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CuriousPuppy -> RE: is it just me??? (6/10/2008 2:30:55 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: coca
before I end, coca has a question he would like me ask to who ever would like to reply "If you do the house work in your home, how long do you spend doing the various chores (ie cooking, dishes, cleaning, laundry, etc)?"
thanks again,
Lady Marmalade and coca
Once every month or three I'll pull out the steam cleaner (I own one so no rental worries) and spend 10-20 minutes giving high traffic rooms like bedroom/livingroom a quick carpet cleaning. I usually don't bother with moving the furniture but will do so at least once or twice a year for most stuff (couch/recliner chair sure, waterbed/solid wood dresser/entertainment center? pfffffffffft!). It really doesn't take much time and is pretty similar to vaccuming. You can get a steam cleaner thing for 100-200$, it's slightly more work than using a vacuum since you have to deal wtih water/soap/emptying the container; but it keeps from having to do a huge amount of work with a rented steam cleaner later, does a nicer job cleaning, makes handling stuff that would stain the carpet easy before it can stain, and generally does a nicer job than just vacuming. Buy a roomba if you want to vacuum more often, hit the button when the last person to leave goes to work and let it buz around while your gone.
Dishes vary depending on if I did any major cooking and what I used. I have a fairly nice set of pans and enjoy cleaning them by hand and making them shiny generally. Depending on what else is there, I either wash it quick or toss it in the dishwasher. Total time 5-15 minutes give or take depending on messes. If something is stuck/burned on, I just leave it sitting in water overnight and clean it the next day when it will slide off.
Cooking, again depends on what I make. With a little planning it's easy to cook with a minimal amount of mess, tossing things in the sink and filling them with water while cooking (instead of letting batter/egg/etc dry on) helps considerably. Likewise with glasses/mugs/bowls/etc, by the time you get to them they pretty much just need to be wiped out with the sponge and some soap barring stuff like cooked on cheese and such.
Laundry doesn't take long unless you need to go to a public/semipublic laundry place. Toss some clothes in the washer, move them to the dryer in an hour or so, and fold them later on. If you forget, just give them a spin for 10 minutes or so and they will unwrinkle for folding later. Folding/hanging up only takes a couple minutes for each load of laundry unless your getting fancy. It's also something that's easy to do while watching tv or waiting for the toaster to finish heating something crispy.
General dusting isn't too much of an issue for me but I'll wipe the fan blades off every couple months with a damp rag.
If you have tile/linolium floors, the swiffer sweep/mop make it easy to do a quick little mopping thing in under 5-10 minutes a room, generally you will need 1-2 mop pads per room in my experience. The ability to attach a pad and simply throw it away without needing to deal with buckets or water and such takes most of the hassle out of mopping I find. The sweeper pads work pretty nicely too.
Hang up one of the automatic shower cleaners in the shower and just hit the button a couple times a week after someone showers (it wants the shower to be wet) and you won't have to worry too much about the shower. I keep a little scrubby brush on a stick in a bucket next/half behind the toilet and just scrub it once or twice a week real quick, that only takes a few seconds and keeps from needing to frequently do the toilet cleaning thing. Sometimes I'll throw some bleach in the toilet.
It also helps a good bit to use the same glass/cup instead of getting a new one each time. Just rinse out the cup, maybe stick some soap and warm water in it depending on what it was in there, and just leave it on the empty side of the sink. If you are going to use it again, just give it a quick twirl of the sponge and rinse out the soap. If you don't use it again, it's easy to clean up. If you use 5 seperate glasses, two different coffee mugs, and three seperate wine glasses, that's quite a bit of work by comparison.
Buy a big thing of sponges, they go bad after a couple weeks/months depending on how often and how you use them. If you can pick up the sponge and it smells like something other than the clorine in your tap water or soap then throw it away, they aren't that expensive.
Keep a couple rags hanging from the stove and wipe off any spills you make while cooking. Yea if your browning meat it's going to splatter and need cleaning later; but if you dribble some kind of sauce on the counter or spill some cooked rice/oatmeal/etc on it, you can wipe it off now instead of when it gets sticky/stains/glues itself down.
All said I maybe spend 0-15 minutes a day with some days going 30-40 minutes. The biggest thing is to just do general picking up after yourself and it doesn't take much work to keep things mostly clean. If you let it all pile up and wait till the end of the week "cause X is my cleaning day", then you will spend way too long doing it and hate it for sucking up a large chunk of the weekend only to leave you worn out when finished.
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