novel, certainly. Even work. But not dusting.

Housekeeping and routine are words not usually found in the same sentence in my house...
sugarfree, it was Quentin Crisp who said that the first seven years are the hardest, after that you just don't notice the dust getting any worse. I get to a few weeks and then can't stand it so I'll never test his theory!

as a card carrying feminist i feel duty bound to do no more than DP. which isn't very much.

our most regular routine is the weekly yell by me to him about the level of squalor. when we have a cleaner, intermittently, the weekly cleaning row gets left out of the routine, replaced by weekly desperate clutter clear to render the place fit for cleaner to see.

My dh is very good at housework, rather anal about kitchen claenliness. He loves cleaning fridge, oven, stove top and extractor fan, and floors, cupboards and kick boards. He does floors down stairs too and bins are his domain.

I do hoovering,clean bathroom (although dh always gives it a swoosh with cleaning wipes), laundry, bed changing and dusting/polishing.

Ask our nanny when she starts work for us to take out £x per week from the cashpoint and leave it out for our cleaner (who also irons and changes the beds).

I feel vaguely compelled to add an embarrassed 'smilely' but I won't!!

I'm also with Roobie and try to keep the clutter down with a "draconian toy regime and non-hoarding philosophy".

I share that philosophy, but sadly live with three people who don't.

Actually that's not true, I do hoard

Issyfit - your nanny irons the beds??!

In order to maintain a tidy house, it is neccesary for me to be shamed into cleaning. When my house reuqires cleaning, I invite someone new round for coffee, thereby ensuring that I will clean up. Once people have visted for the first time, they then fall into the 'friends' catagory. Friends, of course, take one as they find one.
Trouble is, I'm running out of new people to invte round, and if I don't find someone soon, the next 'new' visitors will be social services
So, when are you all next free for a coffee??

Totally with Motherinferior on this one, although sadly cooking isn't on my list of fun things to do either. Trying to think of something virtuous I like doing. Don't mind gardening.. and could spend hours making things like cards, wedding invites, framing pictures... none of which make the house any easier to keep clean/tidy!!

I'm an all or nothing type of cleaner. I have a very impressive dirt/mess tolerance, but when I clean I do it thoroughly/obsesssively. I can easily spend an hour hoovering the stairs (although that might well be entirely necessary to make up for the 4 months since they were last hoovered!). It means that at any time there is (at least) one area of my house that looks like the before bit in How Clean is Your House and one bit that looks as if Kim and Aggie have been at it with a vengeance. This seemed to work quite well before kids but even I can't subect them to that level of grime.

So I am trying to change but failing miserably. Anyone else a lapsed all or nothing cleaner who has tips?

I am messy by nature and now have a cleaner who comes once a week and does two hours of cleaning and one hour ironing. I just really wanted someone to wash the floors for me as I hate that. She hoovers the whole house, polishes, does the three bathrooms and washes the floors. It also means I tidy up for her coming round !!I tried Flylady.com but the constant emails which worked for a short while eventually got deleted without me even reading them. She insists that if you do something fro 30 days it becomes a habit. Not sure about that! You should also shine your sink every night as part of your routine because uit will make you smile! I also find that a basket at the bottom of the stairs helps us. We use it to round up any toys or junk at the end of the day and it gets taken upstairs at night.

Steala you are a woman after my own heart! Sorry no tips!

Is there a slattern's club? if so I'm in.

Clean bathroom/shower room and toilets once a week - no set day just when i can fit it in. If the skidmarks become too unbearable then I might consider doing it more often.

Kids have a chore each every day so little things get done regularly. I go round after them when they're not looking if need be to do it properly!

Laundry every day as and when - this can sometimes be 3-4 times a day depending on how many football matches my boys have had.

Hide things that need ironing under the stairs for a month until no-one has any clothes left in their wardrobe so it MUST be done.

Mop floors once a week. Don';t do it more often as I like to make out funny faces in the dirt.

Change beds about every 10 days.

Polish when seeing the kids graffiti scrawled in it gets too obvious.

Hoover the stairs when I can't stand the bits sticking to the bottom of my feet.

Inviting people round definitely motivates me more to keep on top of things. So I don't invite anyone round very often, slattern that I am.

I have a lovely cleaning lady. She comes once a week and tidies, cleans and generally organises us. She does our two loads of washing but we don't have any clothes that need ironing. Apart from that I tidy the kitchen every night and wipe the surfaces. When the kids are staying with me we tidy everything up before bed time (except for things we are still playing with). Dh has the kids the other half of the week and does his cleaning on Saturdays. His flat is always messier than mine, which is surprising as he was always very obsessive about cleaning, but ever since I de-cluttered to sell my place it has been fairly spotless. I think that once everything has a home the whole tidying thing becomes much easier. I'm not sure I will do so well when I have a house though. - much more space for mess!

floatingonthemed - I'm like you! I used to tidy up behind my parents as an act of rebellion - do you think we should form a support group?

Please tell me I'm not the only one who feeds my kids ...not according to nutrition...but according to how much mess it makes (2yrs & 6yrs) whilst eating it??!! Rice out, baked potato in. . I hoover downstairs twice a day, wash the kitchen floor once a day, clean all loos once a day seem to do 3 loads of laundry - never play with my kids and beat myself up daily about it! However - the house is immaculate 'just in case' someone pops round - funny thing is, they never do!! (And when they eventually do, it's always the day I DIDN'T clear up the sticky porridge and splatted strawberries before the school run) aghhh....

Would anyone mind telling me what they pay for a cleaner? I am thinking of getting one but have no idea what to expect. Cheers if you can help.

Bearsmum - the going rate round here (Newcastle) is about a fiver an hour

HTH