Working full time & running a house

JIL

Just be organised. Keep up to date with the washing. Meal plan and routines. A place for everything and very little clutter all help. Do enough during the week that you do minimal at the weekend. It helps to have a proper day to yourself.

Trishiapp

I'm a single mother with two teenage children, three cats and 2 guinea pigs. I work full time, study and, similarly to the OP, commute two hours per day ( hour each way.)

I found that, little and often is the best approach. I don't enjoy doing housework at the weekends, but generally spend good two or three hours doing the larger jobs: changing bedding, cleaning piggies cage, vacuuming the entire house, if needed, decorating etc...


I tend to do washing as I go along and hang it out before I go to work. In order to fit in all of my daily chores, some days, I wake up at 5 am! And that's before I even do my 9 till 5!


Since I love gardening, I don't see it as a chore. In fact, I would rather spend time outdoors than indoors.


I despise ironing, so I do it as little as I possibly can get away with. I tend to put washed clothes away immediately and only iron what we need on the day.


Whilst doing most of the chores by myself ( my children do help out occasionally) can be very tiring, at least it keeps me fit

nonnatus

I work full time and have two teenage kids.


The kids keep their own rooms tidy, do their own washing and prepare their own packed lunches. Each cooks once a week. In addition, they have separate chores (son mows the lawn and takes charge of the bins, daughter does all the hovering)


I keep the kitchen and living room clean and tidy. I can't relax knowing there's washing up to be done or worktops to be cleaned. I do the rest of the cooking and clean the bathrooms when they start to look embarrassing!


I NEVER iron. I tumble dry and fold immediately. (The extra expense is more than worth it to avoid ironing).


We SPRING CLEAN once a year. Takes one day and is always around the anniversary of when we moved into this lovely house. This involves washing walls and woodwork, inside windows (window cleaner every 6 weeks for outside and he does doors, sills and gutters as part of the job for £20), painting, tile grout refreshing, oven, tops of cupboards etc. It's a fun day that entails lots of mess, lots of giggling and giant Dominoes Pizza (which used to be washed down with Coke but has now evolved to Cider!!)


We do great. We have 5 dogs and visitors often comment how nice it smells in our home (I'm obsessed with air fresheners...).


I regularly think about having a cleaner and the kids would LOVE it, but I just don't like the idea of someone else bumbling around our home. Not to mention having to keep the dogs out of the way!


Find a routine that suits your family, but remember it's a FAMILY home and as such the whole family should be involved in looking after it. Don't be a martyr...

Savannah02K

I do jobs over the end of the working week so I can pretty much have the weekend free: Wed (clean bedrooms and bathroom); Thurs (landing, stairs, hallway and downstairs); Fri (food shopping). Washing I do during the week, if it's a nice day like today I put the washing on night before on delayed start then just get up 15 mins earlier and peg it out before I go to work. I'm doing the 5:2 diet regime with my 2 fast days being Thurs and Fri and I find having stuff to do on those 2 days takes my mind off snacking! Ironing I usually do Sun morning before everyone gets up but then I do very little ironing these days .....

Having said all of that, I wouldn't criticise anyone who works who then decides to have a cleaner, someone to do their ironing etc. Up to you how you spend the money you earn.

bess1234_2

Don't sigh at meal planning. Making decisions is the hard bit. Getting home to a list that tells you what your cooking is a relief. And batch cook for the freezer so those days you can't be bothered you have a ready meal, but tastes like real food.

As for cleaning, no matter how hard I try to make a routine I can't be bothered with it and both me and oh tend to spend sat sorting house food and cooking out. But in a lazy together kind of way.

kboss2010

I find that my motivation comes in fits and starts. It drives my OH crazy that I'll suddenly get the urge to get up and fold the washing mid-tv show because it's bugging me. I'm quite an untidy person but dirt bugs me. As a teen, I stayed at an aunt's house one evening and her youngest daughter seemed to be expected to do all the chores for the other three in the house (all women I should add). After 15 minutes of staring at a stack of plates a mile high I got up and started cleaning the kitchen. My cousin was shocked that I was helping her with the housework and my aunt's response was "*You* don't need to do that, that's her job!" - seriously? ! That house was like Cinderella and her ugly sisters.

I also don't iron anything. I wear tshirts and jeans to work so if you dry them properly ironing is unnecessary.

tori.k

Im still trying to find a way to stay on top of things and been back full-time for over a decade, life has a habit of getting in the way of housework, choose the jobs that bug you the most, dishes, bathrooms and laundry is mine so my everyday jobs to me there is nothing worse than getting up at 6am and facing a sink full of dishes so these are done as soon as we are finished eating, we are open planned here so live quite minimalist in the communal area's as it's the only way to stay on top it but it's still an on-going battle usually paperwork that migrates to the kitchen worktop but i've learnt to give myself a break their is a difference between dirty and untidy

Linda32

I find little and often is the key.

Just a thought, just about everyone who posts on OS keeps house, yet the forum is buzzing so we all must have quite a lot of spare time on our hands

I tend to do any jobs between 6.30 and 7.30pm so maybe ironing from that days washing (never letting it build up) if you have more than one bed to change. Then change on different days so you don't have a lot of bedding to iron.

A quick hoover around one night. A quick dust around the next night etc.
Wash pots in the morning and last thing at night.

It works for us to have a day out at the weekend and a day of house stuff, could you make this work for you. So say if you did house work in the morning at the weekend but know that you would go out in the afternoon.