The Revelation Returns

Way back in April I blogged about cleaning the kitchen, yep riveting eh? As a stay-at-home mum it was one of the things that I found myself doing constantly and I was always battling with the children to put their plates away when they were finished eating. My revelation in April was that if I did a little tidying everyday then I could keep my house looking tidy without much effort. Well that is almost true.

These days my kitchen is tidy. Tidy - not sparkling. What I’ve found is that it is easy to keep it tidy but with the constant coffee and tea making, lunch and dinner and sticky fingers, there is no way to keep my counter tops sparkling unless I keep everyone out of the kitchen. This isn’t practical but I have come to terms with the fact that tidy is okay. I don’t mind it actually. My kitchen doesn’t ‘need’ to be sparkling all of the time and as long as there’s not food going mouldy on the tops and plates piled high above the dishwasher then I think I’m doing a good job. 

I have a routine, just like I did back in April but now my routine involves more writing and more housework. The thing is that somehow I’m managing to stay on top of everything, nothing is getting out of hand and I feel loads better for it. Usually with the housework there is one part, like the clothes washing, that I let pile up and then have to have a whole weekend of washing and ironing before the kids run out of clothes. This is annoying and I only have myself to blame. But since the new year I seem to have a better routine. I spend a little more than half an hour in a morning going round the house picking up after the kids, putting the dishwasher on and making sure that the clothes are in the washing machine. This new routine means that I have a small basket of ironing to do that can be finished in half an hour, the kitchen is tidy all day and I don’t have the kids nagging me about not having jeans or jumpers to wear when they want them. 

Maybe this is just a consequence of being older or maybe it’s the realisation that these things do matter to me. Perhaps I’ve been lying to myself all these years and trying to convince myself that I don’t really care if there’s tons of washing to do. The fact is I do. I hate not having a tidy house, it makes me grumpy. I hate to see piles of clothes all over the place waiting to be washed. These days I can wander into any room in my house, look around and be satisfied that it doesn’t look terrible. There may be washing in the basket but the basket is not overflowing. There may be toys out and jigsaw pieces on the floor but I can still see the carpet. A family lives here and I’m not about to tell my children not to get toys out because I want it to be tidy all the time. Just a little work from me while they’re at school and my house is tidy, and I don’t need to spend hours to get it that way. That, for me, is good enough.

How about you, are you constantly fighting with your children or hubby to tidy up after themselves? Do you let things pile up into a huge job rather than doing it little and often? Or, like me, have you found a new routine which you are proud of?