Entries Tagged as 'General Encouragement'

The Cleaning Imbalance

April 30th, 2008 8 Comments

Dear Home Ec 101,

How can I make my husband help around the house?

Signed,

Nags Head, NC

Heather says:

I moved out quite young and lived with an interesting variety of roommates until I married.  Different people have different standards of cleanliness and tolerance.  If you are the Felix of your relationship, odds are you will carry more of the cleaning burden.   You can ask, but you cannot make your spouse or partner do anything.  This goes for those living with roommates, to a point.  As long as finances aren’t an issue, roommates have the somewhat less difficult option of dissolving the situation.

My best tip for achieving help around the house is to ask politely and directly when the other party is not busy.  Use the same courtesy you expect from others. Thank them when the are through and do NOT immediately fix what they have done.

I know many of our readers have been down this road and not every tactic works for every relationship; please share what you have found helpful in your situation.

You do have a choice when it comes to the maintenance of your home: you can wallow in resentment and self-pity or you can choose to maintain your surroundings to your* standards.

*If a spouse is both critical and unwilling to help, please seek professional advice.

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Spring cleaning for disastrously messy homes

March 12th, 2008 10 Comments

retrochick.JPGIvy says:

Recently, I ran into a friend who asked me when I was going to write about spring cleaning here on Home-Ec 101. Well, normally I do my spring cleaning right after Easter so I can find any  rogue Easter eggs running around my house. (Because it always rains here on Easter, always.)

Then my friend said  she didn’t normally do spring cleaning because her house was so “disastrously messy” that it could take months. Haha, I understand the feeling of “it could take months to clean my house, so why bother?” I’ve had that kind of mess on my hands before when I had been on bed rest for 6 weeks and my husband who is apparently allergic to cleaning was in charge of the cooking and cleaning and kid-raising. When I finally came off bed rest with a new baby and a horribly messy house, I got depressed about it all and just thought, “why bother?”

But having a clean house is beneficial on so many levels. First, it makes you feel better in general. My mom always would harangue me about my messy house contributing to my depression. I thought, “Right, mom, a clean house would totally fix my depression.” But I found she was right- having a clean house really does make me feel better.

Add that to being able to find things easily, thereby saving you money (how many times have you had to buy something you couldn’t find, only to find it again later and be mad that you wasted the money?), time, and energy. Once your house is clean, it is far easier to maintain.

So how can you get that super-messy house under control? First, you have to be completely determined that you are going to get your house under control once and for all. It might take you months, but I doubt it. Check your supplies and make sure you have enough cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, and trash bags. Once you’ve done that, you need to set goals and just get started.

A completely messy house is overwhelming, so let me tell you where to start. Start with the laundry. Picking up those clothes that are strewn everywhere will make an immediate difference in how your house looks, plus it’s a task that you can do while you’re doing lots of other things. As you’re doing laundry, put a plastic bag by the dryer for  clothes you are going to give away. Now, I always fold the clothes right in the laundry room, and when I have everything folded I call the kids in who have clothes in that particular load and ask them about each item of clothing. If it doesn’t fit, or they just don’t like the item of clothing, out it goes. Same goes for me and my stuff. My husband, well, I just get rid of stuff that’s unusually holey and hope he doesn’t notice.

Once the laundry’s rolling, go clean the smallest room in your house. Usually, that’s a bathroom. Or sometimes it’s your laundry room, which is handy since you’re doing all this laundry anyway- might as well have a sparkly clean laundry room to do all that laundry in. Bag up trash, get rid of stuff you won’t use, and wash the floors. Dust the walls and wash the woodwork. Clean it as if your mother-in-law was coming to inspect it with white gloves.

Once you have the smallest room in your house cleaned, enjoy the nice feeling of a completely clean room, and then move on to your hardest room to clean. For some, this might be the kitchen, for others, it might be a kid bedroom. Whatever it is, you are going to have to tackle it sometime and it might as well be sooner rather than later. Whatever it is, buckle down and get to work on it.

Once you have the worst room tackled, the rest can’t be all that bad. Just work room by room until you have it all finished. Then enjoy your clean house!

Tomorrow, I’ll give you step by step room specific cleaning tips.

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Organization is fundamental

January 22nd, 2008 8 Comments

Alternate title: In which Ivy loses very important directions and has to wing it, and it all could have been avoided by keeping all her stuff in one neat place instead of keeping her stuff flung all over the house.

retrochick.JPGIvy says:

Darling Home Eccers, I do stupid things to help you learn from my mistakes. As my mama always said, “If you can’t be the good example, at least serve as the horrible warning.” I have spent my life living up to my mom’s sage advice.  Today’s horrible warning is brought to you by the letter “O”, for organization.

