▪ Light-duty evaporating cleaner (glass cleaner or
before you clean.
multi-surface cleaner)
▪ Heavy-duty degreasing cleaner
▪ Tile and bathroom cleaner
▪ Powdered abrasive cleanser
10 Think teamwork.
Two people make a bed four times faster
than a single cleaner working alone. Watch
the pros at work. Working in teams of two or three,
That’s it! No soap scum remover, no special counter
they make short work of an average home.
spray, no single-use products designed to clean only Where family circumstances permit, make cleaning
blinds or fans or walls. The professionals know that a family affair. Family members are more reluctant to with these four simple products they’ll be able to
mess up a clean house when they have been part of
handle any ordinary cleaning chore.
the cleaning effort!
Clean, safe,
Children bring special cleaning challenges
to any household—but their developing
immune systems mean that kids can be more
affected by chemical cleaners than adults.
Meet the challenge of cleaning safely around
children with these tips:
▪ Avoid aerosols. Fine mist emitted by
gr
aerosol products is easily absorbed in the
lungs—and aerosol propellants can be highly
een
irritating. Use pump sprayers instead.
▪ Skip the scents. Commercial cleaning
products with added fragrance offer a double
dose of potentially harmful chemicals. Often,
fragrances are more toxic than the cleaner
they’re intended to mask! Opt for unscented
to reduce chemical levels at home.
▪ Home in on homemade. Cleaning
recipes from the pantry (see page 54) offer
cleaning power without harsh chemicals—
and are safe, inexpensive, and green
alternatives to commercial cleaners.
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SKILLS FOR A WELL-RUN HOME
Scheduling: the solution for
a clean and happy home
Clean houses have one thing in common: cleaning chores are tackled according to a schedule. Haphazard cleaning isn’t only ineffective—it takes longer. The quickest and simplest route to a clean house is to schedule cleaning tasks on a daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal basis.
I know, I know—you have a million reasons why you don’t
▪ Clear kitchen counters and wipe down stovetop
want to clean on a schedule. You’re a free spirit. You’re
▪ Clean kitchen sink
pregnant. Your spouse works odd shifts. You’re an artistic type
▪ Take out kitchen garbage
and sticking to a schedule would dampen your creativity.
▪ Sweep kitchen floor
Trust me; in over 10 years of teaching these skills, I have
▪ Pick up family room and play areas (put away toys, stack heard every rationale ever offered for resisting this truth. But magazines, remove clutter)
truth it remains. There’s only one reason to schedule housework: because doing so gets the job done fastest Weekly cleaning checklist
and most easily.
▪ Change bed linens and bathroom towels
▪ Clean bathrooms
Little and often
▪ Clean kitchen counters and wipe inside of microwave oven Housework delayed is housework multiplied. Dust the
▪ Wash or dust hard-surface floors
breakfast nook weekly, and it’s a quick-swipe, two-minute job.
▪ Dust furniture
Wait a month, and enough air-borne grease has settled over
▪ Vacuum carpets and rugs
the dust to require (a) oil soap, (b) elbow grease, and (c) an
▪ Check entryway or porch; sweep if needed
energetic half-hour to return the furniture to a state of clean.
Better to schedule two easy minutes a week than to play The case against spring-cleaning
catch-up with a sweaty half-hour once a month.
In Grandma’s day, spring-cleaning was mandatory. It marked Whatever your mental roadblock to the idea, consider the end of the heating season, when the entire house was establishing a cleaning schedule. By scheduling chores so that scrubbed clean of the smoky film given off by older heat they’re performed regularly—before the problems mushroom sources. With today’s heating technology, this rationale no exponentially—the house stays cleaner, and the house cleaners longer applies. Modern lives, too, cannot sustain an old-do less work to keep it that way. Use these sample checklists as fashioned cleaning marathon.
a start-point to develop one that’s right for your household: So how do we replace spring-cleaning? With a workable household cleaning schedule. Homes cleaned according to Daily cleaning checklist
schedule stay reasonably clean all the time. A cleaning
▪ Make beds
schedule integrates seasonal cleaning chores into daily or
▪ Place dirty clothing in hampers
weekly cleaning sessions, and no task goes too long without
▪ Wash, dry, and put away one load of laundry
being done. Result: a clean home all year around.
CLEANING YOUR HOME
69
Minimum
Even the best-run households experience
A sample list might look like this:
rocky patches from time to time. Illness, special
Every day:
work assignments, absence of a family member,
▪ Load and run dishwasher
or volunteer commitments can throw a monkey
▪ Tidy kitchen
wrench into the workings of a home.
