Culling the Chaos With Littlies Around

A few people I've been talking to both in and out of the lifestyle have been having a hard time with coping with keeping their house clean with small children around. They feel as if their lives and their homes are falling apart. So here are some tips that I had been given by people over the years to help keep my sanity and at least keep a mostly neat and tidy home (because really, no one expects a home where toddlers to reside to look perfect):

• Toys are probably the biggest issue. At least they were for me until someone suggested going out and buying several plastic storage bins. Place a couple in every room where the kids play, including your living room. When it comes time to pick up, you can just go room to room throwing toys right into the bins. 
• Get the kids to help! Seriously... start while they're young. I made the mistake of always doing the cleanup because it was easier. Now I'm wishing I would have listened to everyone who told me to get her started earlier. My mom had a saying, "If they're old enough to take it out, they're old enough to put it away." I wish I had listened to that advice. Now it's a nightmare trying to get our daughter to clean. If they get into the habit when they are toddler it will be something they're used to doing (even if they don't like it).
• Make a habit of picking something up and putting it away every time you enter a room. It will help keep things from getting too untidy.
• Clean the shower walls a couple times a week while you're having a shower.
• Wipe down the toilet and bathroom sink every day (this takes less than a minute if you do it every day)
• Buy your toddler(s) and other young children their own dusters and let them follow you around the house while you're dusting. Most kids love to help with this! It still works with my seven year old.
• Clean something in your kitchen every day. For instance, one day clean the stove, and then the next day clean the microwave and so on. This way you're never stuck having to spend a lot of time cleaning the kitchen at any one time.
• Only vacuum and/or mop one or two rooms a day (depending on size and foot traffic in your home). Trying to do the whole thing in one day is a losing battle with young children around.
• If you are home alone with the kids all week and find you don't have much time for cooking, do some food prep over the weekend, or you can even prepare and freeze some meals for the week. You can either make or prep healthy meals that can be thrown together in 15 to 20 minutes this way.

Hope these tips help a bit. If you have any of your own, feel free to leave them in the comment section below! We'd love to see them!

5-Minute Fixes

When folding towels, try to remember to tug the corners (all four) to keep them from...well shrinking. Such a simple thing that honestly will keep your towels looking better longer. Also, folded towels just make a room, like the bathroom seem a bit more tidy.

Each day, take a moment and fluff all your pillows and cushions! Not only will it shake the dust off seldom sat on furniture -- but it does make the room look a little brighter.

Make your bed (encourage the kids to also). Silly as it sounds even a kinda messy room will look a little better when the bed's made.

Clean your (all) sinks and swish the toilets. Especially during the winter months when everyone is sharing germs.

Wipe down appliances. The stove, fridge, dishwasher, coffee maker microwave -- basically if it lives on a countertop or if it takes up a lot of eye-space. Give it a little wipe-down.

Sweep or dust your floors. Again this can't be said enough a messy floor just attracts more mess. Not sure why it is. But it does.

Set your table before bed! If your home is like ours the kitchen table is a major artery. Kids play, do homework, random things just get dumped and its a hot spot straight from Dante's Inferno. Setting the table before bed, culls the need to drop things on the table. Breakfast bowls or plates, silver and glassware...and it's one less thing to do during a busy morning!

Lay out your clothes for the next day! Do we need to explain this one? Gather your purse, iPod, charge your phone -- where are your keys?

What's for dinner?

Culling the Chaos

Good morning,

There are people that say that slaves/submissive (whatever you want to call them) shouldn't have any sort of ego.  If they do, it should be remedied by breaking the slave/sub.  Some describe it as when a horse is broken to accept a saddle, or when a prisoner is broken to give-up information or accept what they did wrong.  Everyone has that breaking point where they can't take anymore (mouse reached that point years ago when she was with Alpha -- but that's another topic for another time or not).

Daddy surrounds himself with very capable people, he wants them to have personal strengths to do whatever their job is.  This is also too true for mouse.  It's taken a long time to put away the ego of assuming just because mouse has tits she must instinctively know how to clean house.  Or having a uterus means she'll naturally know how to be a good mom. It's got to be instinctive, inborn into her right?

Well, wrong, but the ego got in the way.   Over our time together we've tried so many things to keep mouse focused and on task.  None of them worked in any (long term way) until Daddy really examined what mouse was doing.  See, for Shabbat on Friday, the house is supposed to be very clean and mouse just couldn't pull it all together by Friday.  Too much to do and not enough time in that one day.  It was like mouse was constantly just circling the drain.

