Housework Hacks

[beakerandburette]

I am bloody awful at keeping on top of the house work, gimme some of your best tips on easing the load mumsnetters! I'm not looking for a show home I'd just like things to be a bit more organised without spending all day everyday keeping on top of it!

I'm awful at it too, or was.... Get yourself over to the 'Life-Changing Magic of Tidying' thread! it will change your life .

Set your phone for five minutes on the timer. Then spend that 5 minutes doing the most you can in a room. You will be surprised at what you can do in that short space of time.

Get the kids doing some chores. Mine empty the dishwasher, tidy their room & get washing in. They pair up socks & sort into piles for me.

I use a foam bathroom cleaner. Just spray & rinse no scrubbing. I just wipe the basin & edges of bath & shower with a damp cloth. I used to spray & scrub before it took much longer. For grout use a bleach spray, leave 10 mins & rinse. No more scrubbing with a tooth brush.

de-clutter. Seriously. When we were first married it used to feel like a losing battle to keep the house clean and every time we had guests it would involve a giant game of jenga to hide/tidy everything away.

After starting to de-clutter and getting the bug we now find that even when the house looks untidy it takes minutes to put everything away and then it's easier to clean.

We also have a cleaner who comes for 2 hrs per week and does very basics (floors, kitchen surfaces, bathrooms) she's not great to be honest but it keeps things ticking over and forces us to tidy everything once a week at a bare minimum as I don't want her having to clean around our crap.

Also, with the de-cluttering, you'll find that you do it, think you've thrown away everything you can then suddenly realise there's a whole host more stuff you can do without. We've done 3 or 4 major de-clutters (e.g. 400 CDs, c.20 bags of books, 3 large boxes of kitchen stuff) in the past year and I know I could go deeper: I'm currently pondering getting rid of my sewing machine and most/all craft stuff as I literally never use it. The thing stopping me is that with a couple of lessons I could start altering all my own stuff which would be amazing.

hey missa (waves). How does the craft stuff make you feel?

OP, yes, banish stuff from your house - makes things so much easier. Give even tiny DS jobs to do. My DS was putting away folded up clothes from around 2. They love jobs at that age. Fill in dead time eg while waiting for kettle to boil, wipe surfaces or empty dishwasher. And don't put down things, put it away straight away, if you can.

Tiny DC

Hi cool

It doesn't really bother me, it's all tidied into one medium box in the spare room and the sewing machine is in a cupboard on the landing. But I've had it all maybe 6 years and not used it, so maybe an idea to sell/donate and then if I get sewing lessons I can take the plunge and buy a new machine?

As a watered-down version of 'a place for everything and everything in its place', I have a mad 5-10 minutes where I look around and think to myself 'does that belong there?' e.g. Hairbrush in living room - no, books on floor - no, pile of washing on chair - no. It just helps me to focus on tidying the surfaces and I feel much better after a spell of this.

DH is a nightmare for putting things in totally random places. It's one of the few things we fight about because he can never find anything as he doesn't have a place for it, or even if he does he won't bother putting it back there anyway.

We're talking 1 pair of shoes in the hall, 1 on the stairs, 1 in th ebedroom, 1 in the study, 1 in the bathroom. And none in the shoe rack. Towels left over bannister when we have a towel rack and hooks in bathroom. Toiletries left in a trail through bedroom/bathroom/study.

I've given up nagging and just move them where they live now.

I get mad when DP won't put his shaving stuff back on the tray in the bathroom. Your DH missa would drive me bonkers but my DP tells me how untidy I am . Anyway, if you have not used the craft stuff for six years, then it's time to thank them and set them free.

Two things I do try to do daily is to put washing on and sweep through the house with one of the big blue IKEA bags. I start in the kitchen and sweep through the house chucking stuff in the bag that is in the wrong place. When I get to our bedroom (the last room) I empty it on the bed and group things by room. I then put them back in the right place. As part of this process I do a quick clean and tidy (wash dishes/straighten cushions). It does help.

Definitely a lot of 'does that belong there?' as you go along. As I move around the house I pretty much always have something in my hand to put away.

NEVER go upstairs empty handed.

Declutter like mad, so there's less stuff to create mess with.

He once left a bottle of ketchup on a bookshelf. Took us quite some time to spot it He's lovely, but a total scatterbrain.