trying to be less routine

[positivemom]

ok, I have a daily routine, and it is too much. I just can't keep up anymore. I need to do less for many reasons. what can I do to do less. this is an odd question but where does one start???

is it a good idea to just do things less often. like we pick up the whole house and yard before children's bedtime...maybe just do that every other night??? I dunno...any help on this

I really am too shot right now to type in my routine or I would. suffice it to say, it is not a schedule with times...but it is a routine that allows me to stay on top of homeshcooling, laundry, dinner, dishes, all housework including tidying toys and cleaning, cleaning out the van, daily pick-ups, errands, shopping, meal planning, etc etc...my home runs like a well oiled machine but I am beat. I need to stop and have a break. I can't keep going like this, but then again if I let everything drop I can't handle that either. I need to pair back without things going chaotic. what can I do???

[MarynMunchkins]

We have shared bedrooms and a playroom so I can throw toys in the playroom and shut the door on the days it's too much to clean up. If the dishwasher is full, we use paper plates so I only have to run/empty it once a day. Clorox wipes, while decidedly not natural, are great for handing a kid and telling them to wipe the bathroom. I wash laundry one kid at a time. Mine aren't old enough to care if their socks are gray, so I don't bother sorting their stuff. ;)

My van is a disaster, so I won't give advice there. :P

[positivemom]

yes, yes, keep it coming. this is the kind of help I need. my mother was a clean freak and I don't know how to downsize, I need ideas taht will allow me to downsize my routine, but keep me going with my routine at the same time. thanks!!

[positivemom]

ok, I guess I want to know what is normal around a balanced home. I am OCD and so I am not balanced.

how many loads of laundry is normal for an average household of 6 to have laying around needing to be washed, folded, put away at any given time?

do you have dishes in your sink??? or are they always clean??

Do you cook homemade meals every night or how many times a week do you eat out or cook frozen pizza???

do you run the dishwasher promptly and wash those dishes up promptly or do you always have some dishes in the sink?

do you always pick up and organize all the toys sometime everyday, do you sweep them aside into a big box, or do you leave them in the floor???

come on folks, I need some help knowing what is balanced an dnormal. I am either an OCD tidy freak, or I just let it all go and then get overwhelmed. every time I make a schedule out it is so hard for me to stick to it without becoming depressied and tired from never relaxing. I need an inbetween approach.

[Mothering by Heart]

how many loads of laundry is normal for an average household of 6 to have laying around needing to be washed, folded, put away at any given time?
Usually 2 baskets. The kids have to put their own away, except the 4 yo. SO I have hers and then mine and DH's. That is only if I don't put it away at night. I usually get it put away when it comes out of the dryer. If I don't it gets tobe bad news really quickly

do you have dishes in your sink??? or are they always clean??
I do 2 loads in the dishwasher a day. The dishes stay in the sink until I load the dishwasher. I hate dirty dishes in the dishwasher unless I am going to run it.

Do you cook homemade meals every night or how many times a week do you eat out or cook frozen pizza???Pretty much every night. We do have one or 2 leftover nights a week. Eating out is usually only on DH's days off. We do eat lunch out several times a month because of where we live and the location of our shopping amenities :)

do you run the dishwasher promptly and wash those dishes up promptly or do you always have some dishes in the sink?
See above.

do you always pick up and organize all the toys sometime everyday, do you sweep them aside into a big box, or do you leave them in the floor???
The kids are pretty much responsible for their toys. We are still in training mode for daily pick-ups though, so when I am not on top of it, I usually pile everything together in a passive-aggressive rage after they have gone to bed and they have to pick it up before they can eat breakfast :shifty

HTH!

[Singingmom]

lost my post..be back later

[MoongardenMama]

how many loads of laundry is normal for an average household of 6 to have laying around needing to be washed, folded, put away at any given time?
Right now, I have about 5 loads that need to be washed.  They are down in the basement.  Laundry is my worst task.  We have a very old and unpleasant basement and I'm not comfortable being down there with the kids.  Since I do almost all my tasks with them - it makes it hard. 

do you have dishes in your sink??? or are they always clean??
Right now, I have dishes in my sink (because I am online :giggle)  I will get to these before I go to bed though.  The girls do help me with the dishes too, but tonight we are making cupcakes (which makes more dishes!)  Normally I do the dishes immediately after they are used, if not, I run into a big problem.

