cleaning!

I like a clean house. I've been more of an "as needed" type than one who cleans on a schedule. I would clean everything on the same day, when it seemed like it had been a while or the place was starting to look like it wasn't clean. Then, I'd collapse in my chair with a glass of iced tea and smell the lovely aroma of my clean home.

After getting married, Rodgers would join in the cleaning when I cleaned. If he saw me doing the bathrooms, he'd bust out the vacuum. He's awesome like that. Then I got pregnant and would collapse in my chair with a glass of iced tea at the mere thought of cleaning anything at all. Rodgers graciously took over cleaning duties while I was busy being an incubator. The whole apartment would be cleaned over a course of a month or two, though, rather than a week or two. I was dissatisfied, but not enough to do anything about it.

After Nate was born, cleaning became not a priority at all. I was looking through pictures one day and saw a picture of our living room a week or so after we moved in. It was beautiful. Then, I looked at is as it was that day. Gross. It was then that I decided our willy-nilly cleaning style needed to change.

I like having everything clean on the same day, but, short of hiring a cleaning service, that just can't happen when Rodgers and I are both working full time and have a baby at home. Ideally, everything would be cleaned every two weeks, but laundry needs to be done weekly. I drew up a Cleaning Calendar (CC) (I alluded to this a few posts back):

Every Wed: Nate's laundry
Every Thu: Our laundry

Mon A: toilets, bathroom countertops, mirrors
Tue A: scrub showers/tubs, sweep/mop tile floors (bathrooms, kitchen, dining nook)
Fri A: kitchen (clean out fridge, scrub microwave, wash stove drip pans and rings, scrub oven [if needed], run coffee pot cleaning)

Mon B: tidy living room and dining room (this used to be a daily task, but no more)
Tue B: vacuum all carpet
Fri B: laundry (towels and sheets)

Daily/as needed: cook, dishes, take out trash, buy groceries (usually on the weekend)

Chores are generally done after Nate's in bed. We don't have to do anything besides groceries on the weekends. There have been weeks when we needed laundry earlier in the week, so we swapped days. We are halfway through our fourth rotation (this is our seventh week under the CC) and still going strong! Rodgers likes to clean, but doesn't always know what I want to be cleaned. I don't like to always be telling him what I want cleaned because then I feel controlling or like I'm nagging him. One of the biggest benefits of the CC is that Rodgers knows what I want to be done without me asking him to to do a chore every day. Some days the chores are split evenly between us, some days he does it all, some days I do it all. It's a good 50/50 split. It may not work this way forever, but for now, I'm happy with it!