Cleaning House Is Hard To Do

I bet most of you working parents can relate: You work full time outside of the house(or at home full time without the chance to really clean because you have to be doing work while home), have a kid (or a few) and a spouse or partner. Days off you want to spend with your family and don't want to clean. After a long day of work, you don't want to clean either. Before you know it, your house is cluttered and untidy. You try your best to pick things up, surface clean the "important areas," like the kitchen, living room and the bathroom people use when they come over and on the surface it looks great. But before you know it, you and your significant other look around and are arguing over the clutter and mess and who doesn't do what and who works more, etc.

Confession: I have never been an all-star housekeeper.

As a kid, I was messy. My parents cleaned, and we cleaned but the house was always disorganized and messy. To this day, my parent's house is still messy and is almost borderline hoarder status to be perfectly honest. Why? Because once you get it, it's hard to get out. Once you start collecting and not taking stuff out, it's hard to stop. Once you get out of the habit of cleaning, it is hard to get back into it. When you let things go, it is overwhelming, to say the least to take care of the problem. It can be emotionally draining to get rid of things when you have things you want to keep, you have memories with these things, you have them because you want them, like them, need them.

When I moved out on my own, I was a decent housekeeper. I put things away, vacuumed all the time, swept, mopped, cleaned the bathroom, etc. But after having a husband and a kid, things got sidelined. After moving all my "stuff" into a house that was too small for it all, collecting more and then adding my husband's stuff and daughter's stuff; the house became a disaster. It just kept getting worse and worse as we moved around and had weird storage situations. It got worse and worse as I began to work full time and not have time to myself or as much time with my family.

Before anyone starts judging: My husband also works full time, more than full time. He works 40 hours a week an hour away, teaches online classes for the local community college and is taking PhD courses. It has not always been this way, but he has always worked in some facet since we have been married. When he was home because his jobs were only online, he was working at home and although I think he could have done more to help clean, he didn't feel he had the time due to working so much. To be honest, I always underestimated what working at home takes and what teaching takes, so when I got upset about things in the house being messy or it falling upon me, I claimed he doesn't do his part. This isn't necessarily the case.

Well, now I am at home full time again. Long story short, after I got laid off due to funding cuts from a job related to my degree, after I finally found full time work again I lost my job due to calling in when my kid had a snow day from school.

It is time to buckle down and get the house in order once more. Looking at it's current state is overwhelming but it needs to be done. Don't get me wrong, it's not a disaster or a health hazard or anything but we have too much stuff that we don't need or use; I haven't given a deep clean to the house since we moved in two and a half years ago.

So I devised a plan: First, I will spot clean the usual, lived in areas. Then I will go to the areas that look pretty bad and make a plan for those areas (like the totes in the office that prevent us from using the elliptical...in order for them to go anywhere they need to go in the shed for storage...but the shed needs cleaned out first....and then they can go there until we pack up the Christmas stuff again...then that needs to go back to the top of the shed so I can clean out the storage unit so we can get storage stuff into the shed to get rid of the storage unit and save money monthly).

I write this not only to make myself accountable but to show support for others. You are not alone! Don't let anyone shame you into thinking you are the only one who has a messy house. As messy as our house is, I have been told many times that it looks clean compared to theirs or compared to other people's with children. But a messy house can sometimes derail a relationship and I sometimes feel like my husband and I are fighting over the mess or clutter and we lose something in our relationship with every bickering match we have. Unfortunately, I am  not alone in that. Many marriages suffer over clutter and it is time to take back our lives. It can be done. It has to be prioritized.

10 More Days of Elf on The Shelf

So we started our Elf on The Shelf early this year because we bought her this year and were excited to start. Maybe next year we will start on Thanksgiving like most of the rest of the world, especially if I can't come up with anything new for ideas!

If you want more ideas, see my previous post where I show the first 15 days of ideas!

Day 16: December 3: We sometimes have a hard time with our daughter brushing her teeth before bed. When she gave us a really hard time, I decided to put Charlotte into action. My husband is against using her for "naughty" and "nice" bribes, so I used a different but similar tactic. See the note Charlotte left along with a new toothbrush and her toothpaste message on the mirror. Also, note: toothpaste is VERY hard to get off the mirror...especially when for 24ish hours! If this idea is used, first, smear toothpaste with paper towel, douse with glass cleaner, use paper towel once over with glass cleaner, then wet a hand towel with water and scrub that way, after the toothpaste is off, clean with glass cleaner again....best method!

