sorta H&F: running a household

[breezy8407]

Whenever I read the weekend workout posts, I am always a teeny bit jealous of all the fun stuff everyone does on the weekend. I feel like my workout is my luxury, and the rest of the time I am cleaning my house, doing laundry, going to Target/Costco for essentials, yard work, cooking food for the week, etc. 

Yesterday my H and I spent the entire day (except for my run) cleaning and doing yard work - both of us. My mom and sister were even here to take care of the babies, but we still didn't get everything on our list crossed off. 

Maybe this is a vent? Is this just life with two kids? I am just wondering when/how everyone else keeps up especially those that are training for time intensive stuff like full marathons and Ironmans and the like. 

Any pro tips? Does everyone have a paid house cleaning service? (my dream of all dreams)

[juliahenry]

Honestly, this is just life with two kids. They generate a lot of work. If I'm not cleaning up their mess, I'm cleaning or fixing house stuff related to the fact that with two small children, we no longer live in the urban, maintenance free condo.

Every few weeks, we have a day or a weekend when we don't do it and that's nice. But, like going out whenever, sleeping until you wake up, and discovering that your fridge contains only mustard, salad dressing, and diet coke, free weekends are a thing of the past, at least until the kids hit double-digit ages.

They're worth it but, man, they're a lot of work...

[al320]

We pay someone to take care of our (very very tiny) lawn because of allergies. Our house is always an embarrassing disaster area (the idea of taking the time to find a cleaning person and then clean for the cleaning person is overwhelming). Errands are the weekend day activity lol. Also, we dont have kids.

[gt7301b]

We have a housekeeper, but I still feel overwhelmed by running our household and it is just the two of us. Our yard looks like sh!t right now because Mr. GT hasn't fully mowed the backyard in weeks and it is now too high for him to mow if it has rained in the last 24 hrs or so. I think he is going to have to use the weed wackier to finish up.

What I have started doing is getting in 15-30 minutes of cleaning each night during the week. That way I don't spend the entire weekend working around the house.

I really don't know how folks with kids do it. I'm pretty sure I will drop to part time if we ever decide to procreate.

[cinco]

We have an HOA that takes care of our yardwork. I'm a little bit nervous about dealing with that when we move to the new house. When I'm marathon training I tend to slack on the cleaning a bit, doing more straightening than deep cleaning. It also gets a little easier as your kids get older because you can out source some of your chores to them

Right now, in the midst of getting our house rented out and a move, I am totally in the weeds. I know I need to give myself a break and make time for more fun, but I can't get out of the "so much to do" mentality.

[libbygrl109]

I think it's life with kids. Mine is older (just turned 5), but I still feel like there are never enough hours in the day to do everything. My house is a disaster right now, and this week will be a huge flurry of cleaning because I'll have our families over this weekend for a BBQ. It may stay presentable for about a day until I go back to work, and DS brings the toys back out (oh, the neverending toys. They get bigger as they get older). I just get to the point where I say to DH, "I am going for a run. I'll see you in an hour." It's the one time where I feel like I accomplished something.

[demandypants]

Sometimes, things just don't get done. Like I would rather take advantage of the nice weather to spend time on the street with the neighbors and watch the kids play than to scrub my tub every weekend. So the tub gets a little scummy and is sprayed down another time. Sure there is dust, and clutter. But we have fun.

[kellydelq]

I think it is just life with kids. Running a household and raising a family is hard. really hard. With three kids, sports schedules, homework, both parents working, a house to keep, dinners to be cooked, cleaning, and of course, workouts... I am never sure how it all gets done. I constantly fee like I am being pulled in three different directions and there are not enough hours in the day. But it does eventually all get done maybe not exactly when or how I would like it but I have learned to choose my battles.
We used to have a monthly cleaning service but cut it when finances got tight. Now, we usually take turns doing a deep monthly clean. For example, I took the kids out on Saturday and DH stayed home all day to clean, he can get it done more efficiently without everyone in the way. As far as the regular house keep and laundry, we just try to do a little each day so it doesn't get to the point it is overwhelming. I don't go to bed without the kitchen cleaned up, toys put away, laundry folded, etc.
We try to do something fun on the weekends as a family every weekend. Even if it is an hour to the park or watching a movie together, not every day is perfect and we don't have awesome weekend plans every week but we try to enjoy whatever time together it is. I always feel guilty if we aren't out doing something with them then I realize they are just as happy sitting in the living room building train tracks and watching Belle

[joenali]

I don't have two kids and dh and I had a talk before all of this training started. We looked at my plan, I have him linked to my training calendar so there are no surprises. I try to do weekend workouts in the morning so I have the rest of the day at home. When I use my trainer (so I can be at home) I'll have the laundry going. I'm not really gone all that much. There will be a few days when I'll be gone all day long. He also does some of my runs with me. When SS is with us he knows what I'm doing and thinks its pretty neat. We get grocery delivery so we don't have to go to the grocery store. I don't watch tv except in the morning during the week before school. And yes, our house isn't the cleanest right now because I'm training, working or sleeping and DH is working on his National Bards for teaching. But it's not forever, it's temporary.

