Cleaning
magpie
Citizen
in Life Skills
A few days ago, I convinced my husband to buy a robotic vacuum cleaner.
With my poor executive functioning, it makes a difference. The robot runs once a day and prevents building up of dust and dirt.
But the mess that used to be on the floor, now occupies all the tables and cupboards... if it was only mine, I would probably manage it, but it's mostly the kids' - they produce tons of pictures and cutouts.
Comments
What helped me a lot with dust was an air filter.
Regarding the mess: something I had a degree of success with was to identify the spots where my kids tended to leave their stuff and put open boxes or some sort of container there. In the beginning, I would just put their things in there myself and in time they started doing the same. Like for instance sitting on the table or desk with toys or drawings and crayons, and gathering all of them in a box next to them when they're done. Sometimes they wanted to decorate the boxes themselves and make them "theirs".
A broom, mop and bucket are good enough for me
Do you mop daily?
Three times a week, but I live alone.
My cleaning skills are in the first percentile.....in other words, I suck at it.
Me too :D
When I had some space on my own to care for, I coped by having possibly little number of things and the space arranged without empty corners - the mess buildup had to emerge in the middle, so it was more likely to be dealt with.
With four people of different ages and interests, it doesn't work that well :(
My wife just has too many THINGS......
My husband has a lot of items - typical masculine stuff, tools and materials, some open project every now and then - but he keeps them relatively organized or at least contained. Kids are worse.
Im in no position to give advice on this one but I have managed spurts of organisation from time to time, what helps me is:
Bins in every room, both rubbish and recycling.
Laundry baskets/boxes belonging to each room in the house, I like the baskets because you can carry them around as needed.
I use them to group items that have wound up in the wrong place, for their proper room together, so paperwork for office, clothing and pictures for bedroom 1, toiletries and bedclothes for bedroom 2, coats for hallway.
That type of thing.
I hate to clean. I also believe that once I clean something, it should stay clean!
Bins in my childen's room turned out disastrous - they ended up never emptied and frequently knocked over. Nope, a daily trip to the kitchen with empty dishes and trash from desks works better.
My wife is a better cleaner than me...but she’s worse at leaving stuff out and not putting it back in its place.
“Bin” is a word that I learned maybe in my 20s. We call them “garbage cans.”
We call them "śmietniki"
What do you call the larger bins found in garbage dumps?
Do you have a utility cupboard on your balcony magpie? Storing things in big plastic boxes and stacking them makes it easier on the eyes and organized in a smaller space.
"Smietnik" is a place where you throw your garbage, size doesn't matter unless it's dumping site - "wysypisko".
If you need to stress the difference, you use "kontener" - this means generally a large container. It's usually clear form context, which kind of a container you mean.
Two problems with this solution:
1. I want my balcony usable as a balcony, not a dumping site;
2. With average temperatures below 10 C for most of the year and weeks of freezing in winter, the tools kept on the balcony wouldn't be comfortable to use.
But thanks to point 2, we have a huge additional fridge for half of the year :D
I did have someone going in privately twice a week to do it, but Covid put paid to that. Now my granddaughters do it.
That’s very sweet of them.
I like cleaning and it's one of the daily chores I don't mind doing. It's an easy way to distract myself and things are less cluttered afterwards, so I can focus better on taking care of other things. I try to do the dishes and pick up anything laying around not in their place first thing in the morning.