Honestly how often do you clean...

[OakLeaf]

Okay it must be time for this again.

[kelownagirl]

Bathroom- Whenever it looks dirty
Bed cover- if I lay a shirt on it and it picks up an unacceptable amount of dog hair, then I know it's time to wash

Love the dog hair quote. Me too.

[Crankin]

Mr. Silver, my husband is also more anal about cleaning than me (although I am pretty neat and clean). I always joke that I married him because he was the only single guy I met who had a vacuum!
SFA, my advice is to hire a cleaning lady. Even if you can afford it only one a month or twice a month. Maybe you can find a college student who could help. That way, it's easier to keep up in between. And you can spend your free time doing things with your kids (or riding). And, I hate to ask, but is your husband doing his part?

[kermit]

The in-laws were in town. Easy on the laxative there pops!

[OakLeaf]

Easy on the laxative there pops!

Okay now you have reached my TMI limit.

[Aggie_Ama]

The in-laws were in town. Easy on the laxative there pops!

Okay this may go TMI but I think it is funny. My husband and I are DINKs and have a 3/2 house. The master bath is like most newer homes and within the bedroom (separated by a door of course). When we moved in I ask my husband to use the guest bath for his stinkier business because I like my bedroom smelling cleaner. So I tell my friend my husband uses the guest bath for that and so unfortunately I do have to clean the toilet more than I liked to. She said "Oh I understand with his Crohn's disease he probably has some unfortunate times where the toilet gets real dirty because he can't help it." She was insinuating he had explosiv diahrea I guess. I started dying laughing and said "No it is because like everyone else his s___ stinks and I don't want to smell it if I go to bed shortly after!"

[sfa]

SFA, my advice is to hire a cleaning lady. Even if you can afford it only one a month or twice a month. Maybe you can find a college student who could help. That way, it's easier to keep up in between. And you can spend your free time doing things with your kids (or riding). And, I hate to ask, but is your husband doing his part?

I'd absolutely love to hire a cleaning lady and have looked into it, but it's beyond our budget right now. That's my ultimate dream, though.

My husband pretty much does his part, but he has a much higher tolerance for dirt than I do, so his "assigned" tasks don't get done nearly as often as I'd like them to. He waits until things get really disgusting before doing the job. He and I work opposite schedules, though, so our old habit of spending a couple of hours each Saturday morning thoroughly cleaning the house fell apart once he started coming home at 8 a.m. after working all night and then crashing all day. He also has the really, really annoying habit of being a do-gooder volunteer, so instead of spending his days off cleaning the house (and during the school year he'd have the place to himself to do this) he instead spends his days off building homes for Habitat for Humanity or donating blood or knocking on doors for political causes or volunteering at the school. Drives me nuts, but if I say anything I come off sounding like the Wicked Witch of the West ("whydja spend all day helping poor people when our lawn needed mowing???"). Every once in a while, though, I'll come home from work and find that he spent the day vacuuming and mopping. Those are nice days.

Sarah

[Dogmama]

Must be a popular subject!

Did you know your kitchen sink probably has more bacteria than your toilet? My mother taught microbiology, so I could have written Oakleaf's bacteria U-Tube.

+1 on dumping carpet. I tiled everything 10 years ago & I would NEVER have carpet again. I don't stress over muddy paws or pukey dogs.

.

[Aggie_Ama]

Yup, high on our list is to remove carpet from every room but the bed rooms. I like carpet in there because I don't like cold floors in winter. Otherwise we will be putting laminate or tile in the dining room, kitchen, living, halls, bathroom. I have no freaking clue why a builder put carpet in a formal dining room, it is silly. And even sillier I only have one because the one thing my Nanny wanted to leave me was her china. I have had it 5 months and still have no plans at all to use it, maybe Christmas but then I realized my cousins rambunctious kids will be there and a piece would probably be broken.

[OakLeaf]

Take a look at cork flooring. It's not cheap, but it's well worth the investment. It's beautiful, durable and resilient, it's a great sound and temperature insulator (so it's not cold in winter), and it's relatively "green" to produce. It comes in a wide range of colors and "patterns." I LOVE my cork floors.

[Grog]

The master bath is like most newer homes and within the bedroom (separated by a door of course).

Slightly off-topic:

You'd sort of hope that this is "of course," but...

I visited an apartment in which the master's bedroom had a bathroom in it... not separated by a door at all. Actually there was only a little step leading to the "bathroom," with the toilet effectively in the middle of the place (you could totally walk around it).

Quite weird.

[Miranda]

Mold growing in the toliet helps to keep the riff raff away.

Mom's theory: people who really love you regardless come to visit anyway. That was my mother's wise old advice to me the years I spent killing myself cleaning to no avail with no other life.

It's really sorta crazy... how clean does the toliet need to be to receive human waste anyway?

Oh drats... I was informed right before I found this thread I need to clean for some visitors that are coming... hmm, what would my moma say about that...

[Crankin]

SFA, I don't think you would be "the wicked witch of the west" for asking your husband to cut down a bit on his volunteering. Yes, it's admirable, but your family's needs (and cleaning is a household need) should come before that. It might be a hard conversation to have, but it sounds like that if he is a person who can commit to helping others so much, he would have an open mind to this type of conversation.
I know other people here talked about resenting the fact that they had to help with cleaning chores as kids. I never did, but during the time when we didn't have cleaning help, I did ask my kids to help a bit. They were young (5 and 8) and it lasted for about 2-3 years. I made it a game and we did our work together, at the same time. After that, I expected them to keep their rooms clean (no food left there, garbage) and all of the clutter picked up the night before the cleaning people came. When they turned 13, they had to do their own laundry and put it away. That was a major help, since both of them and my husband wear the same size and we were forever mixing up the socks, underwear, and T shirts.

[OakLeaf]

I had an interesting conversation with my mom about that a couple of weeks ago.

She was under the impression that us kids grew up sloppy because she didn't make us do chores.

Our recollection (all three of us) is that whenever we tried to do something, she immediately took over because we were doing things in our imperfect kid way. Lesson = if it's not going to be absolutely perfect, don't even bother to try. As far as what happened when our dad was supervising and we didn't do something perfectly... well I don't even want to go into that.

I really struggle with being able to do things half-assed (i.e. the normal way that most people do them). Cleaning the bathroom one fixture at a time really helps me with that. It's a lot easier to devote an hour to getting the toilet spotless, or two hours for the shower and tub, than it is to find (or want to find!) an uninterrupted bloc of time to get a whole bathroom perfect.

[Smilie]

It's a lot easier to devote an hour to getting the toilet spotless, or two hours for the shower and tub, than it is to find (or want to find!) an uninterrupted bloc of time to get a whole bathroom perfect.

What?! You spend an HOUR just on the toilet? Yikes. I have a hard time cleaning anything for an hour. I Keep a spray bottle of water mixed with a few drops of bleach (which is all you need) and spritz the sink, toilet and shower every day. Or at least the shower spritzing once a week!

Sheets weekly, towels once or twice a week. Face washcloths daily-after I read that you get break outs from your bacteria infested wash cloths.