[breezy8407]

I definitely don't expect things to be like they were pre-kids, but man. I am tired. And I guess I am feeling guilty today sitting here starting another week after barely spending time with my two this weekend.

H and I are both neat/clean freaks and I am much better at letting things go than he is, but I definitely don't feel like I am going above and beyond here.

[Stingyshark]

Oh good, so it's going to get even better when this kid arrives. ;-)

I'm a horrible house keeper, so I can only imagine what it will be like when we have a kid. DH takes care of all the outside stuff, but he's gone all week, and then some weekends he is still gone. I LOVE that he is handy, it's saved us an assload of money, but OMG. EVERYONE and their brother ALWAYS needs him for something- so even when he's "off" from work, he's not "off" from helping someone.

[Stingyshark]

Also.. why isn't their grocery delivery in this podunk county that I live in. dang. that would be AWESOME.

[ebeth]

maybe we're just slobs or something but I can't fathom a circumstance where cleaning our house and maintaining our yard would take all of both weekend days. but we live in the city and neither our house nor our yard are that big.

we'll frequently do power cleans where we'll set a timer for 30 minutes and each of us takes a floor and we just clean whatever we can. the house is usually clean enough after that. we also do little cleaning during the week. Like tonight I'll probably clean the bathroom counters and toilet. tomorrow I'll wipe down the shower,etc.

the only chores we did this weekend were laundry, grocery shopping, and general tidying.

[Deleted]

That is about how our life is too, although usually Saturdays are devoted to doing something fun and Sundays are get ready for the week day with naps and relaxing built in. I will say that when the kids are teeny tiny, it seems much more overwhelming and well, boring, because they are so completely reliant on you. My DS is 4.5 and is PT, STTN, can do things for himself, so now even though we do a lot of chores on teh weekend, life is so much more managable since he doesn't need me to do everything for him. Hang in there!

Also, I should add, that I am not a neat freak. Our house is clean, but cluttered, and I just do not want to spend the extra time I have on cleaning (apart fron the cleaning I already do). I would rather be exercising or spending time with my family doing something fun.

[joenali]

May 20, 2013 8:35:34 GMT -5 Stingyshark said:

Also.. why isn't their grocery delivery in this podunk county that I live in. dang. that would be AWESOME.

I keep telling myself not to do it anymore, because its a little more expensive than they regular grocery store, but man it's so easy to have groceries show up on your porch in less than 24 hours!!!

[emuni04]

I hear you, sister!

We do have a cleaning service, and even with that I feel like our weekends are spent cleaning/organizing, etc.

My H and I have a system where we each get a chunk of the day to do our workouts, no questions asked. That's the only way it would work in our house. And thankfully, L goes to sleep around 7 (and is still taking 3 naps per day) which gives us time to clean, etc.

[taratru]

Yeah, um...we don't do any fun stuff on the weekends and it's not because of kids. It's because we're so fucking tired from working all week that going places and doing shit is the LAST thing we want to do. Going to the grocery store is my big outing most weekends. The parents who manage to do all that fun shit blow my mind. AND my house is flipping mess. AND I don't really do anything meaningful with the family.

So you're okay. There's always someone doing it "better."

[emuni04]

May 20, 2013 8:45:15 GMT -5 taratru said:

Yeah, um...we don't do any fun stuff on the weekends and it's not because of kids. It's because we're so fucking tired from working all week that going places and doing shit is the LAST thing we want to do. Going to the grocery store is my big outing most weekends. The parents who manage to do all that fun shit blow my mind. AND my house is flipping mess. AND I don't really do anything meaningful with the family.

So you're okay. There's always someone doing it "better."

I second this. We actually got a babysitter for the first time this past Friday night and I honestly had ZERO desire to go out and do anything. I had to force myself to go out and grab margs and Mexican with H. I just wanted to sit on my butt and watch Scandal

[breezy8407]

We completely clean the house every two weeks - vacuuming, dusting, kitchen surfaces scrubbed, I swiffer and steam vac the wood floors, and the bathroom top to bottom. I used to stretch it to 3, but now that I have a crawler and a walker, I don't want them eating 3 day old peas off the floor.

