I just spent 3 hours a day of my holiday weekend cleaning and picking up my house.  That’s 9 hours, people!  I find myself in a conundrum. On one hand, I can’t really relax unless my house is clean and actually find some relaxation from the act of cleaning.  It is rewarding to walk into a messy room and within an hour have it looking good. { I also, thanks to the magic of advertising, have scary thoughts of my children playing hide and go seek around my dirty toilet, oh the horror, and need to wipe down my bathroom religiously.}  And yet on the other hand, when I get home from work or want to enjoy my weekend, cleaning is the LAST thing I want to do and I get stressed out and grumpy.  So, how can I have a clean house and live in it too?

Here are some of the things I do / have done to keep my house clean, keep my sanity and enjoy time with my family.

Get a Housekeeper – not always an option, my husband and I decided it was worth the money when our first child was born.  We had someone come in twice a month for a few months and my stress level went way down while my happiness went up.  I could decide if I had time to dust that week and know if I didn’t, it would get done for me.  Having a housekeeper doesn’t need to be a long term commitment.  It can just be there when you need it.  If money is an issue, and for us it was, do some math and see how much you will get in return.  For us, $100 a month was cheaper than couples counseling 🙂

Get a dog – no really, get a dog.  We now have two kids and I never ever have to clean up after them when they eat.  I have two dogs who are more than happy to get that job done for me.  This is a huge bonus of dog ownership!  Our dogs give us love, companionship, exercise, security (we have a BIG dog), and now cleaning sessions.  We are constantly reminded how lucky we are to have dogs every time we go to someone else’s house and find ourselves down on our hands and knees cleaning up food.

Get a battery powered handheld…vacuum – taking out a vacuum to clean up small messes is a chore.  Getting a broom and dust pan out to get that little spill is a pain.  Grabbing a hand held vacuum and being done in under 3 minutes, priceless.

Clean up as you go – this is a no brainer but not so easy to do.  You have to make a conscious decision to clean as you go.  When you make a mess, clean it up right after.  That way messes don’t have time to build on each other and create a mega mess.  After you clean up your mess, take a second to thank mom who tried her hardest to teach us this lesson when we were young, even though it didn’t work then.

Pick something to clean every day – I learned this from Martha Stewart and laughed when I read it.  Yeah right, Martha, cleaning the bathroom on a Wednesday night sounds like loads of fun.  But you know what is loads of fun, not cleaning a bathroom on the weekend.  Cleaning something every day keeps you from having to clean everything in one day.  Do laundry one night, dust the living room one night while your watching TV, wipe down the tub one time after your little one takes a bath and is brushing their teeth.  Try it.  I was able to let go of my housekeeper when I implemented this way of keeping a clean house.

Enlist your family – don’t do it alone.  If you’re cleaning, they need to do something to help.  It will make it go faster.  Vacuuming for example, have someone pick up the floor and someone else vacuum.

“Put some Windex” – find yourself a multi-purpose cleaner that you can use on almost everything and keep it handy.  I use Windex on everything: my floors, my cabinets, my tables, my counter tops, my mirrors, my Ikea furniture etc etc.  It’s great for quick touch up jobs in between cleans and I can literally walk from room to room with a bottle and rag and go crazy.