Does anyone else have trouble motivating yourself to keep your house tidy? I'm off on weekends and it's like all I want to do is sleep and read a bit but don't want to do any domestic chores, it's like I'm too tired all the time. And I LIKE a clean house, I just can't make myself do it.
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I tend to feel pressured to clean the whole house and wander from room to room, getting sidetracked along the way...not focusing on any area.
The trouble with this is that you don't see any results with all this wandering. So, what I do is set a timer for 15 minutes (or even just 10 minutes if I am really unmotivated) and tell myself that I HAVE to stay in the room I am cleaning and NOT wander to any other rooms. Just concentrate on that area. When the 10 minutes are up, take a good look. You will be amazed at how much you got done and how nice it looks!
Then you can do 10 minutes in each room. That way it is broken up into bite sized, manageable pieces, and not as overwhelming as thinking I HAVE clean the WHOLE house at once!
I understand how you feel!! I am the world's worst housekeeper! I would much rather walk around something than actually take the time to pick it up and put it away.
What I try to do is -- do a little bit every night during the week. I might still have some laundry or misc chore to do on the weekend, but I'm not trying to do everything.
A suggestion: Right now my dh and I are doing a lot of "spring cleaning". We've gotten rid of a lot of things that we just don't have a use for/don't use anymore. That has helped to keep things looking nicer (less junk, less mess ). If you have a chance, go through all of your things and see if there's anything you can get rid of.
Good Luck!!
__________________ Shed my cocoon and became a Butterfly in 2007 May The Force Be With You Hope-Faith-Love-Happiness always
I understand your frustration. One part of you wants a nice, tidy, clean home the other part says "who cares". Well, obviously we care, which is what causes the problem. If we didn't care, there wouldn't be a problem. LOL Small steps really does help. I have chronic fatigue syndrome/fibromyalgia and anything more than small steps is out of my realm. It has really been hard to "let go", but the house is still here and I'm learning some valuable lessons on the importance of "stopping to smell the roses". Maybe your body needs some down time. Do the things that must be done in little increments, but listen to your body. I really wish I had done that when I had a chance to enjoy the world on down time instead of resting it away. Hugs, Lendi
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With me, it's that I have a hard time keeping MYSELF clean. I don't like being dirty, but I don't have the energy to do otherwise. I just quit school because of my apathy towards my homework. I imagine that's how you feel towards housework. When I quit school, I was renewed, and have been on a cleaning frenzy in my room since I got back. I can't really give you any adivce, just letting you know I've been there. Maybe some of these other suggestions can help you get parts of your house clean, and you can feel renewed to finish the job. ((((hugs)))) and good luck to you.
Wow! I thought I was the only deliquent housewife on the planet. I'm not really a "housewife;" I work full-time. But, I feel like since my DH is crazy busy with medical school, that I ought to do most of the cleaning--or at least half, right? Well, I don't and I *hate* having a messy house. It's been a struggle for my entire marriage (4.5 years). What DH and I are doing right now is we've broken up all the chores so that we have a roughly "equal" amount. Then we decided which days we're going to do them. For example, I do laundry on Thursday, DH vaccuums on Wednesday. Then if one of us can't do our chores for the day we ask the other one to pick up the slack or trade. I work better on a structured schedule and I don't like to do it all on Saturday. We just started this last week, so we'll see if it works!
I'm sick of being the maid. I work part time, volunteer at the kids school, drive dd to 4-H, gymnastics, school activities, drive ds to basketball, 4-H, ski club, etc. etc. I do 95% of the cooking, and 100% of the cleaning. It's not that my husband thinks I should do the cleaning, it's that he doesn't care if the house is a mess. If I specifically say "please pick up your ice cream bowl" then yes, he'll do it. But other than that, it doesn't happen. Very frustrating. I've talked to him but all I get is "I just don't think about it." I leave his stuff were it is, so I'm not picking up after him, but after a while, it's driving me crazy!!! The kids are better, they tend to pick up after themselves, but, they think I'm a maid sometimes too. Sometimes you just want to hear "thank you!" DH says I don't say thank you for him working all day, but actually I do, and I gotta tell ya, sometimes the though of working all day, and having all the extras (housework, kids etc) done for me sounds like heaven! Oh my goodness, I had no idea I had all this stored up inside me. So sorry to go off on your post. Thanks for letting me vent.
