Organizing Class #5

This was one of the funnest classes yet!


-Don't stretch yourself too thin by signing up for too much. Be realistic. Or you'll end up a BLOB by the end of the day.

-When it comes to housecleaning, you've got to have a written plan! Work according to method and not mood.

-We all have different standards of cleanliness, but if we do things in a cycle, it will always be clean.

-There are 3 different types/levels of housecleaning:
-Daily. We should "neat" our house everyday. Having the house in order like this will give the illusion (to 80% of visitors anyway) that our house is actually clean.
-Weekly. We should "clean" our house weekly. Set up a plan. Mondays are bathroom cleaning days. Thursdays are kitchen, etc. Or number them and rotate through.
-Occasionally. We "scrub" our homes occasionally (basically any job you do less than weekly). (if we don't have a plan, then we'll forget and it will be less frequent and not as often as we should.) If we scrub often enough, it won't be painful (like if you have in your plan that you'll scrub the shower every month, then it'll be easier/faster to get the job done and therefore less hate-ridden than if you did it less often and have to use more elbow grease). If you wait too long, you'll hate it.

-Think of all the things you have to do to keep the house running. Write each job on a card. Use these categories: Daily Do (things you must do everyday: eat, sleep, shower, get dressed, etc.), Daily (nice to do things everyday: neat toys, do dishes, sweep kitchen, do a load of laundry, etc.), Weekly Do (things you must do every week: get groceries, get things ready for church, etc.), and Weekly (nice to to things every week: clean bathroom, vacuum, budget, etc.). Then on each Weekly Do or Weekly card, write which day of the week you'd like to get that job done, OR number them (it doesn't matter what number you assign each job, just that you go through them in order to maintain a cycle), whichever plan suits you best. (I'll scan in some helpful worksheets soon).

-If you do this, you'll start working according to method, not mood, and you'll sleep better and be less moody!

-When you're head has to remember all these things (when was the last time I cleaned that area of the house? etc.), it can't solve problems as easily. Get as much on paper as you can to free up your brain.

-If you don't get a job done, just move it to next week or wherever and don't worry about it. Life happens. Don't beat yourself up.

-Take on the attitude of a Professional Homemaker. A Professional Homemaker will want a comely, peaceful, beautiful home, striving to make home a haven. See D&C 88: 119. If it's comely, it'll be organized. And order invites the Spirit. Think about how orderly the temple is. Our homework is to pick one area of our house this week, and try to make it feel more like the temple in that spot.

-When it comes to furniture, clothes, floors, etc. think in terms of mid-tone, pattern, and texture. Mid-tone things are the color of dust. Patterns hide problems and stains. And texture hides things too.

-So when you're picking out furniture, tiles, etc. bring a little baggy of dirt from your backyard to make sure it matches!

-When you make your bed, your room is 80% clean. Change has to be little and done!

-There should be more layers on the floor near doors than in the middle of the house. Each foot should touch rugs 2x when entering the house.

-She has 3 aprons (one to use, one to wash, and one extra) she uses when she "neats" her house. They have 2 pockets, one for putting trash in, and one for putting out of place items in. When she's done, she puts the items she collected in each person's mail holder, so they put away their belongings, and you're not running up and down the stairs putting miscellaneous things away. Plus you're teaching your family how to put things in their rightful place, etc.

-Use muffin tins to sort a lot of little things found around the house. Kids love this job.

-Think about the TRS idea: Tools, Routines, and Systems. She gave a TON of great tips about tools, and how important it is to invest in the right tools, because you'll be using these things for the next 300 years.

-Have a good duster. She has a lambs wool one (hers was $15, but I got one for about $3 at Ikea). When it starts to look really dirty, she rinses it with a little bit of mild soap and air dries.

-A good mop. Think about trying to mop your kitchen floor with something the size of a pencil. Now imagine mopping something that has the diameter of 1 or 2 inches. More grip is a big difference. Also think about length because if you have to bend your back, you're going to hate the chore even more.

-Disposable gloves. They're cheap, and you don't have to feel guilty about throwing them away after using them for horrible chores. Use them for ANY job you don't want to touch with your skin.

-Good heavy duty rubber gloves (not the regular yellow variety). She found hers at a hardware store in the Tiling aisle. She's had them for several years, and they are still in tact (i.e. no holes in the fingers). Also, when using these to clean hard to reach, up high places, she takes a cuff off of her husband's old matchless socks and wraps it around her wrist to catch any drips (so you don't end up with a wet shirt!).

-Super tuff rubber gloves for the truly unpleasant tasks, such as retrieving things from the toilet or disposal. She called these ones the "skin the squirrel" gloves.

-BIG sponges. The less you have to cramp your hands, the better. And different varieties for different jobs, soft to abrasive. (never use the hard green ones on plastic, it WILL scratch! We looked at so many homes that they cleaned in a hurry and used the green side of the sponge to clean off the front of the microwave or whatever, and now they are permanently scratched. So sad).

-On the door of your shower, after sanitizing, wipe with Old English lemon oil. For a few days, your shower door will look amazing because the water will repell right off. And for a few weeks, it will look very clean, and then it will look a little yucky for those last few days before it comes into your plan's rotation again, then wipe with lemon oil again. Don't use this on the actual shower walls because if you put weight on a wall, you'll slide right off.

