This is an idea I used to do, pre-kids and then when I only had Brittany. I lost it somewhere along the way and just recently picked up the book with the suggestion again. We have been doing it this week and it has made HUGE changes in our house and our attitudes!
We are spending 5 minutes in each room in our house (I include each bathroom separately and the laundry room here, too) and cleaning the room as well as possible in that 5 minute period. There are 3 of us working in each room so it amounts to 15 minutes of hard work, per room. We have 11 rooms, so it takes us approx 1 hour (with the changing of the rooms) Then we pick one room a day and work on it an hour.
The wonderful thing is, the house looked so much better after only 1 day! On the first day, we mostly got things picked up and put away. After 2 days it was even better! I dusted while Emily picked up and put away and Brittany vacuumed. Today I will finish the dusting and Brittany can get the attachments out and do some spot vaccuuming against the walls and in corners. (Emily will still be in charge of picking up and putting away...esp since most of that stuff is hers!)
The other wonderful thing is: if we miss our 1 hour on the one room (like we did yesterday) it doesn't matter nearly as much, since the whole house is picked up!
The reason this is really working for us, I think, is because in the past we have been trying to focus on one-two rooms a day. The rest of the house was falling apart and not getting attention on the 6 days it took to get back to those rooms. (especially with Emily who is a human tornado and Kaedra who is just learning to mess up the house but is doing very well at it!) This way, the house is ready for visitors at any time and it is getting better every day! I LOVE IT! :-) The girls love it! Both yesterday and today Brittany has said "Isn't it wonderful having a house that's all picked up all the time?" And this is only after two days of 5 minutes a room! It's a miracle! :-)
An unexpected benefit to this is that the girls are picking up more in between cleanings. I heard them say, "Let's get this now so we don't have to waste our 5 minutes." WOO-HOO!
I think we will keep this up during the whole Christmas break and then we will see what we will do after that. So far, this is really working for us!
Be sure to check out what works for other people at Rocks in my Dryer!!
6 comments:
Great tip! Thanks for sharing & welcome to WFMW! =)
Great idea!
I love this - thanks! It is amazing what you can do in 5 minutes, and it makes a full hour seem do-able.
Hey - I just counted and I have 11 rooms in my house too. =)
I think I will start that too. I'm having a hard time holding things together lately and my home is suffering for it.
Thanks for sharing!
Okay I read the 11 rooms and wiped my brow. Whew! We have 7 and a hallway. But I think that's a great idea. I will have to do a post to link to you because that is a perfectly wonderful idea, especially for kids. If I had an award you would definitely get it.
Thank you for sharing that.
That's a great idea to break it down and do a little bit at at time. Have you read Speed Cleaning? You would probably love that book!
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