PrairieFrog Blog

Friday, April 25, 2008

I'm Like a Spider?

Kendra just compared me to a spider.

She comes skipping across the kitchen, Kendra style, with book in hand. She'd just been reading aloud to her daddy from a nature reader. "Mommy, you are like a spider!"

"Oh, how is that?"

"You like a clean house. Mrs. Spider has to have a clean web. If a leaf gets in her web she shakes it off, and if she can't shake it off, she'll cut it out of the web to get it out. Then she fixes the web, but she can't have dirt or clutter in it."

I think it is a compliment?

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Friday, April 25, 2008 - Hi

Posted by momofsix

How do you keep your energy up for all the cleaning? Any tips?

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Friday, April 25, 2008 - Untitled Comment

Posted by Dell

Honestly, I do have once a week cleaning help right now. That helps bunches. A homeschool mom and her graduate daughter needed the funds, and it is a huge blessing to me right now. Otherwise though, I tend to find that having things messy drains more energy than cleaning/organizing does. This is just a personality quirk though, and can be as much weakness as strength, because I have a very hard time focusing or functioning well in disorder.

We decided a few years back that for this season, with the children so young, we could sacrifice and almost never eat our or bring in restaurant meals, but instead spend that money on cleaning help. We eat better, and it works well for us. This may change in later years when my children weigh enough to push a vacuum. ;)

I guess the only other big tip is that keeping things clean and tidy takes much less energy than getting it that way, so the thing I aim for most is to never let it get ahead of me, and it keeps it easy and manageable.

Until we hired our cleaning friends to help us out, I really liked the "Speed Cleaning" book's techniques for the weekly cleaning (although I modified it to fit us better.)

We also all work together. Even Keianna (age 4) helps by unloading dishes and folding cloth napkins and such.

Hmmm... I'll keep thinking on other tips. Mostly just keeping on top of it is, I think the thing that makes it work for me. And, I am like the spider. If I see something out of place, I do have to remove it immediately. My poor dear husband has even had me putting away items he's just gotten out. He'll get out bread to make a sandwich, turn around to get a stick of butter, and the bread is back in the breadbox. I just straighten on auto-pilot sometimes and don't even think about it! He's a great sport and we just laugh.

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Saturday, April 26, 2008 - Untitled Comment

Posted by Melissa at Our Side