Being a mom is a blessing and a great responsibility. You have lovely kids to take care of – and you will constantly worry about them especially when you are away from them. You have thousands of household chores waiting for you at home: the sink is full of dirty cutlery, the laundry basket is full, everyone’s wardrobe has to be arranged and you have to cook for the family. To top it all, you might have your own business to mind, or be employed. All this might drive you to your extreme if you have no planned routine to work it all out. Even when multi-tasking you have to have a proper laid out plan.
To survive all this work, you need to have a strategy. Some things you can do to ease your workload are:
Have a To – Do List
Having an organized list of all the activities you need to do will help you prioritize. What activities are the most important and should be carried out first? What activities are not all that important? What activities could wait until tomorrow? How much time do you need for each specific activity? How many people are in your home and how can they help you achieve it all? When should you have a break?
All the above are questions you need to consider when making an activity list to help you in effective multi-tasking.
Also, be flexible. Do not let the list fully control you, it should be flexible enough to accompany additional workload, additional helpers, emergency activities and tiredness issues.
Organize A Schedule
Have a set routine about how you will do all your work. It would be a plus to let everyone in the house aware of your chosen and established routine in order to avoid clashes and disturbances while you’re doing the chores. For example, everyone should be aware of what time you clean the house so they avoid being in the house at that specific time to allow you room to execute your plans.
Also, everyone should know when laundry is done, to avoid leftover laundry. If you have assigned anyone a task – such as assigning washing of utensils to your daughter let her know when, how and why she should do the activity.
Avoid Procrastination
Sometimes you will get too lazy and decide to carry forward the day’s work to the next day. Do you what you can do now. Avoid time wasting. If you carry forward your activities, your workload will only increase in time and with time, you will be overwhelmed by all you have to do. Then you will be in a big mess since time will be too little.
Multitask Simple and Easy Tasks
Multitask when you can. This greatly reduces your workload. Such as applying your makeup while feeding the kids; washing, drying and folding your laundry at the same time; cooking while washing utensils; listening to your favorite podcast while brushing teeth.
You can even make multitasking fun – such as playing with the kids while cleaning the house; or teaching the kids how to work in the garden while you are also working on it.
Self Discipline
You will have to force yourself do some chores you don’t like because you have to. Also, when you feel lazy, you will still have to work since your family depends on you. Do all chores to the best of your ability, to minimize any repetitions of a task.
Limit Distracters
Your children, spouses, guests or pets might distract you from your duties, making you late in performing them. Avoid watching television or using your phone when executing your duties. If you need space while working, make it clear to other house members. Limiting distracters is the best way to get everything done on time especialy when multi-tasking.
Work in Small Increments
Do not hurry too much to do everything at once. You will be swallowing a pie too large for your mouth, which is disastrous. Do the activities incrementally; few small things at a time, just the right pace and soon you will be amazed at the size of workload you can finish in a day.
Find Motivation
Doing the same chores every time every day will always feel like a monotony over the course of time. Even if you love your job, you will get bored soon. However, you can counter this by trying the following:
Look for the light – look forward to better days such as birthdays, night time when you will be asleep with your spouse, public holidays when you can rest, or even vacations.
Motivational quotes – the Internet has lots of motivational quotes services. You can utilize them to get daily motivation to push you through your day.
Get Moving – when you are very tired, the last thing you would want is to wake up and start working again. However, this is a proven to revive your motivation. Start working and your heartbeat will spur more energy into you, reviving you.
Get Support – inform your mate of how exhausted you are and often, they will chip in to help you cut down the workload.
Tick the List – once an activity is completed tick it on your list as done. This motivates you as one task has already been down so that is one less task to perform for the day.
Set Clear Boundaries
Be clear on when you should rest and how much work you are supposed to do in a given day. When you feel like you are overworking yourself, take an immediate rest and reflect. You can also find out how multi-tasking simple chores can make your days less hectic.
Make Time For You
As much as you are working for the whole family, make some time for yourself. You have a life and you need to take care of yourself.
Take a bath, have a rest, take a walk or watch a movie, since you deserve the best. This will also help you keep your moods in check, as being overworked will leave you dull, unable to cope with your family.
As a mom, your responsibilities will need a lot of planning and multi-tasking. All decisions you make will affect your whole family. If you try the above measures, you can be well assured of a fun-filled adventure in life with your family.
There is perhaps no more important cleaning item in the house than floors. As a cleaning company, we hear many requests about how to handle a certain part of the house, but floor care is our most frequent request.
With that in mind, many people have no idea how to clean their floors the best way.
