Balancing All The Cleaning

Sometimes when life takes over cleaning can be really hard. Here is how I am trying to deal with it.

I wrote a post about how important it is for me to get our dining table clear as it gives me clarity, but what about the rest of the house?

Do you feel like cleaning gets you down. I used to be so good at sprucing the house and when the kids were young it was very much part of our Monday routine. Rob would go off to work and I would deal with single parenting by cleaning. Not crazy cleaning but it would keep us busy and the kids would walk about with dusters not doing much but just enjoying the activities. The TV would be on and I remember it was an easy thing to do. It was routine and that really helped but as soon as Raph went to school, I think that's where my down spiral in life came from. I am not a fretful mother; what will be will be, but when Raph went to school I became more and more anxious. Anxious about time especially and being available to get to school if I needed to. I became so obsessive about my movements that slowly I just ended up always deciding to stay at home or only go places local. It was fine, Etta and I had the best time but inevitably we got used to being in all the time. Now with being in all the time you get to a point where you can only do so much pottering. It was easy to keep a tidy house then because my time was laid out and I just fit it into our 'at home’ schedule. But then I got bored or maybe depressed, but either way, it almost turned on me and just became this momentousness chore. I mean, we haven't got that big a space so it was never unbearable but the cycle of clean, put away, clean, put away was suddenly a burden and something I was tired of doing. I have never been the same about cleaning since.

Part of me cares as our downstairs is really easy to straighten; whip round it with the hoover and it looks new. Everything has a place and can be put away and it is easy to make it look really nice. Upstairs however brings me dread and it is always the end of the day, when I am tired, and have done the picking up downstairs that the walk of doom upstairs gives me this mental, “just leave it” block. The thing is, there is always washing to be put away, always beds to be made, always clothes to be picked up off the floor. Where as downstairs you can have days in between having to clean properly; upstairs is more of a daily task and therefore more like a daily struggle.

And that struggle is real!

I feel it, oh boy, I get one parcel put on my desk and then that's it, you just can’t see my desk for weeks. Hence why I need my dining table clear so I have somewhere to work!

I know that there is a solution. I just need to practise it more but I also don’t want be indebted to the solution because that equally makes me obsessive about everything being perfectly tidy.

If I spent just 30 minutes blitzing upstairs before I even came downstairs on a morning my life would change. My mental attitude would change and I know I would feel so much better about the nightly walk up the stairs.

The thing I am worst at; putting my own clothes away, but when you have had the fire on all day and tea flowing freely I don’t want to be up in our bedroom in the attic sorting my clothes. I don’t think I do anyway but I know that really, 5-10 minutes is nothing and is certainly not an inconvenience to daily life.

Balancing out between downstairs and upstairs is now key to me. I want to enjoy our upstairs as much as our down and it is such a nice space that is only lost because it needs a hoover, a pillow fluff and clothes to be in their right baskets. Really the kids are at a perfect age for learning to help so much more and from this morning I am going to have them make their bed everyday. They can sort most of their things anyway so really it is just me keeping on top of putting the things upstairs in their place just like I do the things downstairs.

Also, key is getting off my phone and social media and using that time for me and my family. I need to be more present in that way which actually would balance me out a lot more. Instead of a morning scroll I need to take a morning stroll, around the house, and start my day with family at the focus. I know that will give me balance.