How it took me five years to finally be good at cleaning our house...

You laugh. But it actually took me until this year to feel like I had this whole 'clean the house' thing down. 'Get better at cleaning the house' was on a note titled 'Before Baby Bucket List' on my iPhone for the past three-ish years. And I just recently deleted it as something I felt like I had accomplished.

It might seem odd because most people probably think our house is clean enough...and I've always sort of enjoyed cleaning (scratch that...how the house feels after it's cleaned). I grew up cleaning bathrooms and vacuuming and dusting (THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE), so I obviously know how to do these things...it's just that when it came to my own house...and you add a job and grocery shopping and helping run a business and PROJECTS and dirty laundry for two...it's hard to become a master everything overnight.

Just to throw this out there...I'm up against a little more than the average wife-trying-to-keep-the-house-clean. You might have a baby or five children, but I promise you...Josh could rival them all. He comes home EXCEPTIONALLY dirty six+ days a week. Meaning his laundry is also exceptionally dirty...and his employees come in and out of our side door to the kitchen to grab things like water bottles, their checks, truck keys, etc...making keeping the house clean (specifically the kitchen) a non-stop battle. Tom Hay once came over to clean out the drum of our washer and it was BLACK. I'm not kidding...the inside of our washer lined with a thick layer of black dirty scum that we spent the night cleaning in the bath tub. When I asked him if everyone's washers looked like this, or was ours the worst he'd ever seen...he replied that it was, in fact, the worst he'd ever seen. And Tommy has seen the inside of hundreds of washers in his lifetime. THAT'S HOW BAD IT IS HERE YOU GUYS I'M NOT LYING!

I once read somewhere once that your house is only as clean as the dirtiest place in your house...and at first I was like, 'This person is crazy. Who cleans the inside of their microwave that often?!' And then I was like, 'That's actually true and WE LIVE IN COMPLETE FILTH.' So for about the past year, I've attacked all of the grossest places in our house on a much more regular basis (rather than just my usual spring cleaning)...and I think that's why I've felt successful. All the places I hate the most get a swipe or a wipe on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and IT FEELS SO GOOD.

I'm not really on a 'Monday, Tuesday, etc.' weekly-style cleaning schedule...though I think I'll probably make one for myself once I'm home with a baby every day to give my days a little more structure/purpose. For now this is how I roll:

Here's what gets cleaned at our house more than once a week:
Kitchen counters/sink
Kitchen floor
Shake rugs/vacuum entrances
Vacuum living room floor
Vacuum bedroom floors/hallway
Bathrooms (if needed)

Here's what gets cleaned weekly:
Toilets
Bathroom sinks
Vacuum under furniture (island, buffet, dining table, desk, couch, shelves, coffee table, etc.)
Dust all furniture
Dust window ledges

Here's what gets cleaned bi-weekly:
'Tops' of everything (microwave, stove, fridge, shelves)
Dust blinds
Spot-mop tile
Cobwebs on ceiling/corners
Vacuum corners/edges
Wipe down appliances
Bathroom floors/rugs
Mirrors

Here's what gets cleaned when I notice it's necessary:
Vents
Ceiling fans
Decor
Closet shelves
Showers
Behind toilets
Tile floor
Inside of appliances
Curtains
Under/behind beds
Q-Tip clean inside the washer
Q-Tip clean drains and faucets

Make friends with Magic Eraser. My fridge and microwave and stove and grubby-finger-printed-white back door look brand new after a wipe-down. And they last for-eva.

Dust with a Swiffer cloth. You're probably like, 'Wow, that's so expensive!' It's actually not. I get them from Sam's Club and I use them until they're black. Meaning...I can usually use it twice for my weekly furniture dust-down before they're ready to be tossed. Nothing grabs hair and dust bunnies like these puppies. It makes dusting less of an 'ordeal' and only takes five minutes to whip out, fling across the furniture, and toss back under the sink to use next time. I dust MUCH more frequently using this approach

Add a Dyson to your Christmas list. We finally bit the bullet and bought one of these last year and called it an 'Anniversary' gift because I was convinced our cheap old Dirt Devil vac was making our house dirtier. Every time I tried to use the attachments dust would fly OUT of the vacuum and into the air instead of being sucked IN. The first time I used our Dyson DC65 in our already 'clean' house...I literally FILLED THE TANK. Ya. That's how bad of a situation we had here.

I generally feel happier and enjoy being at home more when our house is clean and since it's a task I'm sort of stuck with for life, I figured I might as well become an Olympic athlete at it. I don't mind drop-in visitors (grandparents who pull in the driveway and THEN decide to call to see if you're home) as much and I can sit down and relax with Josh in the evening when he gets home if I've used my time and energy well throughout the week to keep the house clean.

I hardly even bat an eye when I find grass in the fridge, in the freezer, on the back of the toilet, IN OUR BED, or in the dryer lint (ask me what makes up approx. 60% of our dryer lint) because Josh has trained me to believe that GRASS = MONEY...so I've just become a master and obliterating any blade of grass that enters the house.

In Maverick News: His room is coming along FABULOUSLY and I'm dying to Instagram the living crap out of it. But I'm going to refrain because I know it's so far from finished (still need the shelf and rocker before it feels 'done'). Hopefully there will be a post coming SOON! :)

MmB