Mod Apron

Cleaning up this one horse town

You may have noticed a distinct lack of blogging happening over here. Don’t worry, I still love you.

I’ve been really focused on some projects at home and I’m in the midst of doing a major Spring Summer cleaning. I’m going as minimalist as I possibly can (in other words, practicing “rational minimalism” to the best of my child-addled abilities) and I’m looking at every room and asking: “How can I downsize all this stuff”?

You should see my closet. It’s a thing of beauty. I’ve got everything paired down to only stuff that I wear, fit me well, and that I actually like. Seems simple enough, but I was amazed by how many pieces of clothing I had that didn’t fit within that criteria. (As a delightful aside, I’ve also trimmed most of my wardrobe to about 3 colors - blues, greens and yellows - which, Ayurvedically speaking, are supposed to be the best for me to wear.)

I’m cleaning up this one horse town as well as turning some of the attention to myself. I’ve been going to the gym almost every day and I’ve finally lost a bit of my baby weight, thank goodness. I still have a bit more to go, but I’m definitely making headway. I’m rewarding myself with a much needed haircut this weekend. I’ve been growing my hair out over the last 7 or so months and it’s currently in an awfully shaggy in-between state. I don’t know what I’m going to do to it yet, but something must be done. Dennis is begging me to cut it short-short again but I don’t think I’m going to go there. I haven’t decided. All I know is that I’m overdue for a haircut something fierce.

I stayed up until 4am last night working on our budget. Puzzling it out. Crunching the numbers. We have our property tax bills coming due soon and it’s causing me some anxiety. California is not kind to the homeowner. We’re on spending lockdown until I can figure it all out.

Apologies for not delivering my weekly meal plan last week. As I mentioned, my focus has been elsewhere (there’s only so much mama to go around!). But, my meal plan inspiration is renewed and I should have one for you guys on Monday morning. I’ve got an interesting week coming up and those are the weeks that for me, are the most fun to plan out. I don’t know why; I guess I like the challenge.

Stay with me folks, and stay tuned. I’m still here. And more good stuff is on the way.

Homebody

After creating last week’s new housekeeping schedule, I decided to start things off on the right foot by doing a whole-house general cleaning and decluttering. My timing couldn’t be better because the donation truck is rolling through our neighborhood on Monday morning and I will be ready!

Yes, this does go against my declaration of having claiming weekend’s off. But hopefully, this will be the last chore-filled weekend for a long while. Means to an end, people. Plus, I’m feeling especially “nesty” right now and when the urge to clean strikes, you’ve gotta seize the moment!

Yesterday, I deep cleaned the whole kitchen. Man, that felt so good. I loved getting all those little areas clean that rarely get touched. Today, I’m going to work on the master bedroom and the kids’ bedrooms. Oh, and I want to move our holiday stuff down to our new storage locker in the garage. Lots to do! All while hopefully fitting in an hour at the gym this afternoon.

In other housey news, after a search spanning many months, I found the perfect runners for our long hallway and ordered the rugs. I LOVE them and I can’t wait to see them in our space. I placed the order right before bed last night and I was so giddy about the whole thing that I fell asleep and literally dreamed about rugs all night. How sad is it that I am this excited about my new rugs? (Answer: Quite sad, actually.)

Anyway, the best part is that we paid cash (as we ALWAYS do these days because we are credit card FREE) and we got a smokin’ deal on some pieces for the house that I am really in love with. We’ve got our whole lives to get this place exactly how we want it, so I refuse to settle. Nothing is coming through our front door unless I really love it. And these rugs definitely fit the bill!

I’ll do a before and after hallway post in mid-August once our new runners have arrived!

It’s a beautiful sunny San Francisco morning and I’m really looking forward to enjoying a quiet Sunday puttering around at home. Puttering Sundays are THE BEST.

On keeping house

Now that Henry is old enough to join his big sister in destroying order around the house, I really need to step up my game to maximize efficiency. Some days I feel like I could literally clean morning, noon and night and never feel caught up.

