Housekeeping While Parenting.

So as as stay-at-home mom, there are certain things I'm "supposed" to do, which involves keeping the house clean.  And I don't mean that in a sexist, old school, barefoot-and-pregnant kind of way.  Lucas does all the laundry (except for the diapers since I wash those way more frequently) and we split the cooking pretty evenly.  And Lucas, of course, now pays all the bills.  I'm just simply in charge of cleaning the house on as as-needed basis.  Things like dusting, vacuuming, sweeping, mopping and cleaning the bathrooms are my unofficial duties.

Somebody's been spying on me!!  Taking pictures while I clean house. ;)

I spot-sweep on a daily basis (I have 5 pets and a crawling baby), and I clean up the kitchen every day since I can't stand a dirty kitchen.  Dusting typically happens when I decide I need to do a major sweep/vacuum/mop of the place (which is usually every 2-3 weeks), and the bathrooms typically get cleaned when I start to see mold OR guests are coming over (I despise cleaning the bathrooms so they always end up as my moan-and-groan do-I-have-to grunt work).

This looks familiar.....a lot like my childhood.....maybe why I hate cleaning bathrooms so much!

Mopping probably gets done the least, because it's the trickiest to pull off.  It's not like I can just get up and decide the house needs mopping and get down to it.  Mopping, in my house, is a 4-step process.

1.)  I have to sweep.  First I have to sweep the floors of all major hair clumps and chewed up dog toy pieces.

2.)  I have to vacuum.  Since I have 5 pets, sweeping is NEVER good enough on it's own before mopping, unless I want to be pushing hair around on the floor.  No matter how well I think I sweep, there is ALWAYS still hair on the floor, so I have to go around with the Shop Vac to get the floor as clean as possible.

3.)  I have to mop.  Duh.

4.)  I have to find the time to do all of these three things consecutively with a baby in the house.  

I HAVE to do all three at the same time, or it doesn't work.  If I sweep and decide I'll vacuum and mop later/tomorrow, I'll just have to sweep again.  Same with if I both sweep and vacuum - if I don't mop immediately after, I'm just going to have to do it all again.  When Delano was itty-bitty, I could put him in the Moby wrap while he was napping and get chores done.  Now that he's older and mobile, that wouldn't last 5 minutes.  Plus he's now 20 pounds instead of 7.  The last time I decided to mop (prior to all the rain), I swept and vacuumed while Delano was in his walker and then mopped after he went down for a nap.  He chased the Shop Vac around while I vacuumed, grabbing the hose and shaking it in the air.  This past Monday when I put him in his walker and turned on the Shop Vac, he started screaming in pure terror.  We tried turning it off, touching it, playing with the hose, playing with the buttons....to no avail.  Every time I turned it on he would scream and shake and drop tears.  And I was afraid it would wake him up while he was napping, so I figured I'd just have to wait until Daddy was home and could distract him while I cleaned the floors.

Maybe Delano needs a Mop Romper.

Today, I came up with a plan.  Delano's morning nap is usually 2 hours long.  I figured I'd let him sleep an hour or so, sweep during this first hour, then try vacuuming during the second hour.  If it woke him up, then so be it.  If it didn't, then I'd get my floors mopped finally after 2 straight weeks of rainy weather.  Well.....Delano woke up as I was moving the chairs out of the dining room to get ready to vacuum (of course - why wouldn't he?).  So I tried again this afternoon...SUCCESS!!  I didn't vacuum down the hallway towards his room because the Shop Vac is really loud, but I did vacuum the rest of the upstairs with him asleep.  So we have clean floors!  Well almost.....I still need to mop the kitchen and the stairs.  The downstairs will get swept/vacuumed/mopped another day.  We're hardly ever down there so it's always a super-last priority.  :)

I'm really trying to get in the habit of cleaning of the entire house every other week.  Some people have strict weekly cleaning schedules they follow....that's just a little to gumptious for me.  Not that I'm lazy (all the time), that's just overkill for my household.  Those people also probably don't have 3 large indoor/outdoor dogs and 2 indoor cats. 

Maybe I need to recruit a babysitter for a few hours (cough cough my mom) every other week (rewarded with the love of your daughter and a tasty lunch) so that I can knock out ALL of the housecleaning at once so that I'm not doing little pieces here and there when I can fit it in.  Then it would just be DONE and I wouldn't have to worry about it until the next round.  Sounds like a plan to me!  :)

Daddy's home.....time to mop the kitchen and stairs!  That way if the baby wakes up, he's on Daddy duty.  :)