No Susie Homemaker – 15 minute kitchen clean up

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dishes

This week’s new habit that I’m implementing is loading and unloading the dishwasher daily. It sounds simple enough, right? Well, for me it can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. I find myself, more often than not, loading the dishwasher when this sink is overflowing with dishes.  Rather than dishes getting put back in their rightful place after a cycle, they stay in the dishwasher until they are used. One reason for this is because my kitchen, though large, is very dysfunctional and space is limited. So basically not everything has a set space.

That brings me to another project I’ll be working on this week. Getting rid of the excess clutter and unused items in my kitchen! More on that to come…

Every night after dinner I go around the house and pick up any randomly left behind sippy cup, bottle, plate and utensil – mind you I do have 2 little ones running around and they tend to leave a trail wherever they go, which usually means dishes are scattered throughout the house. After the dishwasher is loaded and turned on, I give the countertops and stove top a wipe down, sweep the floor and in 15 minutes my kitchen is clean!

My biggest dilemma when starting this task was finding time to empty out the dishwasher and doing so on a daily basis. Everywhere I read suggested doing it first thing in the morning but let’s face it, that wasn’t happening here. My mornings are hectic enough as they are so adding yet another task to my morning routine was simply out of the question. My solution - unload the dishwasher when I get home from work. One thing I’ve found is that my daughter likes to help out with this. She’ll get the dishes off the rack and pass them to me to put away in the cabinets. I’m killing 2 birds with one stone! I’m getting my work done while teaching my daughter to help out with housework.

Another thing she likes to help out with is sweeping the kitchen. She loves to use my Swiffer. I think it might be time to start putting together a fun chore chart for my daughter since she seems to be showing an interest in helping me around the house.

Although my goal was to only implement on habit this week, it felt only right to take it a little further. It’s so much simpler giving the kitchen a quick once over when you do it on a daily basis. Who would have thought!
dishes2

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No Susie Homemaker – A load a day

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laundry

I came across this great post while blog hopping at The Stressed Mom called 10 habits for a well-run home. Since one of my resolutions for this year is to implement better habits to keep my house in order, this post really hit home. One of the recommendations she made was to do one complete load of laundry per day. At first I thought that was a bit much, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

I normally tackle the laundry pile once a week, but by that point it’s out of control and takes me a couple of days to complete the task. Now, by “complete” I mean getting everything washed and dried. Most times I don’t even get around to putting things away and… here’s the horrifying part – sometimes I don’t even get to folding the laundry! Ahhh, I know!

Even with my once a week laundry routine (if you can even call it a routine), I still find myself doing small loads of laundry each day. I thought about how much water and electricity that was wasting and how much money must be coming out of my pocket with all those loads of laundry each week. I get a head ache just thinking about it!

So I took the plunge. This week I started doing one load of laundry per day. Heck, some days I even had time for two! Go me! I washed a load, put it in the dryer as soon as it was done washing and found time during the day/evening to fold, which really only took me 5 minutes. I even got around to putting everything away. Some days I found I had enough time in the morning to at least put the clothes in the wash before dropping of the kids at the sitters then making a quick pit stop to put everything in the dryer before catching the train to work. Other days I didn’t get around to loading the wash until after getting home from work then throwing the clothes in the dryer before dinner. Either way, I found time in my day to get one entire load washed, dried, folded and put away.

It’s amazing how something so simple has already improved my life. There’s no more “do I have clean clothes to wear?” or “I’m out of undies!” My family has plenty of clean clothes to choose from each day which makes me feel great.

I even took things one step further. I got this idea from Pinterest and felt inspired.

Getting the laundry put away each day was my biggest obstacle. And since my family was already in the habit of looking in the laundry room for clean clothes, I thought this could be the answer to all our problems. Let me explain things just a little further. You see, our house if very odd. Most of the closet space we have is not very user-friendly. They’re oddly shaped and in very strange places. I’ve tried many ways to organize the space I have, but nothing really worked. Our laundry room, however, is a somewhat new addition. We moved the laundry room from the dingy basement to an addition in the back of the house. The addition also includes a full bathroom with a stand up shower. Could I really ask for any more perfection? We can now take showers downstairs and walk out for a large closet and even throw our dirty laundry right in the wash after getting dressed. OMG!

It’s still a work in progress and something I’m hoping to finish this weekend, so stay tuned next week for a follow-up post on my new dressing room/laundry room!

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