Before any of you smack me up side the head, let me preface this post by reminding you of this little fact: I have six kids to help me clean my house. Ok, so maybe we should cross out the littlest guy since he just likes to grab the trash bags and drag them around the house.
So I will openly and honestly admit this whole “cleaning the house in one hour” thing is not done by myself. Not at all. Instead I lined all my kids up against the wall, put on my fiercest glare and said, “You will do this . . . or else!” Just kidding.
They happily and cheerfully volunteered to clean the house while I took a bubble bath.
Fine. So that isn’t the truth either.
The truth? It all has to do with math. And the bright sunshine outside and the tilled dirt in my garden. And how I really do not love to spend hours cleaning my house. How many of you just zoomed in on those tiny letters? Scoundrels.
So here’s the math:
7 x 24 = 168 hours in a week
17 weeks (May thru August) x 168 = 2856 hours in summer!
2856 hours that I can spend doing a ginormous amount of fun stuff this summer. Fun stuff like petunias, popsicles, ice cream cones, and fishing. Bicycle rides, porch swings, sweet iced tea, and softball games. Campfires, yard sales, iced coffee, and tomato plants. Stuff that does not include cleaning my house. And I suppose I’ll throw a few hours in there for when I must sleep.
So I said to myself: “Just think, Kendra! What if you could get the entire week’s cleaning done in one hour and not have to think about it again until 167 hours later? Awesomeness!!”
Didn’t take much to convince me. I was sold. (What a good salesman I am . . . )
The kids and I tried this out last week and it worked splendidly. However, I was positively worn out by the end of the hour. Oh, yes. I must mention that we got done with 4 minutes to spare on the timer! The kids were impressed. Of course, I still had to put the mop bucket away and a few items like that. But all in all, we had a good time cleaning.
Just like I tell the kids with a new vegetable: “You can eat one bite of anything – it’s only one bite.”
Such was my pep talk before we started the timer: “Kids, we can handle one hour of cleaning – it’s only one hour!”
It will also be on our Printables & Downloads page.
I am going to put my little disclaimer here: If you are a clean freak, you will not wish to do it this way. It doesn’t get every crumb and spot, but I figured what we miss one week might get cleaned the next. I read a quote recently that said something like this, “If you are a mom of little kids, aim for tidy – not spotless.” That is what this hour got us. Clean toilets, floors and sinks. But don’t look in the corners – that is saved for the deep cleaning we do in the winter.
And at the end of the hour, we rewarded ourselves with an icy popsicle.
Which we so richly deserved.
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Mom G says
I can just see all the Energizer Bunnies hopping to it!
Kendra says
Yep! That’s about what it looked like. 🙂
Ursula says
Now I want to have children just to keep my home clean! I’m kidding! Great organization! I’ll try it one day when I have children 🙂 P.S. I really like your writing style!
Kendra says
Thanks! Kids can be such a help and so much fun at the same time. 🙂