healthwiz
03-26-03, 12:35 AM
Cleaning the house is always a challenge. It's one that almost drove my spouse and I apart, so it is very important. I recently discovered a neat technique. It's a spin off of a study technique I learned for my daughter. When I saw it worked on her, I wondered if it might work for cleaning the house. So here it is: And its simple:
One person in the family wears a watch with a 10 minute count down style timer on it. Everyone in the family meets and decides which rooms are the priorities that day. Sometimes the kids might really want their room to be a priority, so we schedule one child's room one week and another child's room another week. We generally pick 3-4 rooms to tackle. Then we decide which one is first, we get our cleaning products and rags and enter that room and begin the stop watch. We divide up what we are going to do, simply by saying I'll clean the mirror, I'll scrub the bathtub, etc. The youngest, she is 5, will ask us what she can do, so we give her some simple tasks, like put all the shoes away, take them to the bedroom, or empty the garbage can, etc...we keep her busy on small tasks. She gets upset if we run out of stuff for her to do, as its boring watching all of us work. The kicker is we are trying to see how much we can get done in 10 minutes. If we get the whole bathroom done in 10 minutes, we are done and can go on to the next room. If we are not done, we have to reset for 10 more minutes. So the goal is to use the least number of 10 minute periods to get a room done. We whip through 4 rooms pretty fast this way, every weekend, and still have time to go out and enjoy the weekend. It's amazing how much can get done when 4 people attack it all at once. So thats our cleaning method, and it works....do it every weekend....and the house will stay considerably cleaner. Best of all...its kind of fun and it develops a sense of community within our family.
Jon
One person in the family wears a watch with a 10 minute count down style timer on it. Everyone in the family meets and decides which rooms are the priorities that day. Sometimes the kids might really want their room to be a priority, so we schedule one child's room one week and another child's room another week. We generally pick 3-4 rooms to tackle. Then we decide which one is first, we get our cleaning products and rags and enter that room and begin the stop watch. We divide up what we are going to do, simply by saying I'll clean the mirror, I'll scrub the bathtub, etc. The youngest, she is 5, will ask us what she can do, so we give her some simple tasks, like put all the shoes away, take them to the bedroom, or empty the garbage can, etc...we keep her busy on small tasks. She gets upset if we run out of stuff for her to do, as its boring watching all of us work. The kicker is we are trying to see how much we can get done in 10 minutes. If we get the whole bathroom done in 10 minutes, we are done and can go on to the next room. If we are not done, we have to reset for 10 more minutes. So the goal is to use the least number of 10 minute periods to get a room done. We whip through 4 rooms pretty fast this way, every weekend, and still have time to go out and enjoy the weekend. It's amazing how much can get done when 4 people attack it all at once. So thats our cleaning method, and it works....do it every weekend....and the house will stay considerably cleaner. Best of all...its kind of fun and it develops a sense of community within our family.
Jon