Day 17: December 4: My daughter and I need to bake cookies for her snack day in class on the 6th, Charlotte decided she would help get things out and ready for us! 

Day 18: December 5th: Today Charlotte decided that she would hang out in the refrigerator, missing the cold of the North Pole. 

Day 19: December 6th: Charlotte and Anna were riding horses under the tree when we woke up this morning! 

Day 20: December 7th: Charlotte and the snow man decided to play Connect Four and eat Veggie Straws

Day 21: December 8th: Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture before someone messed up the scene, but Charlotte gave a free concert to the stuffed animals under the tree! 

Day 22: December 9th: Charlotte brought us some holiday M&M's and she decided to start eating them without us! 

 Day 23: December 10th: Charlotte made a "shoe shoe train" under the Christmas tree.

Day 24: December 11th: The elf decided to build some Lego things for kiddo. 

Day 25: December 12th: After the disaster with the snowman, I think Charlotte felt bad and brought us a different kind of snow.

Day 26: December 13th: Mario, Yoshi, and the Lego people joined Charlotte for a game of "Left, Center, Right"

The First 15 Days of Elf on The Shelf

Ever since I was a child, there was an elf that always came to our house on Christmas Eve with Santa to help deliver toys. He would always get into mischief. This was WAY before Elf on The Shelf came to existence. We never knew what he looked like, or anything about him but he wrote poorly and always signed his name with Santa on the letters back to us. Sometimes he would put fingerprints on the wall with frosting, and sometimes he would fill dad's pewter cannon with gerbil seed and aim it at the gerbil cage.

When our daughter was born, the elf still showed up at our place with Santa pulling the same sort of mischievous things as he did when my brother and I were kids. Then, something happened...Elf on The Shelf came out in all the stores. My husband and I fought it thinking it undermined our elf, thinking it was a craze that we didn't want to buy into. But, then our daughter turned 5 and saw it. She wanted one and we thought about it but didn't get it. However, this year our daughter still wanted one. Ever since the beginning of November, all she wanted to talk about was her best friend and her elf Tickles.

We caved. We bought our daughter an Elf on The Shelf. Since this was our first year, we bought her on November 17th and we opened her on November 18th. We started her off that day because we 1. didn't know the "rule" about starting on Thanksgiving, and  2. didn't want to wait. I had been on Pinterest for weeks since we started talking about possibly buying the elf looking for fun things to do with it. So here is what I came up with:

Day 1: November 18th: Elf went through our Christmas dvds and blu-rays and got them out.

Day 2: November 19th: Fishing in the sink with goldfish crackers

 Day 3: November 20th: Charlotte decided to go Shopkins shopping

Day 4: November 21st: Getting her morning caffeine fix:

Day 5: November 22nd: Our daughter told Charlotte that she had to go somewhere up high because we were hosting Thanksgiving and there would be a lot of people there. Charlotte decided to go atop the shelf in the kitchen and sample some dog biscuits.

 Day 6: November 23rd: The Elf was caught eating Thin Mints and creating a wall and chair out of Jenga blocks.

Day 7: November 24th: The elf decided that she would sit in the Christmas tree that we put up today.

Day 8: November 25th: Today the tree fell down and Charlotte was still in it! She broke her leg and showed up with a cast. Since she fell, we had to pick her up. The rules state that if you touch the elf you need to apologize or sprinkle cinnamon near her so she can get her magic back or write her a note or even have the family sing Christmas carols. I apologized and I think she understood.

Day 9: November 26th: Today Charlotte thought it would be fun to feed the rubber duckies in the bathtub with some old bread

Day 10: November 27th: I think Charlotte thought that ELF brand makeup was made for Elves. She got into my makeup and took it into the spare bathroom to put it on.

Day 11: November 28th: Sleepover time!

Day 12: November 29th: Charlotte got ahold of the catalog we were looking at and decided to choose some things for herself!

Day 13: November 30th: The Elf decided to play the Rock Band drum kit and also thought it would be a great idea to fold our daughter's laundry for her. She left her a note all about it.

Day 14: December 1:  Charlotte decided to take a bath using a Barbie tub and some cotton balls

Day 15: December 2: Charlotte brought our daughter a snowman from the North Pole, unfortunately it melted in the tupperware dish before we woke up!