Full Time, All the Time
with Britt and Robyn
I'm Britt. I work full time as a mom, wife, blogger and salesperson with a fancy management title. And I'm Robyn. I work as a project manager and between corporate meetings manage to cook a home-made meal every day. This blog is about our experiences of juggling full-time work with family.
Check out our personal blogs:
Miss Britt and Who's the Boss?
I am not a domestic diva. I have no shame about my disdain for housework.
And yet, I don’t like living in a mess either. And, truth be told, it only takes two kids a few days to turn “a little clutter” into a disaster zone.
Recently, my personal life got messier than my house and I found myself craving order and cleanliness more than usual, and with one less adult to help with the chaos. Luckily, I stumbled upon the infamous FlyLady web site and some great tips that helped me get the mess under control.
I tell you all that to tell you this:
I’m about to give housekeeping advice.
Oh yes, I am.
Specifically, I want to talk about housekeeping tips for women who work full time. Because, ladies, our lives our different. We don’t have hours in the morning to prepare for the day. Most of us can’t throw in a load of laundry over lunch. And getting ready for the day usually means a lot more than a sturdy pair of jeans and running shoes. (Which is not to say we’re better, worse or more overworked than a stay at home or work at home mom - we’re just different. Controversy averted. I hope.)
1. Clean your sink every night.
This is the very first thing that the FlyLady tells you to do and it’s the foundation for her entire methodology. Now, you may not be in the market for a whole methodology, but this is a great place to start. In order to clean your sink, you have to do the dishes (or, um, have your 9 year old do them). And once you get your sink clean, it’s easy to keep it clean by wiping it out with a dishtowel after every use.
A clean sink sets the tone for the kitchen, the house, your life, and world peace.
Seriously though - go shine your sink tonight.
2. Set up your coffee maker the night before.
Before I started doing this, I often had to deal with no coffee in the morning because someone overslept. Coffee snobs will tell you that you have to have freshly ground beans, but I say it’s better to have average coffee on time than no coffee at all. It’s awesome to walk into my kitchen in the morning and be greeted by a fresh pot of coffee.
3. Pick your clothes out the night before.
In general, the more you can do the night before, the easier your morning will be. I was already making sure my kids’ backpacks and lunches were ready. Now I also pick out my clothes (right down to the shoes I’ll be wearing). This not only saves me time in the morning, it avoids the pile of discarded “crap that doesn’t fit, oh that has a spot, great that needs to be ironed and/or donated” clothes that would accumulate on my dresser from the morning try on routine. (Tell me that sentence made sense to someone.)
4. Clean your bathroom every morning.
No. Really. I have not lost my mind. I don’t expect you to get on your hands and knees and scrub your bathroom every day. Instead, keep a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels under your sink, and quickly wipe down your mirrors and counter tops after you’ve finished getting ready and putting your makeup away. Then, wipe down the toilet and give it a quick swish with a toilet brush. FlyLady calls this the swish and swipe.
I also do this in my kids’ bathroom once they’ve finished their morning routines.
I’ve added almost no time to my daily routines, and my bathrooms are always clean.
5. Clean when your kids clean.
If you have children over the age of 4, they probably have some kind of chores. Maybe all they have to do is get their own pajamas on and put their toys away. Maybe you are a really mean mom and make them load and unload the dishwasher. Do your chores when they do theirs.
Doing this will keep them motivated to do their chores. No one wants to be working alone. It also ensures that you don’t feel like you’re housecleaning duties aren’t taking away from your family time or that oh so precious down time that happens after the little people are in bed.
These 5 things have made a major difference in how I feel about housecleaning and how my house looks. I use our “chore time” to do as much extra cleaning as I can get in before the kids finish their chores, and I’ve made a lot of progress on my house in a short amount of time.
Do you have any domestic secrets to share with me?
Photo by scalespeeder.
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I followed you all the way to number four. I don’t clean my bathroom every morning, unless by cleaning you count me wiping all my stray hair out of the sink! LOL.
Good tips though for sure. And, ever though I am not a coffee drinker, when the BF stays, the pots prepped the night before!
Kristin | September 16th, 2009 at 7:53 am
I prefer not to go it alone when possible. I do almost all the things you list here, aside from cleaning the toilet daily. Honestly, there’s no time in the morning for me to do that… I’m not a morning person and the gym is more important to me than the toilet.
