When it comes to a big, multi-room tidy, I have a strategy, which I will pass on to you in hopes that it works just as well on your children (I have not tried it on my spouse, so no promises there). My strategy is setting up a Power Hour. Carla LOVES a challenge, especially if there’s the potential of besting me. And it makes cleaning into a game, and games are fun.
What I do is I get out a big colorful sheet of construction paper. At the top I write Power Hour! in big cheerful letters. Beneath, on one side, I write out a list of things I need Carla to do (make her bed, pick up stuffed animals, tidy the living room, put her socks and underpants away, etc.) and put little boxes for checkmarks next to them… and on the other side, I write out a list of things I need to do (unload dishwasher, clean toilets, vacuum stairs, etc.) and put boxes with checkmarks next to them. I have found that it helps if my list is longer than Carla’s, because she likes to have an obvious advantage. (To her, it is not obvious that “washing the floor” is much, much more time consuming than “picking up the crayons scattered all over the counter.”) Then I masking tape the list to the kitchen wall, masking tape a marker to the wall as well, and set a one-hour timer. Then we RACE to complete as many of our tasks as possible in the allotted time, checking off each task as we complete it. This is Carla’s favorite part, I think – making a checkmark on the page, while loudly proclaiming, “Checking off another one!” – and taping the marker to the wall makes it extra fun for her for some reason.
Anyway, I haven’t tried a Power Hour! lately, but I will do so today because it desperately needs doing. (It’s my normal Day Before the Cleaner Arrives technique, and it’s worked well for many months.) (By the way, being surrounded by mess has been making me feel incredibly extra wistful and thankful for our housecleaner, and I am writing her “paid leave” checks with gratitude and hope that one day she will be able to clean for us again because I miss her SO VERY MUCH OMG.)
The Power Hour! is a good strategy for the type of clutter that accumulates over time, between housecleaning appointments for instance. But I am struggling more, lately, with the HUGE VOLUME of day-to-day messiness. Everything is so much more messy than it was prior to self-isolation. Don’t get me wrong — the tendency of a child to start one project, abandon it, and begin another project while the first is strewn about a different room is, shall we say, a familiar concept. As is the concept of piles gradually accruing on every possible surface. But it turns out that my little whirlwind can make SO MANY MORE messes when she is at home for an additional 35 hours a week. Plus, I am guessing I do a lot more of-the-moment tidying when I am not staring despondently at the news 400 hours a day.
I think the utter relentlessness of the mess is what has begun wearing on me. It was simple enough at the beginning, to breezily say things along the lines of, “Of course it’s going to be messier than usual around here! You have double the people at home all day and one of them is a tornado, so mess is inevitable! But you can live with a little mess!” And this is true. I never claimed to be The World’s Tidiest Person, not by a long shot. But it turns out that a little messiness, while endurable for the short term, over time begins to feel like NOTHING IS EVER CLEAN. And, after a few days of enduing “a little mess,” the mess balloons into a LOT of messiness and then it begins feeling like I am living in squalor and there is no point in anything anymore because we are drowning in a sea of clutter. I am already walking around in a constant state of irritation/distress/anxiety and the added mess is NOT HELPING.
So I am starting to lose it, messwise. I need a new system. Otherwise I may as well lie down on the living room floor and be layered over with magnatiles and board games and construction paper and stuffed animals and remnants of pillow forts and Barbie shoes.
I had to have The Talk with my husband last night that I need more help with the housework… But man, I feel guilty about that. He is working all day, and putting his health at risk to help other people, and he is exhausted and anxious all the time, so I WANT to be able to take the pressure off at home. But also I am here ALL DAY EVERY DAY, doing nearly all the childcare and housework and meal planning/preparation, with maybe five minutes to myself at a time and… it sucks.
For those of you who have multiple children in your care all day every day… for those of you who have multiple children AND spouses who are now ALL at home with you nonstop… for those of you who are working from home WHILE your children and/or spouses are at home with you… well, you have my deepest, most sincere sympathy and compassion. My one cheering thought is that we are ALL dealing with this right now, with our own varying levels of tolerance and manageability. Additional people in our spaces, additional maneuvering required, new levels of irritation and stress, new strategizing and planning and letting things go.
I asked a fellow parent what she was doing to keep the mess down, and she said she was trying to clean a bit every day. Well. Yes. As am I. This is a tried-and-true strategy. Every single day, I do the dishes and wipe the counters and straighten and try to get Carla to move things off Obvious Surfaces. Every single day, I try to do at least one Other Thing — a load of laundry, moving all the collected water glasses from my husband’s bedside table to the sink, moving a bundle of precious artwork from the overcrowded craft cupboard to the trash. But it’s NOT ENOUGH. The mess is a rising tide and our house is a leaky boat.
If you, too, are just trying to clean a bit every day, what does that MEAN? Do you have a checklist? Do you have a rotation of Big Items? How are you enlisting the other members of your household? If you have young children, how are you helping them get into the habit of cleaning up after themselves? I am TRYING, believe me, but a) I don’t have the energy/patience to supervise all the cleaning that needs to be done and b) it feels like just one more source of potential tension between me and Carla when we are already getting on each other’s nerves and c) sometimes the ONLY WAY I can get a few minutes to myself is to ignore what is certainly a HUGE mess in the making.
So. What are YOU doing to Keep the Clutter at Bay?
Oh brother. I am afraid I am not a good role model here. I am NOT a neat and tidy person. I can handle the clutter and mess to a point and then I start to lose it.
