Keeping House Part 2
by Nancy Van Pelt
When a woman works outside the home and has a family to care for, she has two jobs. The toll on her can be enormous. Superwoman, as she has been dubbed, often tries to do it all and have it all without help from her partner or a change in society. The truth is that behind the breezy facade of a superwoman, there’s apt to be a stressed out woman.
Ideally, husband and wife share housework and see home management as a team effort. But in homes where this concept is till in process, how can housework be made easier? More efficient? Experts tell us that as much as 60 percent of stress stems from disorganization!
In the first article I described three organization secrets that help me:
1. I set up a daily personal plan – a sequence of major and minor household tasks to be done each day of the week.
2. I use “the five-minute miracle” to declutter the house before I leave in the morning or before I go to bed at night.
3. I carry an “office” in my purse wherever I go–a Day Planner containing vital personal and household information.
Here are four more principles that help my family to live more simply but elegantly.
Secret 4: Make Meal Planning Easy
After an exhausting day at home with preschoolers, Sara wanders into the kitchen and stares in her cupboards. Secretly she wishes ingredients would magically arrange themselves into an appealing, nutritious meal. When it doesn’t happen, Sara settles on soup (with a little help from Campbell) just as her husband bursts through the door.
Jonna, an office employee, sees it is 4:15 and begins the what-shall-we-have-for-supper-tonight? Routine. She dreads the stop at the supermarket, which delays her arrival home. The kids are cranky and started, and Jonna is behind schedule.
There is a better way! In a few minutes we can plan our weekly menus in advance.
Research shows that the average cook prepares only 10 basic dishes month after month. So why not select 20 of your best main dishes, write them on cards, and insert them into the clear pockets at the back of a newly purchased recipe book. Do likewise with 10 to 15 side dishes, vegetable dishes, and dessert ideas. To make the task more fun and pleasant, I bought a variety of pretty recipe cards and copied the recipes in colored ink. My recipe book is colorful and organized.
With recipes before you, you are ready to plan menus. Make up a sheet of paper showing breakfast, lunch, and supper listed in three columns across the top, and the seven days of the week listed at the side. Write in plans for breakfast, lunch, and supper, including your family favorites.
Now you’re ready to make a shopping list. With the menu planner in hand, check each recipe’s ingredients against existing shelf supplies.
This plan reduces the time needed to do grocery shopping. It is also infinitely easier and quicker to prepare meals when ingredients are on hand. By reducing the number of trips to the grocery store we save money, too. Experts predict a savings of $50 to $100 per month through menu planning. Menu planning is helpful in any home, but it’s critical for the employed woman.
Secret 5: Sort Through the Clutter
The biggest cleaning problem is sorting through the clutter that accumulates naturally over time. It’s everywhere! Outdated medicines. Jars of no-longer-used, dried-up cosmetics. Craft supplies from 10 years back. Broken figurines and dishes. Bedspreads, rugs, and drapes from a former house. Stacks of unread magazines. Clothing that needs repair.
It has been estimated that one third of everything we own is clutter. It is now time to evaluate whether the things in your home are worthy of your time. Ask, “Do I need and want this thing badly enough to spend the amount of time and energy necessary to maintain it?”
Getting organized, learning to manage our time, and using professional cleaning methods are next to impossible around clutter.
Even Scripture speaks to us of clutter: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, . . .a time to weep and a time to laugh, . . .a time to keep and a time to throw away” (Eccl.3:1-6, NIV)
Weed out nonessentials. Simplify your life. The tendency is to keep too many things just because we have them or someone gave them to us. Fact: Anything not used in two years almost never gets used.
Here is how to declutter your life. Put labels on four boxes: (1) “Throw Away,” (2) “Give Away or Sell,” (3) “Put Away and Store,” and (4) “Emotional Withdrawal.”
* Empty the throwaway box often, before you begin thinking I might need that someday. Take giveaway items to the Salvation Army without delay. If you are planning a yard sale, do it immediately. Group, sort, and store items you are not currently using.
* Put things you can’t part with in the box labeled “Emotional Withdrawal.” Tape, date, and store this box in the garage. A year later throw it away without opening it!
* Work on decluttering one room at a time. It takes an average of six weeks to declutter a home at this rate. Treat yourself to one day off per week or someone might find you in the attic babbling and muttering incoherently!
Secret 6: Clean Like A Pro
A professional cleaning service can surface-clean a decluttered three-bedroom home in less than four hours. You can too when you know what you are doing.
