Rock The Housework Chat

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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"

Oh God, we also have the shoe explosion in a narrow hallway! There's 5 of us and we genuinely don't have loads of pairs, but as you say the older they get the bigger the shoes! We just bought a couple of racks from Wayfair which will hopefully contain most of them and make it look neater, stacked up rather than all over the floor.

The new bedroom/laundry combo looks good as I always have drying racks in the DCs bedroom so could tidy/clean in there and sort the clothes at the same time.

A boring post for Saturday night but I did 45 min get ready for the weekend on Friday after work and it was really good for avoiding that overwhelmed feeling on Saturday morn ing. Did a 30 min calm upstairs catch up today and house is ok now, just kitchen floor to do tomorrow and usual kitchen clean down after meals and them ready for the next working week! It does feel relentless but housework never stops so I a!m trying be less annoyed about it and just get in there, get it done and on to more fun things! Gamma definitely makes it feel more achievable.

Bump.

Ill child disruption here.
At least the sick bucket wasn't put to the test though.

It's a treading water week.
Not a warm water week because the boiler is kaput.

Child back at school.
New 40 min reset done. I liked it. The structure is loose; tidy, surfaces, floor rather than zoned by room, but worked well as a good general freshen up. Some of the rooms didn't need a dedicated session and a few minutes were enough to restore order.

2x 30 min laundry. There were several half-arsed leftovers of laundry loads to put away. I did segue into a bit of a declutter of some clothes that I haven't worn for yonks and probably won't fit back in in a hurry ever

I did the 40 minute reset on Friday and used it for the bedrooms and living room. I’m not really a fan of the unstructured ones but it did the job and I liked the five minute blitz of the messiest area at the start which gave me the impetus to clear the dining table. Also got through some laundry in my lunch break so that’s looking a bit more under control.

I love the New Year's reset one as it has a 30 min declutter session. I just do a reset once a week now instead of TOMM

Do you think she will run out of ideas?

I need to do the new year reset as it's just chaos here again 😳 I managed a good session or two a couple of weekends ago for my daughter's birthday but with that came more presents. Every room is just crazy and despite me getting into it when I choose a session, I just can't get there mentally to start or where to start 😕

It's so hard working, young children and trying to do daily things before even starting any tidying or cleaning. Self pity post sorry 😂

I've wondered that before. Or wondered if she'll do new versions of the current sessions. Sometimes I get bored listening to the same sessions 🙈

@PumpkinSpicedTea It is hard! My children aren’t tiny any more and I WFH 2-3 days a week so technically I have time to tidy or clean in my breaks but I still feel like the place is a bomb site.

Some of the sessions do feel a bit samey, although I quite like the niche ones like oven cleaning and sorting out under the sink.

I like the familiarity of re-doing sessions and knowing the wording and music.

I did the Valenshine's reset yesterday and it hit the nail on the head as another good general freshen up . I now have a reprieve from the DCs squabbling over the manky toilet seat for a few days. I deliberately left it as a temporary protest hoping that they might learn from their disgust... it's a slow process!

My wildcard job today has been checking the sistema bottles. I bought some replacements a couple of years ago but the lids were slightly different. Now the DCs are older they use them less, so I've binned some of the ones with minority of fitting lids, so at least I can now grab any bottle and any lid now.

I use the multi-room and laundry sessions the most.

Tip run done. I now have a long-lost garage floor. Getting the bikes in and out is far less hazardous now!

Did the combo one today of 'kitchen and laundry' it's 30 min and it's fab there is even a wildcard thrown in there in kitchen and I did my hob win win

I like the side quest ones that have just gone up; the cutlery drawer and shoe zone definitely need tackling. As ever during half term I’ve ended up doing very little in terms of housework because they’re all here all the time!

I'm ready for another 30min laundry drop (needs suggesting). I know about little and often but...

I've learned in the last couple of years that change of season points like this often end up with items (such as thick) jumpers getting deprioritised and stuck at the bottom of baskets.

