Week Seven and Eight: Ingraining New Habits

If you are living alone, or have no help from others in the household, only you can keep up routine cleaning and attend to the deep cleaning tasks. Stay professional by doing tasks with an analytical spirit. Look for ways to streamline. Experiment with a different way of doing the jobs. Pinpoint the interruptions or events that  delay or set you off track.

If you still have organizational problems in certain rooms, now is the time to make them disappear and go away for good. If you conquered them earlier, fine, but if not, make an appointment with yourself to handle them. Get the storage equipment, bags, or shelving needed to corral (if not eliminate) the problem.

I have one question: What is harder than doing all this work yourself–even after designing such great routines?

Legions of moms who have done it all for everyone know it is harder to teach and supervise someone do a job than to do it yourself.  But all this planning, designing, testing, and doing has been preparing you to teach and share, not to be a housecleaning whiz.

Apprentice Training

If you have young, at-home apprentices, these are weeks to start training, if you can take the time to do so. If your schedule precludes this careful one-on-one training and oversight, figure out when training can begin and plan accordingly. In the short term, training will always take more time and effort than doing the task yourself, so allow for extra time, extra oversight, and extra evaluations. You would not have taken this much time to systematize house cleaning procedures, if you weren’t planning to train others.  For years, you will be gaining time by having well-trained home assistants.

Training skills posts are coming in another week or so, but, frankly, I’m ready for a break from all this hard thinking about cleaning. In the cycle of things, I’m ready to concentrate on the kids, rather than the cleaning for a bit. In the meantime:

Beyond Weeks Seven and Eight

Sometime during week nine or ten, do a final evaluation of your plans, making any warranted changes. Maybe you can already tell that an assigned monthly task only needs attention every two months. Or maybe you’ve discovered a task or two needs broken down into smaller modules.  Of course, you have semi-annual and yearly tasks you haven’t handled yet, but your diligent work over recent weeks might help you evaluate how successful you will be with those tasks when the time comes.

Then schedule a yearly evaluation time, a time for you to review and adjust your plan to take account of changed furniture, improvements and added possessions, rearranged shelves, cupboards, and drawers, and items you no longer have to maintain.

Next,  set the big day to wander around your house and record that visual inventory of all the stuff the Lord expects you to steward and you expect the insurance company to replace in case of disaster!

Finally, enjoy a good book and a cup of tea before you cycle into a new home project. Our book club enjoyed reading through Cleaning House by Kay Wills Wyma this past fall. Lots of experimenting and apprenticeship fun down there in Texas.