What Daddy noticed was that mouse was doing fine with her rituals, especially the nighttime ones.  So he knew mouse could follow a routine.  He started talking to mouse about things to do on a daily basis rather than trying to clean everything at once (normally weekly), he simply said somethings should be done daily.  They don't take very long to accomplish and will make the cleaning easier.  He looked at how mouse was cleaning and decided that she was over cleaning some areas but not cleaning other areas enough.  He said that mouse should be only be spending a half hour - to an hour at the most on the housework each day.  Impossible, mouse really thought.  He suggested a few things that should be cleaned daily, and other things that could be cleaned on a weekly basis.  Taking his initial ideas mouse started (begrudged) on the routine.  During the summer when we're too busy to worry about keeping the house up.  An amazing thing was discovered, by doing those little things daily, mouse found they took less time than if they were left to go just weekly or longer.   Even vacuuming, which mouse truly hates, takes less time because it's done more frequently.  The best part is once its done for the day, it's done for the DAY!  Meaning if Daddy takes a huge stinky shit after mouse cleans the toilet, there's no going back in to do again...It's DONE.

So we broke things down...into daily and weekly tasks.

Daily cleaning products

Daily, would be what mouse calls the swish/wipe/dust.  Swish the blue stuff into the toilet (just a few drops are needed instead of covering the whole inside of the bowl, because it's done daily).  Using only one wipe per bathroom mouse cleans the sinks, the counter tops, ending with the toilet--down to the floor...Yes, just one Lysol wipe cleans two sinks, counter tops and toilet...but only if you do it everyday.  Dry dusting the floors daily too.  Also, another tip is instead of cleaning the whole shower daily, get a spray bottle with a little bleach mixed with water and spray the shower after it's used.  Not only will that help cull mold growth but it also keeps soap scum under control.  Or look for a leave on or rinse free shower spray (Method brand, available at most stores in the US) works great too.  The inside of the toilet gets a few drops of toilet bowl cleaner (seriously just a few drops) a quick swish of the brush and it's done.  To help cull the chaos, mouse keeps a toilet brush and holder in each bathroom of the house.  We have three and half bathrooms.  The whole process including dusting the floors and swishing/wiping sinks, counter tops and toilets takes two minutes per bathroom.


Dusting too, just dry dust those areas that tend to get super dusty, everything else weekly.  What a concept!?  One load of laundry per-day, at the very least, will help to keep the chaos away.

Dust the hardwood floors daily (no sweeping or vacuuming unless there's a spill) Wash the floors at least weekly (now because of our wet winter months mouse will do the floors more often then).

Weekly cleaning products

Weekly tasks include cleaning the showers (plus the swish, wipe and dust),  bathtubs, vacuuming and changing sheets.  Replacing towels and dusting those areas that are only touched weekly.  Even the weekly tasks do not take vary long.  You could choose to do them all in a single day or you could break it up across the week.

For example:

On Mondays: mouse vacuums the downstairs, plus the swish/wipe/dust routines.

On Tuesdays: the upstairs hallway and bedrooms are vacuumed plus the s/w/d routine.

On Wednesdays: cleaning the showers, tubs and washing the floors, plus mouse will add another 10 minutes to clean the doors, cabinet fronts and baseboards if needed.  Empty all wastebaskets and purge crap from the fridge.   Don't worry about extra cleaning around the toilet because that's done daily now and ditto the sinks.  Wipe the mirror of oocky stuff and your done.  It takes mouse roughly 20 minutes per bath, if the extra 10 minutes is added.  If not they're good enough to go.

On Thursdays: Weekly dusting and vacuum the house (upstairs and down)

On Fridays: It's all about bedrooms, decluttering, changing and washing sheets.

Other daily tasks include, making the beds and emptying the dishwasher...

Ahhh the kitchen...that is a clean-as-you-go room, you make something and clean it up afterward.  If you own a dishwasher, use it.  If you don't, ask yourself this, is it easier to wash a few dishes (like 2) or a whole sink-full?  If your answer is the first, then wash as you use them.  Take and extra minute to wash that plate or bowl, fork or spoon, cup whatever you use; dry it and put it back where it belongs, this is opposed to leaving the plate in the sink all day and allowing them to pile up.

If you believe it doesn't matter, then try washing those few dishes up after each time you dirty them.  Truthfully when our dishwasher died over the summer (just before the 4th of July) mouse learned the hard way its much easier to just do a few than a whole sink-full and it really made mouse appreciate her dishwasher all the more.

If you do own that dishwasher, stick it inside the machine.  The kitchen cleaning is not added to the daily or weekly lists because like it most houses it's a big hot spot that is cleaned/tidied up multiple times a day.

Wipe down the counter tops, close the cabinets and drawers and you might be surprised how much cleaner it feels.


See mouse NEVER ever did any of these things, she tried everything, making lists, but it felt like she spent everyday the whole day just cleaning...just cleaning everything and nothing ever getting done.  Nothing ever feeling like it was actually cleaned.  Now with this system, if mouse has plans on a Wednesday and can't clean the shower they can wait until the next week.  The rest of the bathrooms are done daily so it's not a big deal to let it go.  On weekends it only takes her a few minutes to get everything tidied up and she's ready to leave the house.  The basics are just wipe/swish and dust...every day.  If mouse can do 4 toilets, 7 sinks and dust 4 floors in just 8 minutes total...why not do it daily?

Now, if someone called and said to mouse they wanted to drop by, mouse wouldn't be embarrassed or anything but most importantly she also, wouldn't break a sweat running around to clean everything at once.   It's a good thing.