Ideas for When You Hate Housework!

NB This is a sponsored post.

Here’s the thing: I hate housework.

I’m sure that doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. I mean – have you ever met anyone that doesn’t hate housework?!

And yet it’s got to be done on a reasonably regular basis.

Over the years I’ve heard and tried all sorts of strategies to try and get a handle on the housework. I even wrote a Cheat’s Guide to Housework here on the blog – and yes, I may have done some (or all!) of the things 😉 .

Housework Rota

Back when I was a stay at home mum of two littlies, I quickly realised that Parkinson’s law definitely applies to housework – as in, a task will expand to fit the amount of time you give it.

Just because I was a “housewife” didn’t mean that I wanted to spend all my time cleaning the house! While washing up and laundry needed to be done each day, I developed a rota system for the rest. This was based on splitting my house into three “zones” and then cleaning one each week, as follows:

1. Master Bedroom and Bathrooms – Toilets, sinks, bath, mirrors, showers, plus dusting and vacuuming our bedroom.
2. Formal Lounge and Dining area – Mostly dusting and vacuuming.
3. The Rest – For me that meant the mopping the family room and/or vacuuming the other bedrooms.

I found it liberating because I knew my house was cleaned from top to bottom every month; and once I’d done the zone for the week, I could (mostly) forget about housework and enjoy life.

The 2 Things Principle

I’ve long been a devotee of the “two things principle” – picking up two things whenever you enter/exit a room and putting them away.

Now that we are in a two storey house I rarely go up or down the stairs empty-handed – there’s always something that needs to be put away!

The 5 Minute Method

I have a friend who used to swear by the five minute method. She created a box full of index cards each with a 5 minute cleaning task written on it. Whenever she had a spare 5 minutes she would grab the card at the front of the box and do that chore – polish a mirror, sweep the kitchen, dust a particular shelf. The card was then placed at the back of the box. Bit by bit, her whole house was cleaned.

The Panic Clean

It can be particularly challenging when you have a ‘cleanie’ married to a ‘messie’. I’ll leave it to your imagination to work out who is who in our household, but let’s just say that telling the husbear that company’s coming is a great way to get him to do a panic clean!

Problem is it makes booking a house cleaner like Baymaids a pointless exercise, because the husbear will make sure everything’s spotless before they get here. Sigh.

Sharing the Load

It goes without saying that if you are sharing a house you should be sharing the housework.

I’m a lot more relaxed about the housework these days.  I had to learn to turn a blind eye to it when I started working from home – because when you get right down to it, paid work is more important than sparkling windows or floors!

We don’t have a roster set in stone or anything, but the husbear is mostly in charge of the vacuuming as it triggers the bursitis in my shoulder, which is quite painful. I much prefer mowing the yard anyway, besides, the effects last longer LOL.

It’s not a perfect arrangement and we still squabble over the housework occasionally, but for the most part it works.

A Great House Cleaning Deal

But for those in the Brisbane/Redlands area, ready to let somebody else deal with the dirty work, Baymaids has a great offer specially for readers here at Middle Aged Mama. Simply enter the code MAMA when booking your cleaning and you can get $25 off your first four cleans!

I’m pretty sure that I’m not alone when I say that “I hate housework” (although I love the results!) – so instead I’ll ask, are you a Cleanie or a Messie or somewhere in between?! And if you have any great housework hacks please share them in the comments below!