Do you cook homemade meals every night or how many times a week do you eat out or cook frozen pizza???
I cook at least 5 nights.  We have a quickie meal one night a week, and normally one night we go out.  This week, we are low on money so I am cooking up a storm which probably accounts for my lack of vigor regarding my dishes right now!   

do you run the dishwasher promptly and wash those dishes up promptly or do you always have some dishes in the sink?
We have no dishwasher, we hand wash.  I normally do them right away after every meal.  If we use any snack dishes in between meals though, they wait until the next meal to be washed - I am just not willing to waste that much water I guess.

do you always pick up and organize all the toys sometime everyday, do you sweep them aside into a big box, or do you leave them in the floor???
All of our toys are cleaned up everyday.  I work a basket system.  I have empty med-large wicker baskets in every room that we fill 2 times a day with anything that ends up laying around the house.  I find that it takes infinately longer to put every specific item away more than once a day.  Being a touch OCD myself, I would have a tendancy to reorganize the whole closet if a toy didn't fit on the shelf the way I'd like it to - and if that happens, the whole day is lost!  This way, it just goes in the basket and then we have a time once a day when we go through the basket and put the things *away* away - it's easier, because the basket can travel from room to room with you.  I have done some major revamping of the toy situation this year.  We downsized ALOT.  I am also selective about the things that I leave accessible to them.  If they want something that is *not* within their reach - they may ask me and I get it for them, but not before we put away the things they already have out.  This has helped us tremendously! 

I am still going to pm you my detailed routine...it's just too insanely long and wordy to subject to poor innocent passers-by!  :rolleyes

[Singingmom]

I'm back.

I do laundry probably every other day, whenever one of the 2 hampers is full. I do jeans together, and other than that I do the boys' things all together without sorting (their white socks and briefs look fine to me...thank you Mary for not letting me be the only one :)) and mine and dd's together in 2 loads. I'll sort dh's into two loads, sometimes with the boys' things. Clothes go straight from the hamper or bathroom floor to the washer, and I don't put them in the dryer til I'm ready to commit to getting them out and folding/hanging them as soon as they're done. The boys put their piles in their drawers. Nothing sits around in baskets, so it never seems like an overwhelming thing to me. I hated laundry when I had to do it in the basement, but it's off the kitchen now and it's much more friendly. Also, the house is very small, so the trip from the hamper to the washer to the drawers is not a long one.

I run the dishwasher after dinner and unload it after lunch. After breakfast used to be my goal, but it slows me down too much and I need to get a shower and get school started in the mornings. The breakfast dishes sit rinsed in the sink until they get loaded in with the lunch dishes. Anything that is used from then til dinner waits in the sink til I load it after dinner. I do it that way on purpose because otherwise it feels like I'm in the kitchen all day long. If I bake cookies or something, I wash that stuff right away.

We can't do takeout much because of food allergies, but I'd order in once a week if we could. I try for leftovers once a week and do pancakes or waffles for dinner about once a week. I cook simple meals just about all the time with prep time under 30 min.

The boys are responsible for their toys. We'll have a clean up time every day, and if it's bothering me I'll have one of them do a toy sweep in the public rooms. They pick up their sister's toys, too, except for a few times a day when I help her put things away. So I pretty much ignore the toys because it's not my job and that helps a lot. It also helps a lot to go through the toys on a regular basis and give some away or put them in the attic if we can't part with them but don't play with them. Then we just have out what they really use.

The thing I really need to stay on top of better is dusting. This is such a dusty house, I think because we live on a dirt road, and going a week is just too long. But I go that long anyway.

[positivemom]

ok, thank you SO much. this helps. I just wanted to get a feel for how others do there chores, what a balanced home "looks" like. thanks!!!

[This Busy Mom]

i do dishes by hand every day. that in itself is overwhelming :hug2 I need some kind of routine and the time to do it.