Housework is another area that seems to stress homeschooling moms. While I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve lowered my standards over the years, we’ve found a few things that seem to work for us.
Do a little each day. We take about an hour each morning to tackle the housework before we start school. The kids have their chore chart and I have a mental list of things that need to be done. We try to tackle a little bit each day. I do a load of laundry every day, trying to get one load folded and one in the dryer. I don’t put a load in the washer unless the dryer is empty or I am in the process of emptying it. Otherwise, there’s a strong chance I’ll wind up re-washing it.
Don’t expect to have everything spotless at once. I try to run the vacuum and dust once a week, but not usually on the same day. This is generally done during our hour in the morning. I usually clean the kitchen before I go to bed, but often I have to unload the dishwasher in the morning and reload it, if it wasn’t finished the night before. We do general pick-up each day and I’ll put things like “clean the bathroom” or “empty the trash” in the kids’ chore charts once or twice a week.
Save the more time-consuming tasks for the weekend. This is harder in the summer when we have more plans on the weekends, but we can usually find the time to do some of the more time-consuming housework on the weekends.
I really want to set up a nice, neat schedule for the housework, such as “mop on Monday,” “vacuum on Tuesday,” “clean the bathrooms on Wednesday,” but I find it hard to stick to a schedule like that when I don’t always know what might be going on those days. So, the tips I listed above seem to be the best for us right now.
What about you? I’d love to hear how you manage to keep the house clean while homeschooling.
Kris is the sweet-tea-drinking, classically eclectic, slightly Charlotte Mason, homeschooling mom to her three Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I have my house divided into 4 zones. We clean one zone each day, so in a week’s time, we can get to each zone. For each zone I listed the jobs to be done on popsicle sticks…..clean mirrors, vacuum bedroom, mop bathroom, dust den, clean guest room potty, etc. I listed every single job. The children choose one stick from the cup (without looking) and complete that job. Then they choose another stick. We continue until all of the jobs are finished. This takes us about an hour.
In addition to this zone cleaning, my children and I all have daily chores twice a day. These chores keep the house tidy and include daily laundry, pet care, kitchen work, etc.
Well I have an advantage of living in a rv right now… so our area to be cleaned is only about 20 ft… lol…BUT when we were in a house.. we did the same routine as we do now…
Everrday the kids have specific chores… ds has to do the trash and sweep, and also does dinner dishes each night… dd has laundry and washes, drys, and folds and puts away for all of us…( I do admit that was my fav chore to pass on!!! lol..)
Laundry is like twice per week. I do breakfast and lunch dishes, and then help keep it picked up…dh handles the outside stuff.
We make it a point if we fall behind on stuff… to give oursevles a home ec day…. then we do everything together… the cooking and cleaning and sewing or whatnot…. We do that at least once every two weeks… and then we do reading afterwards instead of other work….
It works for us. =) And it is part of our schooling as life lessons and skills are only going to make them ready for life as adults.. and so they get graded on how well they do the chores… no whining or reminding… gets a higher score…
Oh, gosh. I have no tips! I feel like I’m losing my mind some days! (Okay, not for real…) But I’ve learned this year that I can NOT do everything all at once! Thanks for the tips you’ve shared…I’ll keep plugging away!
I’m in the process of a major spring cleaning so when I get this done I want to do a schedule like you have planned. Monday dusting, tuesday mop, etc.
I am woefully behind in my housework. I wish I could say that I had some wonderful plan, but I totally do not.
But, oh man — I did have to comment, because I really need to take your advice on the laundry aspect. I can’t imagine how many loads of laundry I have rewashed because they sat in the washing machine too long.