Maybe this is excessive? Before kids, I used to do this whole routine in about 3 hours. Now we have to break it up between naps and meals, so it feels like it gets dragged out across a day.

Stingyshark - it's a lot easier when they are tiny and not mobile

emuni04 - I hear ya. Once I finished my work yesterday, my mom was still there and asked me if there was any shopping I wanted to do. Of course the answer was yes, but I was too tired to go anywhere!

[shorty20]

We only have a kid in the house half the time, and it's still hard to get everything done! I try to do some laundry every evening, and we always make sure the kitchen is cleaned up, and the dishes and things are put away before we go to bed.

Saturdays we *normally* do our deeper cleaning. With both of us helping (and sometimes SD when she's there) it takes us about an hour to an hour and a half. I will typically sweep the hardwood and bathroom floors, and clean the bathroom sinks, toilets and mirrors. DH will run the vacuum and clean the showers. Once a month we try to dust (our blinds are a total PITA, I swear you dust them and 5 minutes later they're dusty again!) and mop the floors. We fit in mowing the lawn whatever day it works out best. DH does it 9 times out of 10, but I will help occasionally. We have a push mower, so it counts as exercise!

We have 3 cats, so our house is never truly clean, but it's not a disaster area. Neither of us are neat freaks, so we do the best we can. I think you could clean for the rest of your life, there's always something that needs done, but who wants to live like that? We try to keep relatively clean, but also squeeze fun stuff in as well, life's too short to worry about dust and cat hair!

A lot of times we're too exhausted to go out either. We're total homebodies.

[Deleted]

May 20, 2013 9:19:10 GMT -5 breezy8407 said:

We completely clean the house every two weeks - vacuuming, dusting, kitchen surfaces scrubbed, I swiffer and steam vac the wood floors, and the bathroom top to bottom. I used to stretch it to 3, but now that I have a crawler and a walker, I don't want them eating 3 day old peas off the floor.

Maybe this is excessive? Before kids, I used to do this whole routine in about 3 hours. Now we have to break it up between naps and meals, so it feels like it gets dragged out across a day.

Stingyshark - it's a lot easier when they are tiny and not mobile

emuni04 - I hear ya. Once I finished my work yesterday, my mom was still there and asked me if there was any shopping I wanted to do. Of course the answer was yes, but I was too tired to go anywhere!

Okay, why don't you do a couple chores a night instead of cramming everything into the weekend? I created my own little housekeeping schedule and it works out much better that way. E.g., floors are done Tue, Thurs and Sat, bathrooms are done on Wed., laundry is done on Friday, etc.

[secretlyevil]

This a huge reason H and I can't pull the trigger on a kid. Because it is hard to keep up after the two of us, man if it's a busy week, it looks like a tornado went through our house and I truly resent giving several hours of my weekend to clean my house so it doesn't always get done. Like right now, the place is a disaster area. Imagining throwing a kid into the mix gives me a bit of panic attack. I am enjoying my work out routine and I fear that would be the first to go with a kid.

Your thread is timely because it is foremost on my brain because Saturday my younger SIL/BIL told us she was pregnant. So excited for them but I was hoping to have more time to make up my mind. If H and I have a kid, it will most definitely be one and done, so we were going to rely on them for cousin/siblings.

I think it's important to have a balance. In order to achieve that, it requires letting some things go.

[thom]

Bree, let me just say you sound like cleaning superwoman! I try to vacuum weekly, and I wipe things down, do laundry, and tidy the kitchen everyday. Other than that I probably only do a BIG cleaning every few months. Maybe...

(For reference, I have 2 large indoor dogs & no kids.)

Also, when I'm running a lot I get even less done. I really try to do my long runs on Saturday early so I still have some time to clean, cook, etc before I go to work. (I work at about noon on Saturday & then 5:30 am Sunday.)

When I am not training for a big race, I never run super long because I don't have the time. I know I'm behind on house, yard, and farm stuff so I need to play catch-up after this marathon. I think I've promised my H as much.

I suppose my point is that I think you're doing great. You are making home & family a priority (as you need to) and you are still running races & getting speedy again. I know it seems like a long way off, but in several years the twins will be old enough to help w/ the chores too.

