Rock The Housework Chat

[BogRollBOGOF]

www.rockthehousework.co.uk/

Anyone else rocking the housework?

My housekeeping was always somewhat chaotic, and since these were launched, my house is far more functional and a podcast away from actually looking rather orderly, even at short notice.

I tend to pick what I need each day rather than following the tradtitonal TOMM, but do refer back to that to help get some jobs done if they're in danger of being neglected.

I think my most used tracks are the "Calm Laundry Put Away" the "Bitesize Bathroom Blitz" and the "Quick Kitchen Turnaround"

Doesn't a bit of daylight make a difference!
It was the 1hour house reset yesterday. It didn't quite finish the kitchen off, but it did freshen up the rest of the house.

My motivation was through the floor in last week's perma-gloom.

The only glitch of low sunshine is realising how filthy the windows are 😂

I did the chaotic kids room tidy a couple of times in the last few days, once in the DC's room and once in ours. I found the instructions to concentrate on clearing the floor, and then the surfaces, more helpful than just "do five minutes tidying" - I really need a very granular level of detail!

Toying with doing a bootcamp or deep clean before Christmas, but need to get rid of a lot more clutter first.....

Did the post-school run clean today and Friday which gets things off to a good start. Tried to do one of the thirty minute house reset sessions on Sunday but spent half the time wrestling with the DCs sleeping bags as I let them sleep in the living room and then had to pack it all away. Gave up and just made the beds instead!

Hi! So, I just wanted to come back in here to say that I finally (after years of having the app) used a guided clean, and Wowsers was it successful! For some reason I’m a slow burner and I seem to have to think /procrastinate on something for bloody ages before getting stuck in. I did the whole house one hour clean, and if I wasn’t going out in the afternoon I think I would have done it all through again (as one hour only scratched the surface in some of the rooms).

day off today and I’m about to do it again.

i look forward to getting in the swing of this and actually having a clean and tidy house! 🎉

Well done @SydneyCarton and @BrutusMcDogface

I need to get myself in gear and put on something like the dreamy kitchen clean. The dishwasher has been busy this morning so at least the weekend backlog of plates has been dealt with, but the sides and floor need some proper attention. I seemed to struggle to keep on top of them last week and just stayed in firefighting mode.

I've used the recent "decorating the tree" drop to do my outdoor lights. It took 2 rounds. The hour session was about right to do the job on round 2, it's just that starting round 1 with wiping down the windows and soffits, then realising some twiggy bits of bush needed trimming, then having to climb over DS's desk to access the windows and realising that was a 20 min clear up job deep into the corners all ended up using the first hour.

I'm definitely not a natural for the Organised Christmas series through the autumn, but I do like the sessions when I'm ready in December.

I did the new Living Room SOS session the other day which has a dedicated ten minutes to declutter a couple of hotspots. I used the whole time to get the dining table cleared, and although it's not totally clear it does look a lot better - at least it did until the children came home and destroyed it There's also a Kitchen SOS I might have a go at later this week

The kitchen SOS is good. There were a couple of points where I paused for a moment to finish a job off, but it was good at a decent clean-up where maintainence isn't quite enough. Mine's a kitchen-dining so that's a lot of surfaces, and my DCs struggle with scraping plates (dyslexia/ dyspraxia).

The kitchen cleans have never quite hit the spot if you need more than the 25 min sessions as the longer, deeper cleans rely on the basics being done. It's so hard keeping on top of the kitchen too- a couple of meals can make it look a wreck very quickly!

Ooh, 2 hour house reset dropped 😁

2 solid hours a week before Christmas is a bit of a tall order, but I might try this in bits. Interested to see what the finishing touches are 🤔

I did it across 3 hours with some pauses for breaks, or just finishing some rooms off as they were close enough to be worth it. The last 10 mins is a wildcard to finish off or catch up with anything not specifically included- I swept the kitchen floor at this point as I ended up curveballing into a rare clean of the display cupboard.

I really enjoyed it. Starting with laundry was handy; I did a clothes-sweep of all living spacss for sneaky garments so that was some tidying for start.

