Jeni Is Seized with a Desire for Usefulness

Okay, I’ve been getting up a wee bit later than I should lately.  Winter blues, time change issues, denialthatIhavesevenchildren… or maybe sheer laziness. Whatever.  Today I got up earlier.  Still later than I’ll admit to the general public, but early enough to be seized with a desire to do something with the day beyond exist. 

So we straightened.  and straightened.  and did some school.  and straightened some more.  Wednesday is my new cleaning day, and the last two weeks we’ve not gotten to every area of the house because the first areas were so messy we spent double or triple the allotted time just dealing with toys and clothes and papers and junk.  Hopefully tomorrow we’ll do better. 

Now I’ll bet you’re wondering how I can have a day in the middle of the week as my cleaning day if I homeschool.  Or maybe not, but I’m going to write it anyway. 

The first week of our nifty new cleaning schedule, the boys cleaned with me during their daily 30 minutes with mom.  The great things about doing it this way was nothing else was interrupted—they still did all their independent work at the regular times—and I was able to teach them the proper way to clean.  The problem was we took so long in the downstairs areas, dealing with the accumulated STUFF littering the floors, chairs, and horizontal surfaces that we never got the upstairs cleaned.  And the other problem was the floors.  It doesn’t make sense to clean the floors of each room separately, and since we were still using the other rooms, they never did get cleaned during our cleaning time.  Bummer. 

The following week, I rebelled against cleaning at all until after lunch.  Then I had the boys come down, right before naps, and tackle their designated areas.  The girls helped, too, and they were to do as much as possible in thirty minutes.  Then I put the girls down for naps, the boys to Legos and listening to history on the computer, and I did the floors.  That was great, except I couldn’t oversee and train them since I was doing the kitchen, and the upstairs could not be done during naps.  And after two weeks of not being dusted, the upstairs really needs to be cleaned.

I’m still not sure how I’ll manage it tomorrow.  The clutter is under control, so all we have to do is clean.  Shall I tackle it first thing, string it throughout the day, or wait until after lunch?  I do know I want to work with at least one boy, showing him how to go around the room only once in order to clean quickly.  In order to do that, my own area must get cleaned tonight.  And it’s 9:30.  Isn’t cleaning the kitchen what everyone wants to do at 9:30!?  At least Mark will be in the dining room so I can bother him while he works on school stuff. 

[Update:  It is now 10:21 on my computer, and my kitchen is clean from cabinet tops to floors, and I even did a bit of the breakfast room.  Not bad for less than 51 minutes of work.]