by Emily Tuuk

Created on: August 24, 2008   Last Updated: October 28, 2010

If you feel that it's impossible to keep your house clean all week long, and that you'll never be able to catch up on unfinished chores, you may want to try doing it with nine children in the house, all of them being homeschooled, which means that they are almost always at home to make a mess.

A few tips that I have found to be most helpful, mostly learned from my Mom, the numerous books she has on home-keeping that I've been reading since I was about ten years old, and my own personal experience are these:

PLAN OF ATTACK

It is important to know what you are doing to have a sense of direction and purpose. It is most helpful to list the jobs to be done. For instance, kitchen clean-up, vacuuming or sweeping the floors, picking up the living room, and so on. Making a list of all these things helps you to see what is in front of you more clearly.

It is sometimes helpful to list things according to how often they need to be done. Vacuuming may only need to be done once of twice a week (or everyday, in my family, on hard floors), and picking up the living room may need to be done everyday, or perhaps twice a day. Consider listing things under two categories daily and weekly or however else is necessary in your particular home.

If there are certain tasks that need doing only once a week, it is often wise to plan a specific day that they should be done in. If there are several things that need doing just once, weekly, then it is most helpful to plan them each for different days. This prevents there being too many things to do on just one day, avoiding a huge cleaning "affair", which is undesirable for many.

Make your plan as simple as possible, to avoid frustration. It should not be a tedious affair to make a list. Think about what the biggest problem is, and focus on that. Even a simple pick-up in the main rooms of the house can be enough to make a huge difference. Decide what is most important to you, and keep the list as small as possible.

It helps tremendously to post the list on your refrigerator or somewhere where it can be easily seen, so just a quick glance can give you direction on what needs doing.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER:

If jobs are divided up between multiple people it speeds up the total cleaning time. Divide the chores among any available person in the house. You may want to list names next to each job on your list, or you may want a separate list for each person to have with their specific chores on it. No matter what you choose, it is helpful to still have

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