How to get it all done and still have fun

This may be one of my most valuable tips ever. It will help you accomplish more of your everyday tasks than any other I know. Once you try this you will feel liberated; freed from the oppressive rule of your daily household chores. You may even start to look forward to the work that you usually dreaded doing!

Okay, here it is: Buy a headset for your home phone. That's it. Let me explain how a headset can change the everyday grind from something you dread to something that you actually don't mind doing. When I get up in the morning I make my cup of coffee and I tend to the little ones. Make sure they have breakfast, get to the potty and get diapers changed. Then I don my phone and headset and I call my mom. As we chat about anything and everything I unload my dishwasher from the night before. We keep talking and I keep cleaning. Wiping counters, sorting laundry and making beds. On the other end she is doing the same thing. The only thing I can't do, for obvious reasons, is talk on the phone and vacuum. I even talk on the phone when I am cleaning bathrooms and mopping the floor. If I run out of things to talk about with mom I call my sister. When it's time to make dinner I pick up the phone and get cooking. It is so liberating!

You know, this makes me think of something that my mother once told me. When she was a brand new house wife she lived next door to a very good friend. They would get up in the morning and do their housework together. Literally one would go over to the others house and they would make beds and whatever else needed to be done together. Isn't that awesome? I think that talking on the phone to my mom or sister while I work is the next best thing to doing it side by side with them. And having a headset makes it possible.

Let me know if you give this a try!

Mopping the floor...

I know that it sounds crazy but this is something that I am passionate about. There is only one right way to mop a floor. First, you have to vacuum it. Once I met this lady who was in the cleaning business and she told me that she mopped before she vacuumed. I will never forget that because it made absolutely no sense to me! I mop on my hands and knees using a wet bar towel. I fold it in half and then half again. I carry Lysol mixed with water in a spray bottle and I mist the floor and then mop over it with the towel. I cover about 8 to 12 square feet and then I flip the towel over and keep going. When the two outside sides are dirty I rinse the towel out under running water very well and then refold it and keep mopping.

I like this method because I feel like I can cover more area before I need to rinse out my mop. With a sponge mop I would be rinsing it out constantly. With a regular mop head on a stick I don't feel like I get enough pressure to actually clean the floor. When you are down on your hands and knees you see a lot more than you would if you were just standing and mopping. You can also get to the corners and the baseboards easier. There is something about a clean floor that relaxes me. I clean my house every Friday and I always do the floor first because it is the biggest and most physical part of the job. When the floor is done I feel like I am three quarters done with the house!

I would love to know if there is anyone else out there like me when it comes to mopping the floor. Incidentally, it also seems that if there is even the smallest sticky spot on the floor my feet will find it. That drives me crazy! I think that it also drives my family crazy to hear me going on about every sticky spot that I find but, oh well, I don't see that changing any time soon.

A bit too obsessive with the cleaning?

I can't help it; I love clean, I love organized. I sing the praises of Lysol and Mr. Clean Magic Erasers. I follow my family around and pick up after them to the point of annoyance. My kitchen sink sparkles and my trash cans are always empty. I firmly believe that there is nothing wrong with vacuuming at 9:00 at night. Or cleaning your baseboards once a week. I bought a new vacuum just for the accessory that is for cleaning window blinds. Do I have a problem?

Just recently we were having someone over for dinner and I was doing my usual running around to get the house ready. As I pulled out a stool to stand on and readjust the folds of my living room window drapes, my husband commented "I didn't know that Martha Stewart was coming over." Doesn't everyone do that? It's like, if I know that something somewhere is dirty or unorganized...I can't forget about it. Once it is done, it's like cleaning the cobwebs out of the corners of my mind. That's the best way that I can explain it.

That's why I titled this blog Betty Crocker or Off Your Rocker. I'll let you decide which of those I might be because I am too busy reorganizing my Tupperware cupboard to worry about it...