Five Minutes a Day

My sister and a few of my friends will walk into my house on occasion, unannounced, and say "how do you keep your house so clean?" But more than that, "how do your kids keep their rooms so clean?"

I have OCD, people. I cannot STAND IT when there is clutter or mess of any kind in my house. That being said, don't think for one minute that messes don't get made. And there's that old saying that "the kids won't remember how clean the house was, they'll remember the time you spent together."

Well...what IF the time you spend together is CLEANING?!

Seriously though, I have a system.
1. One mess gets picked up before another is made.
2. Five minutes a day (usually right before bed), we help each other clean up the kitchen, front room, and the kids' two bedrooms. Sometimes one adult will tackle the kitchen and front room, while the other helps the kids. But WORST case scenario, this system means at MOST, 20 minutes a day, we spend picking up.

And because we do this, we are NEVER overpowered or overwhelmed by messes. The basement...well, I allow a little more leniency here. If a mess gets made, it gets picked the next time we go down there (which isn't a whole lot). Out of sight, out of mind, right?

My sister marvels at this system - and when her son comes over to play with my son, and I make him spend 5 minutes cleaning, too - he looks at me like a deer in the headlights, or like he saw a ghost. Then we do it, and we're done and he goes "OHHHH."

It's a system that works for us. It keeps me sane, and it keeps me from being REALLY crabby. Both are good things, right?!