By the way, I totally understand how you feel, it's hard to find the motivation. I love the timer idea. I also try to work on one room a day, so I don't feel overwelmed. Also, I usually start with the table tops, so I have something that looks clean and organized to look at to motivate me.
Good luck!
__________________ Be thankful for what you have received and also for what you have escaped.
Flylady.net is a brilliant website I found on these boards. That and writing lists. Sometimes there is so much to do it is difficult to know where to start, but if it is written down at least you don't have to think about it.... just do it!
I know the feeling, I have my stepson and his friend flying in on Thursday and I have so much to do and no motivation to do it. It just seems that planning a wedding and finding another job have sucked the life right outta me.
I find the computer is a big distraction for me. I have to limit my time on it, but I find that hard to.
I think I am in the middle of a major mood swing right now. I am in the middle of AF and am not dealing well with it.
I hope things are going better for you!!
Keep us posted!!
April
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When my body went out of control the last thing on my mind was cleaning my house. I'm getting much better and trying to keep up with 3 children sure wore me out more. I've felt like a terrible Wife and Mom but I've been doing things slowly so I don't get overwhelmed. Flylady is a great thing!!!
I joined Curves in the middle of January and the exercising really has me feeling so much better and that has helped lots!!!
I find my motivation seems to be lacking in the housecleaning dept. also. When the house gets to the point when I have to clean I make a list room by room of everything that needs to be done and I stay in that room until it is done and I cross off things as they are finished. When your done you can look at the crossed off list and say wow I did a lot of stuff today. It feels good. Now if only I had the motivation to write the list.....LOL!
I'm terrible at cleaning, too. It wasn't so bad when I lived alone, because it was only me I was cleaning up after, and I'd sometimes go on binges that would leave EVERYTHING spotless. Not so living with DH now. He's a good cleaner, but he's really good at making messes, too. He has a tendency to just put something somewhere "for now" and then leaving it, and then things pile up on top of it until it's just a huge mountain of junk. We've gotten into arguments about this all the time, in fact. We were really starting to get better, and went on a huge spring cleaning binge last year - and that was the weekend I started spotting, eventually leading to a D&C. I know that cleaning house and moving furniture around was not the cause, but I'm still scared now. Things have really gone downhill since then, and I'm not really motivated to do ANYTHING. I'm so tired all the time - rightfully so, as I have a lot going on in my belly, but still, I should be able to bring myself to at LEAST wash dishes sometimes, right?! Or start a good dinner? Because I love cooking? But I can't. And I'm so frustrated that the house is a disaster, but I don't know where to start, and I don't want DH to feel like he has to do it all....but he won't let me do much of it to begin with...!
She really helped me get organized and motivated to clean. She uses the timer idea a lot. In fact she has a saying, "You can do ANYTHING in 15 minutes!"
Thank you once again my cysters for making me feel more normal! I never have any motivation to clean up the house! I am embarrassed that our house is such a mess but I still sit down and night and cannot imagine cleaning after work...so like so many of you it gets put off until the weekend and then all I want to do is nap to "catch up" from the week! I thought it was only me and I was a horrible wife (we have only been married 6mos!) I am going to try the timer thing and see how that works and I will be going to see flylady.net too! Thank you soo much cysters!
I just wanted to add that there is a lot of information on flylady's website. If you do decide to sign up to receive her daily e-mail reminders that there is no charge for that and best of all, she does NOT give out your e-mail address to anyone else so you won't get "spammed!"
You can also "desubscribe" at any time and the information to do that is on the bottom of every e-mail she sends. I subscribed for about a year and then got the hang of it and de-subscribed because she does send quite a bit of e-mails and some were starting to repeat.
Cleaning house 
Kathryn