▪ Run one load of laundry, fold, and put away
There’s a solution for busy times—a minimum
▪ Family pick-up time
maintenance
maintenance shortlist to keep your home running
smoothly. Think of it as a Magic Minimum: those
Every week:
essential tasks that must be done come Hell, high
▪ Review bank balances and pay bills
water, or soccer play-offs. Every family has different
▪ Shop for groceries
needs, but most Magic Minimums provide for:
▪ Clean bathrooms
▪ Basic accounting chores (bank deposits
Next step: delegate! Assign one or more minimum
and bill-paying)
chores to each family member. Every family member
▪ Meals and menus (clean dishes, grocery
has a stake in keeping the household functioning,
shopping)
so should be expected to help.
▪ Laundry (necessary clean clothing)
Finally, post your Magic Minimum list in a
▪ Home management (once-a-day pick-up,
public place. Families using a Household Notebook
weekly cleaning of bathrooms and kitchen)
(see pages 84–87) will include their list under the
“home management” divider. Another choice is
To make your own Magic Minimum plan, list the
the refrigerator door, but use any central area. The rock-bottom essential maintenance chores that
written list aids accountability, because everyone
need to be tackled to keep the household clean,
knows what must be done to keep the household
fed, and on time.
functioning during times of stress.
laundry ▲ see pages 140–153
meals and menu planning ▲ see pages 92–97
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SKILLS FOR A WELL-RUN HOME
Teaching
children to clean
“Clean your room!” It’s the cry of parents everywhere. Toddlers to teens, it’s a battle to get kids to help. The terrain is familiar: a dirty house, balky children, and frazzled, frustrated parents. What can parents do to create peace on the home front? Try these strategies to chill the chore wars.
The buck(et) stops here
▪ Tap the power of choice. Children who are given a choice An ambivalent mindset can keep us from successfully gaining of chores do them better and more happily. A child who dislikes kid cooperation around the house. Perhaps we grew up in a the feeling of wet hands and gritty cleanser may be the World’s home heavy with sex-role stereotypes. Maybe we feel guilt Best Duster-and-Trash-Emptier. Another, with sensitive ears, may because we work outside the home.
prefer bathroom duty to running the vacuum. A chore list of When ambivalence strikes remind yourself that, just as we scheduled chores makes it easy to allow children to select jobs prepare our children for adult life by sending them to school, they’d prefer.
so we need to prepare them to manage a home.
▪ Make housework a partnership. The best motivator for a child is to work together with an adult. From a child’s point
▪ Start small. The easiest way to secure your children’s of view, it’s downright lonely to be sentenced to clean a assistance is to train them to it from the time they are small.
bathroom each afternoon after school. Better to institute a family A one-year-old will giggle if handed a clean diaper to dust the the furniture. Nothing can be such fun as washing a car with
“Invest in your child’s
a five-year-old. Problem is, these little ones’ efforts aren’t yet much help. In truth, you’ll probably have to follow behind that learning now and you will
one-year-old with his diaper duster, removing the specks of be implanting skills for life.”
dirt he’s rearranged. Even when you match the chore to the child, the early years require some extra work from you. Listen up, parents of tiny children: just do it! An investment in your Pick-up Time each day, a family Clean-up Time each week. Even child’s learning now will reap rewards in just a few years.
if that same child is alone in that same bathroom, he knows
▪ Invoke change slowly. Your children are at an age to be that all the other family members are hard at work, too.
of help around the house—but their idea of “helping” is
▪ Focus on the big picture. Cleaning methods are a lifting their feet from the floor so you can vacuum beneath frequent bone of contention between parents and children.
them. Resist the big blow-up and get children involved in chores A parent’s insistence on “the right way” can add another slowly. For example, this month, decide that one child will assist element of conflict to the housework issue. The answer? Avoid with predinner preparation, the other will help with clean-up.
this by focusing on the “good-enough” job. A 10-year-old’s Next month, begin a Saturday morning family “cleanathon.”
skill with the vacuum cleaner will increase with practice ... if Gradual change gives you time to teach a child your household’s he’s not derailed by arguments over too-high standards or standard for each task.
demoralized when a parent redoes the work.
CLEANING YOUR HOME
71
Chores
Who says kids can’t do chores? Check this
▪ Prepare simple snacks
listing of age-appropriate chores to help children
▪ Wash dishes
learn responsibility and habits of order:
▪ Load the dishwasher
▪ Polish silver
Two- to three-year-olds can:
▪ Vacuum
for childr
▪ Pick up toys
▪ Sweep floors with broom and dustpan
▪ Help make beds
▪ Help with yard work (rake leaves, pull weeds)
▪ Help feed pets
▪ Dust lower shelves and furniture legs
From eleven and up, train teens to do “adult”
▪ Place spoons, napkins, and unbreakable dishes
chores. They’ll squawk on the outside, but feel
on the table
pride on the inside as they master real-life skills.
