Sort me out, I'm a terrible housekeeper!

[Butterpie]

Every now and again I like to do myself a little timetable to sort out my week and ATTEMPT to make sure I do something useful with my time. My housework is shocking. I am not a good housewife.

I live in a two bed semi, DP works 1-9 5 days a week, I run two small businesses from home which basically take up however much time I give them, iyswim. I tend to mainly work during naptime and after the kids are asleep, but it is very flexible. I do do craft fairs (although that is maybe 2 or 3 short days a month) and home/playgroup parties, which I am hoping to do about twice a week, for a couple of hours each.

I have two DDs, a 3yo and a 6.5mo. They sometimes go to their grandparents for the afternoon, again on a very ad hoc basis.

What would you say is the minimum I need to keep on top of (or get dp to keep on top of) and what would be things that are good to do on days when I have spare time? Does anyone have a good scheme for these things?

House is mostly hard floors, range oven, belfast sink, wooden tops, gravel garden with pots, lots of books and clutter, no pets, weekly veg and egg box, milkman, paperboy, two monthly approved food, everything else as and when from co-op, lots of baking and cookery, lots of painting and crafts, no special needs (well apart from my pelvis and hips mean I find too much physical work painful), no car (but too many prams), washable nappies about half the time, baby bf and (mostly) blw. I think that is everything relavant...any tips?

I can be tidying and cleaning all day and the place still looks a state. Yet if somebody else does it, it looks really good after half an hour. What am I doing wrong?

Click on Flylady and take a look at her tips. I don't follow her properly but three things I learned from her mean I never feel overwhelmed by the house for long, and even when it was a total state a week ago, it only took a morning to get the entire house looking spotless.

Her best ideas for useless housewives are:

Five minute room rescue. Set a kitchen timer for five minutes and zoom round a room making it look better. This makes you focus on big things like putting coats and shoes away in cupboards, chucking out old newspapers, stuffing toys back in the toy basket - things that make a visual difference.

Weekly home blessing. This is just an hour's cleaning once a week. You empty all the bins in the house for ten mins, hoover for ten mins, dust for ten mins. You're supposed to change the beds in ten mins too but I can't see how she does that, so I just freshen up the bathroom instead, and mop the hardwood floors as that makes the house smell nice. The point of this is you don't do it thoroughly but you do enough to make a difference - just hoover the main bits of the house, mop the heavy traffic areas of wooden floors etc. So pick six jobs that make a big difference visually and do each one for just ten minutes.

And her last one is 15 minutes to get a room ready for company. You set a timer for fifteen minutes and attack a room as if someone was turning up in 15 mins- doing the same stuff as above but with three boxes - one lined with a bin bag for things that need chucking; one for things that need giving away to charity and one for things that you keep but aren't in the right place. That takes about five mins, then you spend the other ten dusting, plumping cushions, cleaning windows etc. It works because you don't get side tracked into stupid time consuming stuff.

Sorry - gone on for ages but it does make a difference without too much effort.