Work Wednesday: Cleaning Update

After my "work wheel" post last month, a couple of readers have expressed their surprise at the frequency with which I clean the floors.  Actually, it is pretty surprising.  Every week the floors get vacuumed and swiffered and every other week they get washed for real, with a bucket and a cleaning product that's similar to Fabuloso or Spic n Span.  What's really amazing is that despite being a basically shoeless household, and despite not allowing our kid to eat anywhere but the table, the floors are actually dirty when it comes time to clean them every few days.

Really, when I swiffered on Friday, only 3 days after I had vacuumed all the floors, the swiffer cloth was so filthy I thought about changing it midway through (I didn't).  I don't know why this is, but I suspect it has to do with living in an old building (don't they just spontaneously release dust?), our lifestyle (M and I are home much more often than we were in New York and therefore we are making dust at home as opposed to work or school) and our windows (don't close properly to the point of an inside door blowing closed one particularly windy night).

So, despite needing some slight tweaking to address tasks that aren't regularly completed, sadly, cleaning the floor isn't really something I can cut back on.

Work Wednesday: The Work Wheel

Before we had a kid, Peter and I would spend every Saturday morning cleaning the apartment.  It didn't take long--it was under 800 square feet and there were 2 of us.  I also worked about a block away, so occasionally I'd head home to do a load of laundry or clean the bathroom on my lunch hour.  We had plenty of time to do what we needed to do and didn't need to be particularly organized about it.

That all changed when our little boy arrived.  Suddenly I realized that before I had a kid, I had a ton of free time.  Like, enough free time to write a book or win the Nobel prize.  And I never noticed how much free time I had, what with all the hanging out with friends and TV watching, but that's another blog post...

So after M arrived, and especially after I went back to work 7 months later, we needed a much more organized approach to housework.  Suddenly, dropping everything for 2 hours to clean the house just didn't work.  I'm a huge fan of fly lady, but felt that her zoned approach wasn't the right one for us.  Borrowing from her idea to divide work up into manageable chunks I decided we could do a little bit of work every day and always have a clean house.  With a little bit of thought we came up with a plan that wasn't overly burdensome on any one day and made logical sense (laundry done the day after sheets changed; dusting done before sweeping and sweeping done the day before mopping day).  Plus, our house never got too dirty.

We stuck with this work wheel for three years, adjusting it for different chores as we moved and different chores were necessary.  (And I remember people in college having work wheels for taking turns with chores, so I don't think this is a work wheel in the traditional sense, but I like the alliteration and it is a wheel in that it's never complete).  When we moved to Amsterdam I knew I wouldn't be working so I thought we didn't need a work wheel.  I was wrong. After about a month here the necessity of the work wheel made itself known.

The work wheel is all about a logical approach to housework.  If you don't have to spend time determining what to do next you can just get the chore done.  Or at least I can.  I suppose I'm not so great at the determining what to do next.

So, after a couple of weeks of working with it, we settled on this, our current work wheel:

• Monday:  Wipe bathrooms, plan meals, write grocery list, swiffer dust
• Tuesday:  Grocery shop, vacuum
• Wednesday:  vaccuum upholstery/wash floors (these chores alternate between weeks)
• Thursday:  clean bathrooms, clean kitchen, change beds (alternating between Mairtin's and ours each week)
• Friday:  Swiffer floors

So, there you have it.  I never have to mix "wet" and "dry" chores (for some reason that bugs me) and related chores follow logically.  This plan works for us.  Since I'm not working we don't have assigned chores on the weekend (although I'll occasionally put in some laundry or get a jump on meal planning).  We have our own laundry facilities once again, so that chore doesn't need to show up on the wheel.   The heavy-duty chores are scheduled for days M has school.  Sure, it's not perfect (Thursdays are a bit heavy and the one chore that is piling up is ironing, so I think that needs a spot on the wheel) but the beauty of the work wheel is that you never wake up and say, "gee, we are knee deep in cat hair," or, "my sheets kind of stink; when was the last time I washed them?" two problems I had pre-work wheel.  It's also completely customizable based on what's important to each individual household.  It changed my life.  You're welcome.