-To help family members differentiate between regular cloths for face and body, and those used for cleaning the house, draw silly faces in the middle of each cleaning cloth with a permanent marker.

-A good sturdy brush for those "scrubbing" jobs. It's much better to have the handle on top than out at the end, distributes weight better.

-A good brush for your dustpan. Early in their marriage, her husband splurged and got the $10 brush instead of the $1 brush. He figured it was worth the investment if it only took them one swipe to clean up, instead of 10 or 15. From then on, whenever she swept, and it only took 1 pass of the brush to get it all clean, she would think, "Oh, honey, I love you!" She then told us this story might give our spouses good incentive to help us invest in proper tools for our home. :) (I told Jeromy this, and the next day, he happened to be sweeping the kitchen and he counted how many swipes it took to get everything into the dustpan. 17. I think I've sold him on this point;)

-A scrubber that looks like it could be a horse toothbrush. Actually a brush found in the painting supplies aisle. It's bristles are plastic so it won't scratch anything, but it's very firm so it'll clean very well.

-A squeegee for cleaning showers and windows. Make sure it has a rubber edge so it won't go brittle on you. To keep the shower clean, swipe the squeegee down each wall after each use. To wash windows, spray her homemade Windex all over windows, scrub here and there, and then squeegee off, and you'll have streak free windows!

-She has 5 cleaners: her homemade Windex, her homemade Lysol, her homemade "no-rinsing" cleanser, upholstery cleaner made for cars (to clean furniture), and Simple Green (her fave degreaser). Recipes are at bottom of this post. Oh, and vinegar too.

-She keeps white vinegar in a clean ketchup bottle so she can squirt where needed when cleaning. Vinegar is great for getting hard water stains off, it only takes awhile. She cuts paper towels into 1 or 2 inch strips, wraps them around the taps, soaks them with her vinegar, and leaves them for 8 hours. No more hard water stains. She does the same thing with her showerhead: she attaches a clippy ring to an old paper muffin cup holder, and clasps the ring aroung the neck of the showerhead. Then she fills the cup with vinegar, and leaves for 8 hours. Another great thing about vinegar is it won't ruin anything!

-Her favorite toilet bowl cleaner is Lysol Power. Nothing else works. And she scrubs using gloves and rags ever since one of her sons ate the toilet brush.

-If you've got mold on your grout, use a solution of one part water and one part bleach, and scrub with a toothbrush.

-When members of her family are done with their toothbrushes, she washes them in the dishwasher, then puts them in her cleaning supplies box. When she cleans the toilet, she uses one of these to clean around the little knobby things at the base of the toilet, then throws the toothbrush away.

-The best spot cleaner for carpet, she has found, is her homemade Windex and a cloth (sponges will just get shredded). Make sure to test an inconspicuous area first.

-When she mops, she uses 2 buckets: one for clean soapy water, one for dirty water. Her mop has removeable microfiber cloths. She dunks it in the clean soapy water and mops like normal, but then instead of going back into the clean water with a dirty mop, she removes the cloth, dunks it in the dirty side, wrings it as dry as she can get it, and then reattaches it and puts it into the clean water. This way, since it's dry going into the clean water, all it can do is soak up the soapy water instead of contaminating it.

-And she mops DAMP, not wet. And when she's finished, she wraps a towel around her mop and goes around soaking up any leftover moisture. AND she doesn't normally mop all the way to the wall because no one hardly ever walks on the 12 inches closest to the wall (she sweeps or vacuums the rest).

-Get the freeloaders off your bathroom counter. Think about how great it would be to be able to clean your bathroom counters with just one pass of your cloth.

-Clean the cleanest first, then work your way to the dirtiest. The mirrors, counters, sinks, showers and tubs, floor, and then toilet last.

-If you have a cleaning kit close to the site with all the tools in it you'd need, it will save you a lot of time.

-She keeps a plastic bucket in her laundry room for rags to be washed (so they stay separate from normal laundry).

-If you're right-handed, go in a counter-clockwise motion around the room you're cleaning. Left-handed = clockwise. This is much more efficient.

-Light-Duty Cleaner (like Windex)
1/4 tsp. liquid soap (to help make it sudsy)
2 tsp. ammonia (non-detergent/non-sudsy)
1/2 C. isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol
1 1/2 C. water
1 drop green food coloring (so everyone knows it's a cleaner)
Write recipe for homemade light-duty cleaner on spray bottle with a permanent marking pen. Mix ingredients and store in spray bottle. Use for all light-duty cleaning.

-Medium-duty Cleaner (for the tougher jobs)
1/4 C. Pine Sol
2 C. water
1 drop red food coloring (so everyone knows it is a cleaner)
Same instructions as above recipe.

-Heavy-duty Cleaner (mostly for "scrub" jobs)
1 C. ammonia (non-detergent)
1/2 C. white vinegar
1/4 C. baking soda
1 gallon boiling water
Mix well in large bucket and let cool a bit before using. Can be used on everything: kitchen appliances, furniture, floors, carpet, paint and varnish, etc. Items do not need to be rinsed unless the cleaner is used on windows.


I hope you enjoy the notes!! I scanned in some worksheets from last week, just haven't posted yet. Tomorrow, it's late and I'm tired. Happy cleaning!