Will do the two hour clean in two sessions so house is looking good for Christmas on Monday and Tuesday next week when I am off work. Great timing, Gem! Love the feeling of getting up on Christmas morning and the house is generally tidy and clean!! Just going to do Level 1 s today and .look after our new kitten!

@BogRollBOGOF Good that it starts with laundry, I am a bit overwhelmed with this as the weather has been too damp to dry stuff properly (no tumble dryer) so I've just been doing quick stuff here and there and the bigger things are building up. I am working Monday and Tuesday but from home and there is not much to do, so hopefully I can attack it then.

@Amore2 I know no one else in my house cares if the place is clean and tidy for Christmas, but I do!!!

The 30min laundry session is good for breaking the back of the chaos.

A strategy I like when it's a total mess is to just consilidate then break down the heaps. If it's across the household, at least you've then got clear heaps by person if it's not finished.
If it's mine and I've got a few baskets, I'll lump it all together and then sort through picking out the underwear that can be shoved in a drawer. Quick win. I then sort into piles and do the more faffy folding. I got 80% through my stuff a couple of days ago, but at least I know that the 20% left in a basket is leggings and jumpers.
I'm not a fan of one-touch because the pitfall is getting more mired in sorting everything and whatever is left is still jumbled.

When I sort DS2, his drawers are in a sliding wardrobe, so I sort one accessible half at a time.

Ours is in one jumbled pile, unless I’ve been organised enough to do a whites wash in which case it’s 90% school shirts. I try to pull DPs stuff out where I can easily get it because it’s so much bigger than anyone else’s, so getting rid of ten items of his clothing makes much more of an impact than ten tiny pairs of knickers 🤣

It always mystifies me how DH's clothes are so vast- he's only a M 😂

The DCs will be going that way soon. They're similar in size to me at present which can make identifying some garments such as parkrun t-shirts a pain.

DS1 moaned about his latest growth spurt this week... he didn't check the size of the school shirt and it was DS2's 😂

Hello, I’m back with some New Year cleaning motivation but I have a question.

I’ve only recently opened the app again after using the guided cleans through Patreon and see that it’s now offered inside the app as “TOM rocks” but I can’t log in, even though I pay the £3.60 a month.

I take it that this is the same content as Patreon? And I should cancel my P sub and sign up within the app to have it all in one place?

It is mostly the same content. I stuck with Patreon as there's some older content that I like that couldn't transfer over. I don't use the app much anyway.

A lot did transfer and anything since the app update in Autumn 2023 is on both.

After a couple of weeks of minimal maintainence mode while the family are off, I'm on a laundry and dishwasher blitz today to make it easier to reset this week.

The 30 min laundry session will be very useful this week!

@FlightOfTheProcrastinator is an amazing username 😁

I love it. Even with kids in the house I can have ear bud in and select 'play with own music'. I can watch kids and have Gemma prompting what I'm doing next every now and then. It's amazing and I absolutely loved the two hour reset!

Other than needing a window of decent weather to tackle the outdoor lights, my indoor decorations were dealt with with the new 45 min decoration drop and last years 30 min session. It felt much more focused and quicker than usual!

The new-ish 20min power tidy is a good 'un. Downstairs was feeling generally chaotic and a "big job" but one dishwasher load, 20min tidy and a general floor clean and it's feeling orderly again 😇

I've got teenagers in rapid-growth-mode and suddenly shoes are taking up much more space. Alas shoes still tend to be strewn rather than placed neatly, and in a long, narrow hall it looks like a bomb's gone off in a shoe shop within hours of tidying it.
It's a right PITA finding shoe storage compatible with DH's size 12s in a space only a foot wider than the front door.

The mystery of DS1's missing socks is now solved... lurking at the bottom of DS2's never ending clean clothes bag.
One of those jobs that felt big but didn't even fill the whole "beat the piles" session. I've left DS2 a token amount to sort out.

DS1's clothes also sorted, and again, not as bad as it looked.

Both bedrooms now looking significantly clearer and have had a basic vacuum.

Some out-grown items added to some donate bags and now loaded by the front door. I'm trying to shift to clothes banks little and often as I'd reached a phase of items getting stuck.