Friday, January 30, 2009

Sanity for now

A bane to all housekeepers is keeping house.
A bane to all homeschool mothers is getting their children to help with the housework.

I try something new every so often after losing my mind because of the dust bunnies, dirt, and disgusting bathrooms that begin to overtake the house due to the fact that simply keeping books, papers, toys, craft projects put away takes a lot of effort.

This is what I'm trying now, and so far so good. Of course, this is only the second week so it is still new and therefore going well. As time progresses we'll see if this stands the test, or if I try something new yet again.

I took ten 3x5 cards and wrote various rooms of the house on them. Well, actually I had Ellie right them as I dictated while I was washing dishes, the exact moment when this idea occurred to me, and I wasn't about to let it go to waste. I wanted action - now!

Then we turned the cards upside down and each house (last year we broke our children into houses ala Hogwarts style) drew a card. They were then responsible for that room or rooms, everything picked up and put away, dusted, and vacuumed, mopped if necessary.

Oh yes there is grumbling, but hey the rooms got cleaned. Five days all rooms have been gone through and I allow a two day break. On the back of the card I made two columns, one for each house, and put a tally mark under it so that we can keep track and make it "fair." Since they are the ones drawing, I'm not the one telling them which room, the luck of the draw has so far taken me out of the equation.

Yippee! Clutter and dust are a bit more under control. Sanity...........



for now.

4 comments:

Karin said...

Perservere homeschooling comrade! And don't let the dust bunnies get you down. You lifted my spirits this morning at 4:00am while reading your goal setting post. Our goals are set and they like the idea. Cleaning....I was doing something similar last week and need to perservere myself and not get buried.....yet.

Karen said...

Just before sitting down to read your blog, I did the same concept with my kids! Great minds must think alike. I assigned rooms for a week that will be rotated to a new room the following week. I'm hoping for a cleaner home with less complaining from the troops.

Kim said...

I hope the new system works out well for you. I have given up trying to keep the house clean. My problem is that a small house just doesn't stay clean. We only have 5 rooms but because we use each of these rooms on and off all day, 10 minutes after we clean them they are back to looking horrible. I think a lot of it is the floors. No grass outside means all the dirt is blown or tracked in constantly. Since we only have visitors once a year it's really easy to just give up and live in the filth.

Glenda said...

Kim - yes when there isn't a place for everything, it is hard to clean. The best then is simply straightening the piles for now. My good friend is in a similar situation, very small home and there are 6 of them with new baby on the way. She shuffles piles from one place to the next. But neither of us has the dirt outside you describe. Oh well, take heart, clean what you can when you can and know the rest will wait till next time. :-)

Thanks Karen and Karin! Today they didn't get to their rooms due to errands, but since I've only assigned one or two easy rooms/day, they can draw 2 cards tomorrow to catch up. And it isn't clean, clean, but at least it has been gone through and some of the dirt, dust, and piles are cleaned out to make room for any new. ;-)