At one point a few months ago, I came up with a “chores schedule”. It worked - sort of - but it was kinda complicated. I had everything divided up into daily, weekly, monthly, and “as needed” tasks, and it was loosely based on this method. My intentions were honorable, but admittedly, I found this housekeeping routine to be slightly too laborious. That, plus our variable schedule and my littlest one suddenly becoming super mobile, has forced me to rethink how I should spend my cleaning time.

When it was just little Maya (long before Henry came along), I would bomb around the house first thing in the morning, doing all my chores before she woke up. This worked well, and it was lovely to have everything completed before the day really got started. Flash forward a few years and another kid later, and now I feel like I can barely keep up. I swear on all that is holy that my kids seem to follow me around, immediately undoing at least 85% of my cleaning progress as I complete it. So I run around in circles re-doing chores whilst constantly trying to keep on top of the scattered Cheerios on the kitchen floor before somebody steps on them.

Efficiency? Uh, not so much.

I think at this stage of my life (and the kids’ lives), there will always be some element of constant clean-up. I will likely never get to sit back and bask in the glory of my perfectly clean house, at least not for more than 5-10 minutes at best. The laundry never ends. The dishes never stop. And oh, the Cheerios. Please don’t get me started on the Cheerios.

Currently, I run around cleaning up little messes all day, and then I do a major clean-up on the weekend when Dennis is home to help wrangle the kiddos. Yes, this approach gets the job done, but it means that I’m ALWAYS cleaning. Every single day. And in my opinion, that’s just not fair!

So how does a busy mama manage?

Simplicity. And acceptance. I’m realizing these concepts go hand-in-hand, are the keys to keeping an organized home. Simplicity and acceptance are paramount for survival.

THEREFORE.

I have divided my chores into very general categories, based on each room/area. For each room listed, I will complete a basic, no-frills clean-up. This means declutter, wipe, dust, polish, mop, sweep, vacuum, etc. I will also choose ONE drawer, cabinet, closet, etc. at my discretion, from that room, to thoroughly clean.

For example, if it’s Monday and “Kitchen” is my room for the day, then I will likely:

• remove any toys, books, mail, etc. from countertops
• wipe counters, stove, windowsills, windows
• polish stainless steel appliances
• mop floor
• and ALSO perhaps clean out the cutlery drawer

The idea is that each room/area gets my attention once a week, and most long-term cleaning projects will be negated as they are always constantly, slowly in progress. So something like a major kitchen cupboard re-org will happen, but probably take several weeks to fully complete. Make sense?

Also, I have one rule: When my room of the day is complete, I AM NOT ALLOWED TO CLEAN ANYTHING FURTHER. No exceptions. I’m all done for the day (except for the ongoing daily chores listed below, no escaping those, I’m afraid.)

So this is what my housekeeping schedule will look like going forward:

• Mondays: Kitchen
• Tuesdays: Bathrooms
• Wednesdays: Kids’ Bedrooms
• Thursdays: Master Bedroom
• Fridays: Dining Room/Living Room/Hallway
• Saturdays & Sundays: Weekends OFF!
• Ongoing Daily Chores: Make beds, laundry, dishes, toy clean-up, garbage/recycling/compost, Cheerio management.

I like this cleaning schedule. It’ll keep each room looking tidy while simultaneously allowing for the completion of larger-scale tasks. Plus, I get weekends off from cleaning! Sounds awesome to me!

Likely there will always be a few chores that I will need to schedule separate time for. These will probably be “one-offs” and I’ll have to tackle them as needed. For example, at some point, I’d like to organize our storage locker down in the garage and this might just have to be a weekend thing.

As for acceptance, I’ve just come to the realization that messes are a part of my life right now. We don’t live in a museum. We have real lives and little kids. My inner neat freak just has to let go and unclench. Some days are just going to be messy and that’s OK. Years from now, I probably won’t remember that the Toy Story toys got mixed in with the Barbies, or the night I left some dishes in the sink. But time with my young family is precious, fleeting and indelible.