My kids are older so I usually make a list with maybe one or two easy jobs (wipe out microwave, clean kitchen sink) per child and then a list at the bottom of the page of one longer/more involved chore. I have them sign up for 1 or 2 easy and 1 bigger job – usually 1st come 1st serve. I set an end time. By dinner or ((typical times) before you go somewhere. Now it is before you watch a movie or before dinner. A job not done right the first time means I award them a punishment job- something yucky, like a toilet. This plan usually helps but much of what needs to be done I do not trust them with. Or it is fine for them but eventually I need to do it. When I do not do a list, I call stuff out like “you two don’t have e-learning today so you do the dishwashers.” Or- “if you guys are watching that, then sort that laundry.”
Lad’s college stuff is in boxes and half full laundry baskets mostly in the front hall. It looks like we are about to set up for a garage sale. The girls and I just finished sewing masks (which was mostly me)- so I need to go back and focus on parts of the house that need attention. Lots of attention. An unending battle.
I think nice weather is coming. I am hoping that helps. I hope Carla has a decent stash of sidewalk chalk. It’s always nice to get bodies outside to try to preserve the inside a bit longer.
I would say I’m doing a little each day but that is not true. I am doing A LOT each day. I have three kids at home. My husband is working from home too. And we are so lucky—I know this. But the constant mess is making me bananas. I wish I were the kind of person who could just roll with it, but I am not. Clutter and mess makes me anxious, and I am way over my anxiety redline as it is. So I am cleaning up constantly. I give the kids jobs, but they are limited to what I know they can do without making additional work for me (putting laundry away, cleaning their own rooms, taking an endless stream of toys back from whence they came). They are endlessly competitive though, so I’m definitely considering your challenge idea. I wish I had answers but you are not alone!
OMG the clutter! I am the one adult with three small people in my house, ages 2, 4, and 6. My husband is stuck in South America taking care of his very sick mom for at least another week if he is even able to fly home at that point. The clutter is making me crazy!
I find myself getting grumpier as the house gets messier… So I’m actively teaching my 4 and 6 year olds how to load the dishwasher the way I like it done. They have specific unloading the dishwasher jobs, also. Clothes are going straight into the washing machine and I’m washing a load every two-ish days, but I’m not doing great about folding or putting away. I’ve started retiring that they return a specific number of books (randomly chosen reach time) to the bookshelf before I will read to them. And other toys…I assign specific categories to be cleaned up in a given room, and as each task is completed, either let them move on to play or sign the next category of toys to clean up.
For dinner prep, I’m video calling someone each evening, and they sit at the kitchen table talking, singing songs, or being read to by someone who is not me. Those few moments of being able to mostly focus on my adult task of preparing the food and tidying the kitchen are becoming covered moments of my day. I’m also having the kids spend at much time as humanly possible outdoors. They are dirty, but the house is not as disorganized, and I count bathtime as an activity they look forward to which is also contained.
Ugh, at least it’s not just me? I am a SAHM to a 2 year old and I’m due with baby #2 literally any day now (and praying for sooner rather than later, like… by the end of today would be fantastic, just get! out!). My husband has been working from home for over a week and the house has never looked worse. At first I thought it was me- bending over is a chore on its own this pregnant. The toy clutter is everywhere.
Our lives should have gotten easier since my daughter and I are usually home anyway and my husband should technically be more available to help. But, it’s totally true that being inside this much just leads to more mess. We’d usually be out at music time at the library, at the playground, the grocery store, etc. Also, my husband is a very hands-on dad, which I love, but I’ve realized he is also is a mess instigator and does not seem to demonstrate any initiative to clean as he goes or to insist that something gets cleaned up before a new task is started. Even things that have been agreed upon as His Responsibility (washing dishes) is this painfully drawn out process of items getting washed, but the sink never actually ending up empty. I know he’s feeling really low energy and just kind of stir crazy and weird about everything, but it’s driving me nuts.
So, I obviously don’t have any magic system. The best I’ve been able to come up with is that my daughter gets extremely limited screen time (we don’t even own a TV) and watching Daniel Tiger on my phone is the biggest treat ever to her. So, my husband and I have been letting her watch while we make dinner and in order to get the phone she needs to pick up all her toys from around the house and at least move them to her “play room” area. So, that single room is a disaster, but the rest of the house reaches “OK” status at least once every other day or so without me having to do all of it.
Ugh the mess is… not helpful for an already stretched thin mental state, that’s for sure. For me I’m picking a room and deep cleaning it on days I have the energy for it. If I don’t I don’t try to muscle through it. For the rest… I try to pick up a bit daily. And I set a priority on my bedroom being clean over all other rooms in the house so at least my sleep can be as restful as possible.
I can deal with a little clutter for a while and then it makes me crazy. My husband is usually the main culprit for clutter. When he’s at work, I try to keep everything tidy by doing a little during the day but when he’s here? Not much gets done, because he is constantly leaving things on any flat surface.
What is making me TOTALLY crazy about working from home right now, is all the clutter on the dining room table – which is where I have set up shop. But there is no where for all that stuff to go because my filing cabinets, storage room, etc. are all at work, not here.
I’m also trying to get some of the bigger, more onerous, chores done; when he’s not here. Yesterday, I tackled the oven in between emails; talk about a feeling of victory to have THAT marked off the list! Tomorrow, I may start on cleaning the windows. Emphasis on the “may.” It all depends on where my mindset is at tomorrow.
The Cleaning Challenge is the cutest thing I have heard of – and I think you need to hear this right now – you are such a fun, creative, and loving mom. I would have LOVED something like that when I was Carla’s age. What a great idea! The mess is not bad around here, the boys being teens most of their schoolwork is literally online, and my husband has set up his work from home desk at our dining room table so he has to clean it up every day in order for us to eat dinner. It’s working fine. Teenagers seem to have less clutter – no toys or craft projects – and their actual physical papers and textbooks are either in a neat pile or in one of their baskets that I’ve put out for the purpose.