OP, you do not need to vacuum, mop, and wipe down your household surfaces on a daily basis.... Don’t know where people are coming up with this stuff.

Anonymous wrote:A good amount, but we have cleaners come every 3-4 weeks so at once a month the entire house is clean.

Today my toddler and I are both pretty sick, so I haven’t been killing myself cleaning, but here’s what I did so far in terms of cleaning:

Unload dishwasher
Pick up and put away rooms downstairs
Vacuum and mop downstairs
Run another load of dishes
Wipe down kitchen, dining room, and living room after lunch
Strip master and toddler sheets and launder
Big load of toddler clothes in dryer now

I’m not sure how this compares to other people, but it does feel like I’m constantly cleaning up at least small messes. It’s jecessary to do it unless you want to have a huge cleaning session every night.

That is a ton of cleaning for anyone, let alone a sick person!

Anonymous wrote:I do a three hour chunk of dishes, vacuum and clean the floors/pick up the main floor most nights of the week. I kind of pick up through out the day, but it tends to get messy anyways so I find it pointless since I know I’m spending cleaning time later. Laundry is on the weekends


Husband still things I’m a slob. I do my best.

Sorry, but how does this take 3 hrs every night...? Unload and load dish washer takes maybe half hour, and that’s generous. Vacuuming my 2400 sq ft house takes an hour total (once a week). Picking up the main floor maybe takes like... 15 mins if it’s a DISASTER.

I’m a SAHM and don’t outsource. I don’t find that cleaning occupies my mind but maybe others would hate my standards.

Today I unloaded and put away the clean dishes, made breakfast for myself and the kids, packed my kindergartener’s lunch, pack a snack for my younger one and took him to a meet up at library story time. Then we went grocery shopping and I made him lunch to eat while I put groceries away. Later I’ll toss in a load of laundry and give the kids a bath while dinner cooks.

DH is in charge of the yard which he outsources, he helps with tossing in a load of laundry that I prep or moving something to the dryer, helps put the kids to bed and helps on weekends.

I try to have at least three outings on three mornings during the week, one day laundry and one chore or stay at home day.

We clean up toys once a day in the evening when both kids help.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks, this is helpful. For those of you who multitask cooking, tidying, errands, etc. with kid time, do you basically feel like your mind is going in several directions at once during much of the day? I’m really looking for honesty here as I have not had this experience. On the average snow day or weekend I am definitely doing outings and kid centered activities but if I am also trying to cook meals, do errands, KonMari the living room, etc. to be honest my attention is kind of split. I’m wondering if when you stay at home and don’t outsource, this is just part of the gig.

I’m the PP with the 3yo and 9mo. I think it’s a combination. Partly you do learn to multitask and manage juggling basically two streams-of-consciousness all day. But part of it is also simplifying life so that it requires less active effort to manage daily stuff.

So for example I do a load of laundry daily: put in in the morning, rotate at nap, fold in the afternoon put away as part of bedtime routine. That works well for teo reasons: 1) I never have to think about or plan for laundry. I just do it on autopilot every single day. 2) We don’t need a week’s worth of clothes. Kids have ~10 outfits each at any given time and ~6 pairs of pjs. So I am not constantly trying to figure out what fits or sorting clothes or rearranging drawers or having to schedule an hour once a week to put it all away. If something is getting too short I order a replacement for just that one thing. As we transition seasons I can easily see what I have in the next size up, etc.

I also find that you have to focus on the kids first and then try to be productive. The friends I know who are stressed are the ones who try to get a lot done in the morning. I don’t even do the dishes in the morning. I make breakfast, lunch and snack and then we leave for like 5 hours. When we get back it’s naptime. That way the kids had the entire morning of lots of attention from me and engaging activities for them, then a rest. They haven’t played with any of their toys since yesterday so they are pretty happy to do some free play for an hour or so while I get a few basic things done.

I also babywear the baby often and find that (esp wearing on my back), she can get the closeness and comfort she needs without taking up a ton of mental space for me.

The last thing that helps is minimizing the toys and keeping them in bins. They can have one bin out at a time and we clean up when we’re done. Toys don’t end up strewn across the entire house.

I never really found a way to make everything work all of the time. I just want to say that at one point I did hire a housekeeper to do almost everything. I listed it all out, and I ended up needing 25 hours/wk in order to get it all done. No wonder I couldn’t get this done in little five minute chunks throughout the day. I absolutely believe the poster who says she is cleaning for three hours a day.
At one point while she was still with us, my husband and I swapped roles and he was home with the kids for a few months while I was working. He couldn’t believe how much cleaning up he still had to do even though we had a housekeeper every day. For example, she washed baby bottles every morning, but she didn’t do breakfast dishes or wipe down the table for older kids.

We hired cleaners once and hated the way our house felt after they left. They came highly recommended, too so I don’t think they did a bad job, I think our house is weird and has to be cleaned a certain way and I hate it.

I’d love to be able to hire cleaners to help. I feel like DH holds our house to the same standard as other houses who have cleaners come every two weeks and it drives me nuts!!

