We’ve just come back from an idyllic 4 days away by the seaside enjoying really special cloudless blue skies and warm temperatures but as soon as we got back home I felt so blue by what seemed to be an enormous mountain of chores staring at me from each room.
The kids playroom is looking particularly overcrowded,hectic and messy as do some of the other rooms and I find my self doing one small thing in one room,taking something to where it belongs and then getting distracted by another object out of place and start dealing with this. This is all compounded by the fact I have four days of washing to catch up on,the unused clothes to put away,an empty fridge and HUNDREDS of seeds that really need to be sowed this week!
Luckily the kids are on Easter holidays from pre-school so I can dedicate a few days to getting things straight,surplus clothes &toys identified to take to a charity shop,sowing seeds,doing an online food shop,hoovering,ironing and the like. Luckily I remembered to not feel overwhelmed by it all but to tackle it in a more methodical way than I am naturally inclined to do.
In order to feel like I’m getting somewhere in each room I’m going to set my timer for 15 minutes and do what I can in that time in each room of the house. I’ll grab toys,books,magazines that we have finished with to pass on to someone else,will put toys away where they can be found again and will generally straighten things up. I will do this as speedily as possible and after three 15 minute sessions I’ll have a good sit down with the children and have some fruit and water.
Now I’ve typed this post I’m no longer feeling daunted by it but relishing the challenge of getting it all done before my mum comes to stay on Thursday.
A good friend of ours has a top tip for dealing with post-holiday washing which I don’t need to employ this time but it is an easier option to dealing with the mounds of dirty clothes after a long family holiday. They take the whole lot to the local laundrette and ask for a big service wash. The next day they return to collect clean,dry and folded laundry. This costs less thanone of their holiday meals out. Genius I call it.
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I find that it is very hard not to get overwhelmed by housework. I do like the laundry idea:0)
Cathie
Feel free to file this under “Thoughts from someone who does not know what she is talking about”because,as you know I pay someone to do my housework as work full time but how about,don’t be so hard on yourself that every room has to be perfect at all times. Does it matter if things are a bit messy? Are the housework inspectors coming round? Surely a play room is allowed to be not totally in order. Does not make you a bad person or cr4p at being domestic.
If I remember,Flylady’s key advice is to start with keeping your sink shiny so that you at least *feel* in control as it is surely not practical or possible to have your whole house tidy and perfect at all times –well,you could but that would leave v little time for more enjoyable activities. Having a shiny sink sounds like the at home equivalent of having a to-do list and a tidy-ish desk ie keeps your head calm so can work through what you have to do.
Anyway,your 15 min blasts sound like a top solution if you can just summon the energy. . . .
Cathie says:
The thing is that it is my full time job to ensure that Bealers has ironed shirts to wear to meetings,we have fresh food to eat,the kids have clean beds and no slidey books all over their bedroom floor which could be potential slip over hazard,that the dozens of dead flies and bees that appeared on our floors under the windows while we were away are disappeared and that at least some of our clothes are clean and in a place where we can find them.
The kids playroom should be tidied at the end of each day by them &me for a number of reasons (1) it helps them understand that we should all play a part in keeping ouor home environment a pleasant place to live in;(2) toys left on the floor generally get stepped on &broken (or hurt a foot) –only this morning I saw Mo stand on a drum without thinking just because it was near him;(3) kids who have LOADS of toys out at the same time don’t play as nicely as kids who have a couple of things out. I’ve read this and observed it with my own. They play with full attention if you get the farm set out,the cars,the dinosaurs,a game,a jigsaw etc but if all of these things are out from the previous day they kind of pick up one thing,put it in their mouth and chew it while chucking the bits from another set across the room and bashing their sibling with another component of another toy.
Also my head gets really busy &muddled if there are chores which obviously need my attention. No official house tidy auditors are ever due but we do have unexpected guests from time to time and it would irratate me if they arrived to find my downstairs loo in the pre-cleaned state it was in yesterday (unflushed toilet with something nasty in it,piles of mud on the floor,wet splashy mud all over the sink,no loo paper and no hand towel). The thing is about sharing a home with small kids is that can create a lot of mess in a short space of time.
The thing is that having a family of this size and three of us being at home most days creates a lot more work than when there were just two of us who were mainly out at work all day. I’m not talking about the odd coffee cup not being put away I’m talking total confidence destroying chaos EVERYWHERE.
ANYWAY the update to all this blathering is that the 15 mins trick worked wonders. Yesterday I blitzed the main offending rooms (kitchen,parents bedroom,bathroom,lounge,breakfast room),planted courgette,pumpkin and lettuce seeds,took the lawnmower to the repair shop,did 3 loads of laundry,sent a few invoices off,took Bealers some lunch,did mini shop-up in our village and felt like I was hugely on top of things by the time we went to bed.