You see, I have not always had lots and lots of craft stuff at my disposal. I normally keep just enough stuff on hand to do a project or two at a time. I don’t normally keep enough craft stuff on hand for every Girl Scout and old lady in the world to make 6,900 projects each. In addition to all that yarn I inherited, I also inherited a ton of sewing stuff. Not quite as much sewing stuff as yarn, but I digress.

Since I didn’t have all that much craft equipment, I kept it all neatly in a trunk that I also used for a coffee table, and in a drawer in my buffet. It worked out nicely. But now I have more stuff than I can fit in a room, so all my craft stuff is strewn everywhere. I’ve been working on my sewing lately, so I can make tutorials for all you wonderful Home Eccers who are totally new to sewing but want to learn.

What I should have been doing instead of working on my sewing, was working on making a craft area in my house, organizing everything, you know the routine. But sewing is so much more fun than organizing, so I was sewing. And then I lost the instructions to the pattern I have been working on. Fortunately, I read them through several times, so I think I can put the skirt I’m working on together.

So let that be a lesson to you, Home Eccers. Organize first, sew later.

Let me ask you guys something, while I’ve got ya. I’ve got an area in my house that I am going to use for my craft area. It’s about 4 feet by 5 feet, which is small, but it will have to do because my entire house is small and I feel lucky to be able to carve out that much space.  So, with that small space in mind, what do y’all think is the best way to go for storage? If you have any pictures of your craft areas, please link to them, I’d love some fabulous ideas!

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Yet another reason to declutter

January 3rd, 2008 16 Comments

retrochick.JPGIvy says:

Here’s a really good reason to start decluttering your house right now. Eventually, someday, you’re going to die. It’s unpleasant to think about, but it’s one of the only sure things about life- eventually, you’ll die. And when you do, someone you love is going to have to go through your stuff and decide what to keep and what to throw away.

When they do, if you haven’t decluttered, they’re going to tee hee about the fact that you have 6 measuring tapes. They’re going to tee hee about your 50,000 peanut butter lids, and you won’t be around to defend it. Nobody will know why you have so many peanut butter lids, even if there was a really good reason.

You might say, “Well, I don’t care if they’re tee heeing about my peanut butter lids, Ivy, I’ll be dead.” And while that’s true, those 50,000 peanut butter lids will slow down the process of cleaning up, and your loved ones will have to be sunk down deep in cleaning all this stuff out for much longer than necessary. Truthfully, that makes your loved ones sad. They’re already going to be sad that you’re gone, don’t make the process of cleaning out any worse than it has to be.

Yes, Home-Eccers, I’ve been going through this for months now, cleaning out my late grandma’s stuff. Some of  it is absolute treasure. But a lot of it is 50,000 peanut butter lids and 6 measuring tapes. We’ve been cleaning out for months, now, and it is a hard thing to do. Harder than it has to be, because my grandma was a borderline hoarder. It makes me want to throw everything I own away, seriously. But it’s strengthening my resolve to not just declutter the main house, but my garage, attic, and all the hidden clutter I own. Because I not only don’t want my loved ones to have the burden of cleaning out my junk, but I also would prefer not to have them tee heeing about my 6 measuring tapes (I’m not even sure, honestly, that I owned even one before I inherited these from my granny).

Just another good reason to declutter your house.

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And when Mama’s happy, everyone’s happy

November 12th, 2007 5 Comments

WinkIvy says:

I remember when I was in college, I didn’t feel like I had time or energy to deal with cleaning, so my house was constantly messy. My mom was constantly on me about making sure my house was clean. I’d get depressed for long stretches of time, and she told me if I’d only clean my house, I’d feel better.

It made me incredibly mad. To me, my depression was caused by real problems not just a dirty house. I figured cleaning my house wouldn’t fix anything, so I left it dirty.

Now that I’m older and (ha!) wiser, I’ve been struggling with depression again, and my housework has suffered a bit. This past week I’ve been cleaning and decluttering furiously, and my house is back to being the paragon of cleanliness (ha! again!) I like it to be.  I realized something. My mom was right.

When my house is cleaner, I feel better, cheerier. And while having a clean house won’t singlehandedly pull me out of a depression, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

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