The simple answer is that different floor types require different styles of cleaning to eliminate the most dirt and grime while doing the least amount of long-term damage to the surface. One thing to keep in mind is that the key to floor health is not just in how well you clean, but in how well you treat your flooring in between cleanings.
Here is a brief guide to handling different types of floors.
How To Clean Hardwood Floors
The most important thing to do before applying any wet cleaning agent to a floor is to remove as much dirt and debris as possible. Feel free to use a duster, a high quality broom, and/or a vacuum to pick up the little pieces that were left behind.
Go over this a second time, and make sure that you’re either not wearing shoes or you’re wearing shoe coverings. Obviously, you don’t want to track dirt.
Next, you want to use a mop with just a little bit of cleaning solution. You can add a few drops of some type of scented oil if you’d like (lemon works pretty well on floors.) Two important things:
Mop along the grain of the wood
Do NOT use to much water on the floor so as not to leave any standing water
An easy way to ensure you’re not using too much liquid is to use a swiffer mop instead of a regular one. We use them a lot at Companion Maids, and we’ve found them to be a universally good tool to get the job done, especially in a bind.
Hardwood Floors with a stain
The following advice is from an article featured in “Better Homes and Gardens”
Consider your floor’s finish before trying to remove a mark. If the stain is on the surface, your floor probably has a hard finish, such as urethane. If the stain has penetrated through to the wood, the floor probably has a soft oiled finish — common in older homes whose floors have not been refinished and resealed. Wipe surface stains from a hard finish with a soft, clean cloth. Never use sandpaper, steel wool, or harsh chemicals on such a surface because they can permanently damage the finish.
The following remedies are for hardwood floors with soft oiled finishes. If needed, end each treatment by staining the wood, then waxing and buffing the spot to match the rest of the floor.
Dark spots and pet stains: Rub the spot with No. 000 steel wool and floor wax. If the area is still dark, apply bleach or vinegar and allow it to soak into the wood for about an hour. Rinse with a damp cloth.
Heel marks: Use fine steel wool to rub in floor wax.
Oil-base stains: Rub the area with a soft cloth and dishwashing detergent to break down the grease. Rinse with clear water. If one or more applications don’t work, repeat the procedure. Keep children and pets out of the room until you’re done. Let the spot dry, then smooth the raised grain with fine sandpaper.
Water marks or white stains: Rub the spot with No. 000 steel wool and floor wax. If the stain goes deeper, lightly sand the floor and clean with fine steel wool and odorless mineral spirits.
How To Clean Tile Floors
As said above, the first thing to do is make sure you have swept and vacuumed the surface area so as not to track dirt with your mop or cleaning rag. You should do this regularly to keep the floor in good shape.
Again, the name of the game is to use a mop with very little water. You don’t want any water to seep into the cracks, especially if your tile is stone or you have a lot of grout in between the tiles. We recommend using a swiffer.
However, the key to a “clean” versus “truly clean” tile floor is how you handle the grout. Because grout is porous, it absorbs grease and other stains and gets dirtier over time, making it harder to clean. As a result, the best way to treat grout is to make a mixture of baking soda and water, mix it into a paste, and rub it into the grout, focusing on areas that are dirtier.
Now let that paste sit there overnight. The next morning, scrub the paste off with a dry, stiff brush material like nylon. Do not use metal as it will scrape away and damage the grout. Repeat as necessary.
How To Clean Linoleum Floors
Linoleum or vinyl flooring is much more simple to care for, from a cleaning perspective. Caring for the floor relies more on your daily routine and movements than how you clean it. Don’t use heavy furniture, or slide chairs across the surface, as this can leave a dent or scratch the floors. It is also important to wax the floors occasionally to retain it’s beautiful shine.
As always, before cleaning the floor, make sure you remove dirt and debris with a broom or dust mop. Only use a small vacuum (like a dirt devil) so as not to damage the surface with heavy machinery.
Cleaning the floor with a mop is pretty easy, just be sure that your cleaning solution is not too potent. A low strength detergent will do you just fine here.
As always, be sure to not use too much water.
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We hope that this advice on different types of flooring can help you keep your floors clean and healthy. Companion Maids prides ourselves on providing high quality cleaning services in the Chicago area, and one of the main things we focus on his having a clean floor.
Feel free to check out our other posts on keeping your home clean, such as how to clean your carpet.
Hiring just the right housekeeper can be life-altering for the busy family. Now, this may seem to be a little over-the-top, but I am serious. Think about your life-whether single, a couple or a family you have no time. No time to keep your home as organized or clean as you would like. No time to do the smaller tidying jobs that would make a huge difference.
