A House of Order, Mostly


If you like science, go check out my other blog, Molecular Me. I just put a post there today.

In my last post, I said I needed to get the basement clean. Well, I did. The cold storage, the second kitchen (which was being used as “just go put that there” storage), the office, the bathroom, and the living area which is still kind of used as storage but is now neat and will become my project room. We have a downstairs apartment because we thought my mother in law would be spending her last years with us. Well, she didn’t and now our house is too big, but we can’t sell it. Instead of bemoaning this fact, I’m owning it and will use every square foot of it. Eventually.

My task, now that my space is manageable, is time. I’ve got a weekly system for keeping my house clean. This is on top of daily tasks like dishes, counters, clutter, etc.

  • Mondays: Vacuuming
  • Tuesdays: Change sheets and dust
  • Wednesdays: Clean bathrooms
  • Thursdays: Plan menu and grocery shop
  • Fridays: Clean kitchen
  • Saturday: Extra jobs and yard work

Warning: Begin Mundane. It may need to be tweaked. It occurred to me that it might be more logical to change sheets and dust the day before vacuuming. I’m keeping track of how much time it takes too. The first week, I spent monday working up the plan. I know it seems simple now, but I did some research and pondering to figure out what would work best for my house. So only a little vacuuming got done. The other jobs were nearly all day, or at least five hours long. The second week, they’ve been down to between 30 minutes and five hours. It was the menu and shopping that was five hours. I still have plenty of room to streamline. Apparently, some women get some of this done in 15 minutes a day. I have a bigger house, but not that much bigger. BTW, I figured out I saved quite a bit of time not folding and putting away sheets, but just waiting until they’re clean and then putting them on the beds. End Mundane. At least for the blog.

Once done with this, I write or do FSO (family school organization) stuff for my son’s awesome charter school.

As for the garden, the cucumbers are almost done, the peppers are doing pretty well, the tomatoes are invading and we’ve eaten a spaghetti squash. We also eat carrots occasionally. The pumpkin and watermelon are goners this year. Victims, I think, of watering difficulties and possibly the wrong amount of sun. It’s fall now, and so I will plant garlic and lettuce. When I tear out the other plants, I’ll put down a cover of clover. I’m also going to plant clover in my lawn.

And for my writing, I’m taking an online class to reboot. I like writing prompts. They are fun. I’m interested to see what the feedback is like.


Leave a Reply