* The most prudent step in cleaning is prevention – keeping dirt out in the first place. For example, since 40 pounds of dirt and dust are tracked into an average three-bedroom home on shoes and clothes each year, it makes sense to catch that dirt before it gets in. Place rough-textured vinyl-backed mats at every entrance of your home. Ideally each mat should be large enough to cover three to four steps. The nylon fiber in such mats creates a static charge that pulls diret from shoes and clothes.
* Other simple prevention methods.
Eat in designated areas only. Confine crafts to a specific area. Wipe shower doors after each use. Children’s rooms can also be modified for easy maintenance. Some suggestions: a bed with a fitted bottom sheet and a quilt that serves both as a blanket and a spread; a laundry basket in each bedroom; a waste basket in each room; clothes hung so children can reach them; drawers or stackable bins for folded clothing, toys, books, cars, crayons, puzzles, etc. The children’s daily routine should include a five-minute pickup of their room before bedtime and should be repeated again before they leave for school in the morning.
* Proper cleaning tools are also necessary.
Note that the supermarket is not the place to shop for quality tools. Hardware and janitorial supply stores provide superior tools in most cases. Quality tools may be more expensive, but they are well-made, last a long time, and give better results.
One of the main reasons professionals can clean faster than other people centers on– the rag. Many of us use rags from worn-out clothing and linen because we don’t know any better. For years manufacturers have struggled to develop fabrics that repel liquid and stains. They have succeeded. That is precisely why worn-out sheets, old diapers, torn pajamas, and holey T-shirts make terrible rags.
So. . . down with rags! Up with cleaning cloths! Purchase cotton terry or poly/cotton-blended hand towels. Twenty will clean an entire house every week. Wash, fold, and stack them in a mini-basket near the cleaning supplies.
* Use the right products.
Wrong products can ruin fabrics, floors, wood surfaces, and antiques. A best friend’s or clerk’s advice can ruin an heirloom.
You can save money, time, and shelf space by purchasing an all-purpose cleaner concentrate and mix it up as needed. Shelves bulging with cleaning products can be decluttered, and you can skip whole aisles in the grocery store. The concentrate will do a better job and cost 80 percent less.
Secret 7: Make Life Beautiful, Joyful, and Elegant
The “95-5 principle” says we spend 95 percent of our extra time and money on 5 percent of our lives. For example, some people spend 95 percent of their extra time and money on entertaining, vacations, and special events like birthdays or holidays. This principle should be reversed. Let’s make our daily lives more enjoyable rather then reserving enjoyment for special occasions.
This can be done by creating rituals. How and when you do ordinary everyday tasks can be either despised drudgery or something special. I have found that mundane tasks can be made uplifting, special, and even fun.
For example, few os us really enjoy cleaning bathrooms. However, we will likely be cleaning bathrooms until the Lord comes. Even this task can be made pleasant by adding the right details: Spray a little elegance from a can. Light a fragrant candle. Place a single flower in a small vase. Glance at a treasure placed in the bathroom just for the sake of beauty. Savor the treasure; reflect on how you came to have it.
One third of a lifetime is spent in the bedroom. Don’t just make the bed and run. Since it is a room for rest and intimacy, design and maintain it so it will be restful and pleasurable.
When I redecorated our home, I carefully selected the bedroom carpet, fabrics, wallpaper, and accessories. The colors are soft and soothing. Over the years I’ve added special touches to make the room special to me: a lace pillow, several frilly Victorian hats, a bowl of potpourri, and soft lighting.
When eating alone, rather than serving yourself on any old plate, use a decorative one. Make your table setting look fresh and attractive by adding colored place mats. You are special; you are worth the effort. Small things like this improve the quality of our daily lives.
As we incorporate the concept of specialness into daily life, we can treat our families more graciously.
We each have only so much time. We can live in an ordinary manner or we can choose to live more joyously in spite of our circumstances. It is easier to live life in an ordinary manner. A gracious, elegant life requires thought and effort. The choice is up to us.
By adding special touches to our daily routines, we are making a personal statement about ourselves – that we value ourselves, our family, our time, our home, and the material things God has given us in this life. This provides a marvelous sense of well-being.
When we take time to make little things in our daily lives satisfying, our disappointments and outside pressures become easier to take. By adding beautify, joy, and a touch of elegance to our lives, we are well on our way to making our stressed-out lives more bearable and enoyable.
Excerpted from Get Organized – Seven Secrets to Sanity for Stressed Women