Anonymous wrote:I’m PP who does the 3 hours cleaning chunk.

I’m noticing most people hire cleaners. OP specifically said for people Who didn’t hire help!!!

OP- I don’t hire help. I do a big chunk of cleaning time bc cleaning all day makes me feel like all I do it clean which is worse than the big chunk of cleaning time. However, that may vary depending on personality. My husband prefers to clean all day (and to clean as soon as he wakes up)

We vacuum the main level everyday. Wash the kitchen/dining room floor at least 3 times a week. Ideally I’d do it every day but I just haven’t had to energy and I am usually juggling dinner requests. It can be really hard to manage and I really try not to let the messiness of my house ruin my day (I used to avoid mid afternoon/nighttime activities bc I was worried about my husband coming home to a messy house. Do not avoid fun bc of a mess more often than not

I’m the 13:51 Pp. We have cleaners come once a month, but if they didn’t, I’d get DH to scrub toilets once a month. I guess once a month counts as help, but to me the house doesn’t feel cleaner than when I do it, it’s just that it’s all clean all at the same time. It’s also the only thing that gets me and DH to pick every thing up and tidy in preparation for the cleaners. If we didn’t, I guess we could schedule a time once a month to do it, but the pressure of the scheduled cleaners coming is a big perk. It’s like company coming. You have to clean.

I’m PP who does the 3 hours cleaning chunk.

I’m noticing most people hire cleaners. OP specifically said for people Who didn’t hire help!!!

OP- I don’t hire help. I do a big chunk of cleaning time bc cleaning all day makes me feel like all I do it clean which is worse than the big chunk of cleaning time. However, that may vary depending on personality. My husband prefers to clean all day (and to clean as soon as he wakes up)

We vacuum the main level everyday. Wash the kitchen/dining room floor at least 3 times a week. Ideally I’d do it every day but I just haven’t had to energy and I am usually juggling dinner requests. It can be really hard to manage and I really try not to let the messiness of my house ruin my day (I used to avoid mid afternoon/nighttime activities bc I was worried about my husband coming home to a messy house. Do not avoid fun bc of a mess more often than not

A good amount, but we have cleaners come every 3-4 weeks so at once a month the entire house is clean.

Today my toddler and I are both pretty sick, so I haven’t been killing myself cleaning, but here’s what I did so far in terms of cleaning:

Unload dishwasher
Pick up and put away rooms downstairs
Vacuum and mop downstairs
Run another load of dishes
Wipe down kitchen, dining room, and living room after lunch
Strip master and toddler sheets and launder
Big load of toddler clothes in dryer now

I’m not sure how this compares to other people, but it does feel like I’m constantly cleaning up at least small messes. It’s jecessary to do it unless you want to have a huge cleaning session every night.

I do a three hour chunk of dishes, vacuum and clean the floors/pick up the main floor most nights of the week. I kind of pick up through out the day, but it tends to get messy anyways so I find it pointless since I know I’m spending cleaning time later. Laundry is on the weekends


Husband still things I’m a slob. I do my best.

My 2 yr plays in the kitchen while i make breakfast and dinner. She’s used to it and doesn’t need attention then, so i don’t feel pulled in diff directions. She “helps” with laundry and dishes. That’s about all we have time for chores-wise while she’s awake. I would never spend the entire morning or afternoon trying to do house tasks while she plays by herself - we always do an activity or read books or something for at least part of the time. I don’t take her on errands except for the grocery store. Oh, I guess sometimes we walk to the post office. If I need something random from cvs or another store, I have my husband pick it up on the way home from work.

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks, this is helpful. For those of you who multitask cooking, tidying, errands, etc. with kid time, do you basically feel like your mind is going in several directions at once during much of the day? I’m really looking for honesty here as I have not had this experience. On the average snow day or weekend I am definitely doing outings and kid centered activities but if I am also trying to cook meals, do errands, KonMari the living room, etc. to be honest my attention is kind of split. I’m wondering if when you stay at home and don’t outsource, this is just part of the gig.

Yep. You multitask and find life hacks (there was a long thread not too long ago with all kinds of tips and work-arounds). Lower your expectations too. Do you "have" to unload the dishwasher now for example when kids are getting ants to go to the playground? Put off the temptation "to do one more thing" and engage with the kids. The breakfast dishes can wait. Nobody will care. Nobody will even see them.

OP here. Thanks, this is helpful. For those of you who multitask cooking, tidying, errands, etc. with kid time, do you basically feel like your mind is going in several directions at once during much of the day? I’m really looking for honesty here as I have not had this experience. On the average snow day or weekend I am definitely doing outings and kid centered activities but if I am also trying to cook meals, do errands, KonMari the living room, etc. to be honest my attention is kind of split. I’m wondering if when you stay at home and don’t outsource, this is just part of the gig.

SAHM here who works only 10 hours per week, so I consider myself a SAHM. I do everything. DH will load the dishwasher after dinner and take out the trash, but I do everything else. We have a lawn service who deals with the lawn.