Please talk to me about your cleaning routines

[ohgoonthen]

Hi all,

I am generally quite good at keeping up with the cleaning but the house regularly looks untidy! I'm 20 weeks preg with first DC and have suffered from terminal tiredness so everything has just gotten ontop of me! I desperate to get into some kind of routine that I can do when baby comes along - I'm sure I could cope with that now too! The mess really drags me down and the more I look at it, the more bloody tired I feel!

For those of you who are able to have a quick whizz round and leave everything looking reasonably tidy and sparkling, can you tell me your secrets???

I do need to have a huge clear out (throwing out) and deep clean session before I can even contemplate this but I need something to spur me on! We have decorators coming soon so I am working away slowly, but I don't want everything to go back to this state again after all the effort!

Before I start, my house is not sparkly. My house has clutter. There are boxes shoved up in the spare room that need sorting and unpacking but it just never happens.

However, I do have a general routine to keep on top of the day to day stuff.

Washing goes on in the evening after dcs go to bed and out in the morning while they are contained having breakfast.

In the evening dh usually washes up. After lunch while dd naps and ds potters I put away from the night before, wipe down the sink and wash up from breakfast and lunch then wipe down the surfaces so while it is rare that the kitchen has everything put away it is always clean.

I try to make sure that the day ends at about the same time for myself and dh so when he gets in from work he gets stuck in to bathtime with the dcs while I tidy toys and gather pjs then we put one to bed each and he cooks dinner while I hoover/dust/clean the bathroom/fold the clean washing depending on what needs to be done that day. Then we can sit down to dinner together and both stop for the day.

Of course, with a new baby it is far more difficult and you must try to not let it get to you and sit and rest when you can rather than think you should spend all the time the baby is napping doing house work.