[Brit]

We outsource a lot of stuff. I don't claim to be the most fun, most do most awesome stuff on the weekend person, but what fun stuff I do get to do is thanks, in large part, to the cleaning ladies and landscapers. Do we have other stuff that should probably get done? Sure. We have a ton of renovation type work that we have yet to start on, but the week to week cleaning and yard work is mostly done by others. When we first bought our house we were doing all of the yard work, but it just got to be too much; we were spending 8 hours/week just on mowing alone. It just wasn't worth it. The cleaning ladies have been onboard since the day we moved in, they were the ones who were commissioned to remove the previous owners' cooties and we've had them ever since.


ebeth - To maintain 13 acres and a small orchard we could easily be out there 40 hours a week if we did it ourselves and wanted everything just so all the time. I think I'm on the other end of the extreme than you with my sprawling yard!

[skwcm80]

We hired a cleaning service after ds was born because I was feeling a lot like you described, and it has made a world of difference. She does the deep cleaning every other week, and we do light cleaning between her visits.


Honestly I'm still amazed at the amount if extra work a second child created, and couldn't imagine going from zero to two.

[finallykrisb]

All I can say is thank goodness for teenage children! For example, they want to have friends over Memorial Day weekend. No problem, clean the house. I will be riding my bike.

When the kids were smaller there is no way I could have trained for anything.

[Deleted]

We have a cleaning lady who does the laundry and DH only works part time so he runs all the errands and handles the bills and stuff. So yeah, that leaves very little to do on weekends. But I work about 12 hours/day during the week, so I really need my weekends to rejuvenate. And even so, I still end up working some weekends.

[breezy8407]

May 20, 2013 9:28:54 GMT -5 @mjmksb04 said:

May 20, 2013 9:19:10 GMT -5 breezy8407 said:

We completely clean the house every two weeks - vacuuming, dusting, kitchen surfaces scrubbed, I swiffer and steam vac the wood floors, and the bathroom top to bottom. I used to stretch it to 3, but now that I have a crawler and a walker, I don't want them eating 3 day old peas off the floor.

Maybe this is excessive? Before kids, I used to do this whole routine in about 3 hours. Now we have to break it up between naps and meals, so it feels like it gets dragged out across a day.

Stingyshark - it's a lot easier when they are tiny and not mobile

emuni04 - I hear ya. Once I finished my work yesterday, my mom was still there and asked me if there was any shopping I wanted to do. Of course the answer was yes, but I was too tired to go anywhere!

Okay, why don't you do a couple chores a night instead of cramming everything into the weekend? I created my own little housekeeping schedule and it works out much better that way. E.g., floors are done Tue, Thurs and Sat, bathrooms are done on Wed., laundry is done on Friday, etc.

I've considered this after hearing people organize their cleaning in this way. I think I need to attempt this. Sometimes we end up cleaning this way...DH will dust one night, I will clean the bathroom the next. 

Thanks, I like this idea.

[breezy8407]

May 20, 2013 9:45:26 GMT -5 thom said:

Bree, let me just say you sound like cleaning superwoman! I try to vacuum weekly, and I wipe things down, do laundry, and tidy the kitchen everyday. Other than that I probably only do a BIG cleaning every few months. Maybe...

(For reference, I have 2 large indoor dogs & no kids.)

Also, when I'm running a lot I get even less done. I really try to do my long runs on Saturday early so I still have some time to clean, cook, etc before I go to work. (I work at about noon on Saturday & then 5:30 am Sunday.)

When I am not training for a big race, I never run super long because I don't have the time. I know I'm behind on house, yard, and farm stuff so I need to play catch-up after this marathon. I think I've promised my H as much.

I suppose my point is that I think you're doing great. You are making home & family a priority (as you need to) and you are still running races & getting speedy again. I know it seems like a long way off, but in several years the twins will be old enough to help w/ the chores too.

You are so sweet. Thank you. 

Beyond doing more things in little spurts, I think the deep cleaning stuff can be pushed out further. 

[kams]

May 20, 2013 11:02:33 GMT -5 breezy8407 said:

May 20, 2013 9:28:54 GMT -5 @mjmksb04 said:

Okay, why don't you do a couple chores a night instead of cramming everything into the weekend? I created my own little housekeeping schedule and it works out much better that way. E.g., floors are done Tue, Thurs and Sat, bathrooms are done on Wed., laundry is done on Friday, etc.

I've considered this after hearing people organize their cleaning in this way. I think I need to attempt this. Sometimes we end up cleaning this way...DH will dust one night, I will clean the bathroom the next. 

Thanks, I like this idea.

This is what I do. But, I'm not sure if my voice really counts because I'm a pt wahm of only one.

Also, my home is never spotless.