en
▪ Carry dirty clothing to the laundry area
With teaching, teens can:
▪ Sweep floors with a lightweight electrostatic
▪ Plan and cook family meals
dry mop
▪ Do their own laundry using the washing
machine and dryer
For four- to five-year-olds, add these chores to
▪ Wash windows
the list above:
▪ Replace light bulbs
▪ Make beds (if using comforters)
▪ Polish furniture
▪ Set the table
▪ Wash hard-surface floors
▪ Dust table tops
▪ Clean garages and outbuildings
▪ Unload and put away groceries
▪ Wash, wax, and detail cars
Between six and eight years of age, children
▪ Keep their play areas or bedrooms tidy
▪ Water house plants
▪ Make beds (using bedspreads)
▪ Sort laundry
▪ Put clean clothing away
▪ Assist with simple food preparation (tear lettuce, make sandwiches)
▪ Fold socks, shirts, and pants
▪ Help wash the car
Nine- to ten-year-olds are ready to:
▪ Change sheets
▪ Clean bathtub and sinks
▪ Help cook meals
family teamwork ▲ see also pages 66–67
planning your home
Household skill sets
What’s the secret that makes happy homes
hum? Planning. Just as a dress must be
designed and a movie must have a storyboard,
so every well-run household must have a plan.
In this section, we introduce the basics of
household planning: checklists, to-do lists,
good habits, a Household Notebook, a family
calendar, and a family information center.
Checklists—daily, weekly, monthly, and
seasonal lists of day-to-day chores—take the
thought out of scheduling routine household
tasks. To manage one-time or unexpected jobs,
to-do lists organize the work and break down
big goals into easy steps.
How do you take those steps? Enter habit.
Building good habits, one at a time, is key to
bringing household chaos under control.
To keep track of planning, we create a
family organizer: the Household Notebook.
Add a family calendar and place them at the
heart of a family information center to guide
the doings of life in an organized home.
74
SKILLS FOR A WELL-RUN HOME
Plan to succeed
for an organized home
Planning. It’s the strategy that separates the hapless house from the happy home.
Without a way to plan your time and schedule your life, the household slides into disorder and chaos. Homework goes missing, bills don’t get paid, and you have a regular budget entry for overdue library fines.
Chores don’t get done, laundry doesn’t get washed, and dinner Working from a Master To-Do list, you’ll record a mix of doesn’t get cooked on time. You wake each morning to a sink nagging jobs, little reminders, home improvement projects, and full of dirty dishes, and you go to bed each night, mind buzzing personal goals. Moving Master To-Do list items to a running with “Did I remember?�
� and “Did I forget?” worries, a true to-do list breaks down big projects into achievable tasks, and symptom of failure to plan.
integrates those tasks into the coming days, weeks, and months.
Tackling projects via the organized approach of a to-do list The four tools for planning
takes your aspirations out of the mental clouds and makes A basic plan for an organized home meshes four powerful them happen.
planning tools: checklists, to-do lists, good habits, and a family organizer. Together, they form a framework that saves money, 3 Habit Checklists and to-do lists organize efficient living, saves time, and cuts chaos at home.
but they don’t get the work done themselves. How do you follow through on your good planning? Enter habit: the secret 1 Checklists These are simple-to-follow reminders of the engine of an organized life at home. Once formed, habits are routine tasks of each day—or each week, month, or season.
like the little engine that could, pulling family members along Checklists cover recurring jobs: cleaning chores, personal care, in their (orderly) wake.
exercise routines. They cut through mental clutter and distraction, Encouraging good habits and banishing bad ones is key and make clear what needs to be accomplished each day.
to streamlining life and routing chaos and disorder. Best of all, Checklists promote delegation and family teamwork. Are the children busting to spend Saturday at the park? The morning
“Planning saves money,
checklist sets out the chores that need to be done before the fun part of the day can begin. Once the list is completed, bring saves time, and cuts chaos
out the picnic basket!
at home.”
2 Master to-do lists What checklists do for recurring tasks, to-do lists accomplish for one-time chores or larger projects.
habits are self-sustaining. Once you form them, they will work Can’t sleep at night because your head rings with thoughts for you without further effort. Bring a brace of good habits to of what you need to do, want to do, must remember? Large work for your organized home. As you plan, incorporate checklist or small, entrust clamoring “mind clutter” to a to-do list for items or to-do entries into existing routines to maximize the a good night’s sleep.
power of habit.
PLANNING YOUR HOME
75
4 The Household Notebook What’s a blockbuster tool
▲ Household planning is as critical as planning in any other area of life. Winging it leads to disorder, chaos, and stress. Planning for a well-organized home life? A family organizer: a personal is a powerful tool for an organized home.