What happens in our house is that we have about 10 chores that need to be done regularly. We divide them between Mister and me and each do one chore a night. Clean one bathroom, do a load of laundry. It’s about 20 minutes of work after dinner (or before if I’m really on top of things), then the rest of the night is ours.
On Saturday we each do one “big” project like clean out the fridge or yardwork or something.
Finn | September 16th, 2009 at 8:12 am
I’m trying desperately to get back into my FlyLady routine - I fell off the wagon, so to speak, and my stress levels and the utter CHAOS is overwhelming me again.
I can say, for sure, that I feel a major dip in the stress levels when I keep my sink shined, my bathroom swished and swiped and stick with the bedtime routine of getting everything ready for the next day.
Sheila | September 16th, 2009 at 8:23 am
I’ve tried following some FlyLady principles. And part of the system that works for me is writing down the “cleaning” chores I need to get done in a week. I have a daily organizer and I try to write it down as 2-3 small things for every day of the week. If I don’t do it - I can never remember that at night when I’m home with the million of other things to do. Things like wipe kitchen surfaces, clean/re-arrage fridge shelf, dust a bedroom, sort a shelf. Each one is usually under 4-5 minutes and usually not urgent, but this way they get done and I never have a major cleaning rush.
Maria | September 16th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I just don’t get the obsession with a shiny sink. Sure, it makes sense to clean up all the dishes, but 5 minutes to make the sink sparkle could be better spent elsewhere, such as decluttering a spot where paper collects. When we redid our kitchen, I chose a black matte sink — presto, no need to shine it, ever.
I don’t bother with the swipe and swish — unless there are actual skid marks in the toilet, a deep clean of the bathrooms every two weeks is sufficient.
One tip I have is to open your mail right next to the recycling bin as soon as you bring it into the house. Envelopes and junk mail go straight into the bin, saving on paper clutter. Bills can be paid immediately or stuck on a clip on the fridge (my bill-paying system), magazines taken to the spot where you read them.
I bought black and white mesh laundry hampers to put in our closet. My DH even said, “I’d have to be a complete idiot to mix up the colors with the whites now.” Now at least I don’t have to sort laundry when it’s time to start a load.
SoftwareMom | September 16th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
I am not a mornign person..a nd for me, all chores need to be done the night before.
The sink needs to be cleaned, the bathrooms at least wiped down, the clothes out.. and so on.
The thing which takes most time in the morning, is getting our lunches packed.. i think i will start doing that the night before as well.
For cleaning.. nothing beat a nice all in one cleaner for everyday. i like 409 and Clorox. The combination is brutal to the dirt, and lovely for the sink/ tiles/ floors ets. All in one, means one spray, multiple swipes and you are done! At least for the night.The kitchen candle lights up then to remove any smells!!
THe joke int he house is.. the house is cleanest after 10 to 7 in the morning..
GNSD | September 16th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
i make our bed every morning… sort of along the lines clean sink - makes the bedroom look much tidier, even if there is laundry all over the floor.
i also go through the mail before i get in the house, so anything unimportant can immediately be shredded and or recycled.
emma | September 17th, 2009 at 7:49 am
I swear by #2
I never do #3, it does not take much of our morning time.
I do laundry every day and fold it when playing with kids or when they are watching tv.
And I keep one hand vac in kitchen and one close to master bathroom (our 2 mostly used rooms!), it makes it easier to do quick cleanups.
Lakshmi | September 17th, 2009 at 8:10 am
LOL! I was about to visit FlyLady, but after reading your list…erm…I already do all of these things. I also sweep and Swiffer the kitchen floor and ensure that all counter and table surfaces are wiped clean.
Another part of the nighttime routine is, in getting Amelie ready for bed, we go through the house and pick up her room and all of her toys and put everything away. As long as she’s not following behind me/us pulling things back out (I keep a reserve distractor handy and out for these occasions), it takes about 5 minutes (really! after doing it a few times, it’s like…muscle memory) and you know that her room is perfectly ready and organized for the morning hurricane baby that will hit it - and you’re not going to step on a ball or other wheeled/singing/dancing nightmare on your way to bed.
Yay. I guess I was a step ahead of the game all along…but why does it feel like I’m still so far behind?
Phe | September 17th, 2009 at 10:14 am
I followed the link to your personal blog…I wish for you peace and clarity.
