Dad is in the House

You all know that I keep up with FlyLady and that I've talked about her before on this blog. I have even changed my opinion on some of her philosophies of housekeeping. I am not a "FlyBaby" as her supporters call themselves. I think that is a bit cultish, and, although Marla the FlyLady seems like a lovely human being, I don't do personality cults. I think that's probably because I'm jealous of the cultee.

The other reason I can't be called a "FlyBaby" is that keeping house, like any other day-in-day-out activity (think of exercise, eating right, being a good person, keeping up with your finances) doesn't have any magic secrets. Faire le ménage, c'est apprendre à mourir, to paraphrase Montaigne. You can get tips from somebody, but ultimately it's up to you to figure out how you tick.

I do think she's on to something with her "routines," though. She says that a person who struggles to keep up their house needs a routine to keep them on track. A routine is something that you should do every day, or on a regular basis. The sine qua non of FlyLady is to clean your kitchen sink every day. This is a point of order in an otherwise chaotic household. It allows you to always do your dishes at any moment. Although I don't necessarily do this rule, I think the point is well taken.

Anyway, anyway.

I would like to share with you my daily routine I've figured out. These help me avoid doom. I have actually found that I don't have to do each one every day, however, checking my list at least keeps me thinking about it and not putting it off too long.

1. Make beds. I actually slack on this a lot. However, in theory, I like to make the beds because, like a shiny sink, these are a point of order in the bedroom part of the house. Otherwise, the whole area can look like the garbage tip. This also kind of assumes picking up in the bedrooms: get stuff (e.g. laundry) off the floors, take any dishes to the kitchen, etc. I put it under the rubric of making beds in my mind to simplify my list.

2. Pick up in the living room. I try to pick up in the living room each day. Especially dishes, but we still have lots of toys, paper, etc., because we are not terribly strict on what we let the daughter have in there.

3. Pick up in the family room. I'd rather have a house with one big room than two separate rooms to keep tidy, but I try to do this every day too. Actually, since my daughter doesn't always come down into the family room, it's easier to keep up with.

4. Clean out cat box. I have two enormous cats. I used to have one tiny cat who was hardly any trouble but these guys eat a lot and make a lot of stink. Therefore, every day.

5. Kitchen. My kitchen routine is do the dishes and sweep the floor. Having the kitchen clean is a big deal because that lets you make meals, handle kids' food requests and so forth. It's a pain but there is a return on the investment.

6. Bathrooms tidy. Flylady refers to this as "swish and swipe." Just pick up and put away the toothpaste, brushes, makeup, etc. and wipe things down with some window cleaner.

7. Laundry. The fly says "a load a day keeps chaos away." I think that's pretty much right, but let me say that for a family of three I average slightly over that, but we're not skimpy with towel washing. I think that if your family was bigger than mine, you'd definitely be averaging 1.5-2 loads of laundry a day. I try to think about laundry every day but usually I have laundry sprints where I'll wait a day or two and do three loads or so. I kind of put it on an assembly line where at the end of the day I fold the laundry and put it away. That part is very important too.

8. Quicken. This is not housekeeping per se, but I definitely need to think about the finances each day. Otherwise there are too many transactions to remember. I've found that prioritizing the finances on a daily basis is a definite doom-avoidance measure.

That's it for the daily list. I've found these lists are highly personal, and suited to your family and the particular house you live in. But the daily housekeeping list helps me a lot.

I also have processes that I run on MWF, Weekly and Fortnightly. I'll cover these in different posts.