My Attempts At House Cleaning

I finally have stopped pumping milk for James and now I am catching up on many things that I wasn't able to do this past year. Cleaning is one of them! Before I had children I had a weekly cleaning time where I cleaned my entire house pretty thoroughly. After our first child Elise came that weekly time quickly vanished, only to be replaced with occasional cleaning times as there was need. I don't think our house has ever gotten super dirty, but as we have added more children and the time I have available to clean has simultaneously decreased, so too has the condition of our home. It is overwhelming!

Well, now a weekly couple hours of cleaning is not very realistic. However, my husband sent me an article a couple of years ago that talked about organizing the house into different areas and cleaning in one area for 15-20 minutes each day of the week. The idea is that you could get your whole house clean over the course of a week. Such a great idea! As I tried to figure out how to do this in my house I quickly realized there was no way I could clean my entire house in 5 or 6 15-minute slots. At least not at this point. So I improvised and divided my house into 4 zones, with the plan that I could focus on one zone each week. It would take one month to get the entire house thoroughly clean, but hey, that would result in more cleaning than I was doing at the time. I made this beautiful colored graph and everything and was so excited to get started. But, it never happened! I was probably pregnant or something and I just couldn't implement the new plan.

Fast forward to today. Now that I am not pumping for 2+ hours a day, I have a tiny bit more time (most of which is taken up with the kiddos) to actually get some cleaning in. So for the past three weeks I have been implementing my two-year old plan. And I really love it! Now it remains to be seen if I can stick with it, but at least this is a great start. The first week I thoroughly cleaned the kitchen, pantry and laundry room. Last week I did the dining room, living room, and my daughter Elise's room. This week is the office, entry way, boys' room and downstairs bathtub (the rest of that bathroom gets cleaned weekly because we host a community group for our church). The fourth week of the month I will clean the master bedroom and bath and the baby's room. Some things still need to be cleaned more regularly (like the sinks, counters and kitchen floors), but usually those just take a few minutes here and there.

Keeping a clean house can make an impact on overall health. Lots of dust in the air, as well as mold and mildew have the real potential to harm our bodies. However, if we are using toxic chemicals to get rid of dust, mildew and mold, we are setting ourselves up for even more harm. Over the past few years I have slowly transitioned to using natural cleaning products. There are so many reasons I am excited about this! Next time I will share with you some of the things I am currently using to make cleaning safer and easier in my home!