This is a small thing, but it keeps down the chaos: I do the launchpad thing for stuff that needs to go out the door the next morning, and I always, always put my keys in the same place — on the hook by the door.
Just me | September 18th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Oh, I’m sure a coffee snob would take issue with my (lovely) Melitta Mill & Brew :-). Add whole beans, add water, set timer, presto….I wake up to the sound of the coffee grinder in the morning and by the time I get my behind downstairs, there’s a fresh pot waiting!
We have baskets in the fridge - one for me, one for my husband, one for little one - into which the refrigerated components of our lunches go into every night. Then there are the baskets into which the pre-prepared veggies and stuff that I do on Sunday afternoons go into. Sounds excessive, but the baskets came to be after my husband went grazing after hockey one night and annihilated most of the following evening’s dinner prep!
CV | September 18th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
CV - I was just going to suggest that one; it’s great and can be like a second alarm clock
Britt - I recently started #1 and you’re right; it changes my outlook on things.
I tried #3 but honestly, the way the weather (and my mood!) changes around here it doesn’t work well (but yes, your sentence totally made sense)
My big issue is paper. Paper piles up everywhere. My current deal with it is this; take it out of the mailbox, and with me to the kitchen. Turn on oven to preheat, and sort mail over recycling bins since 90% of it can go straight there. Take the “deal with” pile to my computer, then continue with dinner making.
Mich | September 18th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I tried FlyLady before I had kids, and found it did not save me any time. I’m basically an organized person anyway, so adding structure around WHEN to do the housework did not cut down on the AMOUNT of housework that needed to be done. (I should’ve known this intuitively after several years of creating and managing software schedules!)
That’s when I started paying for a biweekly cleaning lady. Now THAT saves me time and is worth every penny. If finances were tight, I would go so far as to cancel cable before cancelling the cleaning lady.
SoftwareMom | September 18th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I used to do those things and more. Now (since my kids arrived), not so much, but I’m getting back into it.
I always try to clean as I go. When I get home from somewhere, I change into my jammies, empty my pants pockets into the right receptacles, fold them and put them away, hang up my shirt, put dirty stuff in the laundry bin (right side out, ready for washing), etc. I used to be good about cleaning the bathroom every morning or at least after every hair wash. I’m starting that up again. I wash dishes (mostly just rinsing with water) immediately after I’m done using them, so it only takes a minute and my sink is generally always clean. I fold/hang laundry as it’s coming out of the dryer, then put it right away. I always unpack work bags / suitcases right away upon returning home, and put things in the most logical places. I keep only one “everyday” set of sheets for each bed and one set bathroom/kitchen towels, so I never have to fold them but just put them right back after laundering. I have my kids pick up after themselves as they go, too.
A couple additional time savers: bleach tablets in the toilet (they allow you to go up to 2 weeks between serious scrubbings), and Tilex in the shower. Oh, also liquid soap and laundry detergent. Much less likely to make a scummy or powdery mess.
A major cheat that I can get away with for a couple years anyway: I have my kids dress in their school clothes after their evening bath. Much less stress in the morning, less laundry (no pj’s), etc.
SKL | September 19th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Oh, and the weather here has done nothing but prove that suggestion no. 3 may not be feasible in the Midwest! (Even further impossible for those mags that recommend “cut down on back to school chaos by setting aside the kids clothing for the entire week on Sundays” - in an area where it can be 50 one day, then 80 the next even though nobody predicted the 80?)
CV | September 21st, 2009 at 8:15 am
You are a genius. I have come to the same conclusion about all these things (sink and coffee especially). I have learned the hard way too.. Sometimes we are so tired I just can’t bear to do dishes and we throw them in the sink for the next day. When we do that the next day is always horrible. The kids and chores thing is brilliant. I am going to try it….
THanks, R
Rachel R | September 28th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Whenever I work from home and don’t have to be in front of my computer for a conference call, I tidy up the house, fold laundry, wipe down counters, etc. It is something I can do making little noise (although thank god for the mute button) and the house can stay more organized along the way.
I gave up on cleaning a long time ago. I have a weekly service that comes in a cleans for me. I do, however, clean the sink every night after dinner. A clean sink makes the whole kitchen feel right.
Robyn - Who\\\\\\\'s the Boss? | October 7th, 2009 at 10:40 am