Currently halfway through a big post-half term clean laundry purge... I tend to sort my stuff by filtering undergarments first as they make a big difference to daily life and are a pain to rummage for. Normally I move on to active wear (which I wear a lot) but this time I've conciously gone for the random stuff and will come back to the active wear after a break.

I recently weeded some old clothes from my drawers wardrobe that I've finally conceeded that are either long-term too small, or just washed up.

I've been aiming each week to take some old clothes one bag at a time to a clothes bank where I park up for one of the DC's activities and I can see some benefits from it now.

Next job, strip DS1's bedding so I can get that on the washing line.

Active wear, active wear, doing the laundry in my active wear
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I'm literally watching this in my activewear I planned to go for a run this morning but have got bogged down and faffed around too much and now I doubt it will happen.

We've got a new clothes bank at school - hurrah! - so I can drop off bags of stuff on the school run instead of taking them into town, which is a definite plus. Also have a laundry mountain which keeps piling up - a lot of it is activewear, ironically, as the DC do a lot of sport and it's easy to chuck in the machine for a quick 15 minute freshen up, but then I get stuck putting it away.

Tackling the playroom today. Used a 15 min desk clear session to deal with that zone and now need to do a general 15 min session to sort out the other end. DS dealt with his desk zone yesterday... I thought he'd done a good job until this morning when I saw a bit of blazer trying to escape some desk drawer. That's missed the uniform wash for the week 🤦‍♀️

Doing the getting ready for guests clean as we have guests arriving at the weekend. Looking forward to seeing them but they are staying for quite an extended stay. We see them about once every other year and we do all get on well and have fun.

My query is what do you do re Tomm when you have guests? While they are staying I intend to do my normal L1s each day and then a bit of a general clean around. I s’pose I should just do what I normally do really. The female guest helps quite a bit but it always seems to throw me off routine as I feel slightly awkward cleaning when they are there. The male guest just watches me clean and doesn’t really lift a finger for the two weeks he normally stays! 😳 I wonder what Gemma would suggest? They are tidy people and don’t create much mess so I suppose that is enough to ask from guests really…and they are on holiday.

I've done the new tidy-up session today. Well timed for dealing with the post-holiday chaos, and getting a general sense of control back into the house. I paused at the end of downstairs, vacuumed and did the same after upstairs which made it feel more complete.

Teenagers and food wrappers 🙄

At least the offending teenager was easily identified and made to clean the downstairs toilet. Pretty obvious when he was the only male in the house before I walked in with his brother. It was clean before he got home from school.

Having done tidying today, I can do more polishing off with a multi-room reset later in the week... if I'm good 😂

I tried to start from the beginning over Easter as it was a new Week One, but didn’t get much beyond the level ones. That said it was DD2’s birthday over the holidays and we had people round to drop off presents so we did some mad last minute cleaning (a scurryfunge!) and I’m trying to keep the momentum going, especially in the bathroom.

The whole house tidy looks good, I might give that a go tomorrow in my break as I’m WFH.

Loving the ten min ones

I've had a really good laundry blitz today. I didn't Rock it, but put on some youtube cleaning videos to help with focus.

I've got a basket for lightly used clothes and they needed sorting. I couldn't face more washer loads, so put them on a "freshen up" cycle in the tumble dryer then put them away. At least any dust and hair was shaken off them.

Another blitz- been at the kitchen this time.

I started off with some 20 min cleaning sessions, but just went off-piste and did what needed to be done as I went from one session to another. I needed a full-on move and wipe everything down and had reached the point that my usual 10-15 min cleans weren't really making the kitchen look done.

I was at it over 2 hours which was more than I was expecting! That did include things like moving the table for a full clean of the floor and cleaning all of the chairs.

I tend to find the sessions are great for light maintainence cleans, or deeper more obscure task cleans, but there's a bit of a gap at just needing a longer session to empty the bins, deal with the dishes/ dishwasher, and get the sides cleared and cleaned before getting to the floor and moving things around, but not getting bogged down with details like the fridge, toaster and drawers.