What’s your cadence for maintenance? Is there anything you think you should be doing more frequently? Is there anything you do extra proactively because you don’t like seeing it left undone?
I’m also curious about how much time you spend taking care of your home and how that balances with the rest of your personal life, and how you share the load with other people you live with.
Household of 2 adults (me and my partner), where we mostly do things that we prefer. Personally I think I end up taking charge of things that he would do less often than I would.
- Shared: vacuum (1-2x a week), taking out trash/recycling (as needed), dishwashing, general cleaning (tables/countertops, dusting, etc)
- Partner: cook (2-3x a week), floor mopping (as needed)
- Me: laundry (as needed, ~1x a week), changing & washing towels (every 1-2 weeks), changing bed sheets (partner often helps, every 3-4 weeks)
My partner and I once sat down for like 3 hours and make a checklist of chores in todoist. Can ret reoccurring things with all different parameters… Sometimes I stay on top of it, but other times I play like 3 weeks of catch up on my day off…
Wow, lots of folks Roomba way more often than I do… I should get that guy going more often! I just get conflicted with it… I feel like I have to get everything off the floor for it… Perhaps I’ll try to let it run in a native environment.
Done as needed, or as mood strikes. Generally everything stays clean, if not, the pressure and annoyance builts until it gets completed. Repeat.
Routines like that do not exist in my household
I’m recovering from cancer and caring for my wife who has severe post traumatic stress as a result of natural disaster.
- I have a shower most days
- I get dressed most days
- I turn the dishwasher on when it’s full, and empty it when there’s no more room in the sink
- Occasionally I sweep and vacuum
- I mow the lawns every few weeks
That’s pretty much all I can do at the moment, but I’m slowly getting better.
this sounds like me but add in laundry like the dishwasher and nix the lawn as im in a condo. Honestly I spend more time going over finance type stuff which I try to look over each weekend.
High odds he doubles his vacuuming for a good relationship, or gets his way and they ultimately break up. ( Most relationships die by bug bites. )
You can’t be a slob when sharing space with another person and expect success.
I think you replied to the wrong comment?
Hey, just wanted to say: Fuck cancer, you beat its bitch ass to a pulp for good now, ya hear?
So, I’m SINK, so my routine is probably “light.”
Dishes are done
usuallydaily, but I live alone, so it’s like… My breakfast mug and then whatever dinner is. I usually do it in the morning while I’m waiting for the water to boil.I vacuum once every 1-2 weeks depending on the state of the carpet. (I got outside often and sometimes track things in. Also have a long haired cat). I also don’t like bugs, and my carpet is light. The little dots make me anxious.
I wash the bathroom about once a month, but will spot treatments here and there. (like wiping something down whole brushing my teeth, stuff like that).
And swifter the kitchen floor whenever it seems gross. I do laundry when I run out of underwear.
Littler box is usually every day, though I can sometimes skip a day. Usually when I do that, I’m in “animal mode,” so that’ll prompt me to refill bird feeders as well.
I am awful when it comes to my bedding. I hate doing it for whatever reason.
I hate doing my bedding too.
Actually I don’t even hate it, I just never think of it. It never seems to force me to think about it like other dirty things do.
Same. I don’t think of it as “dirty” like I do everything else. Even though it’s just as dirty 😂
When it gets bad enough that I have to ; )
Though we have been on a kick lately of washing dishes immediately after supper and not letting them pile up.
I remember a guy talking about moving in with his girlfriend. As single people she vaccumed once a week and he did once a month. She felt they should alternate every other week and he was like wait. Your vacumming half as much as you used to and now im vaccuming twice as much. He proposed he do once a month so he is working the same as before and she gets a week off. Was a guy from work so no idea how that eventually turned out.
Somebody missed the schoolhouse rock that explained “compromise”, what a dullard lol
Wait, I don’t get it. The alternative that the guy propose sounds like a win-win though? What if one of them likes vacuuming twice a week and the other once every month? What’s the right way to divide it fairly?
(I’m a woman who vacuum as needed.)
It’s a win-win, if they view the relationship as just individuals with benefits.
The opposite end of the relationship spectrum is where you work together to advance both of your goals, happiness etc., like an amorphous blob.
In that case, the proposal of the girlfriend makes sense, because she presumably needs the once-a-week cleaning for her happiness and so they would work together on that, just as much as they would work together on something that primarily advances the guy’s happiness.People will often call the former a “transactional” relationship, and the latter “true love” or whatever, but ultimately, each relationship has to figure out what works best for them and where along the spectrum they want to be.
Biggest problem with this particular relationship is that the girlfriend seems to have a very different expectation than the guy.The goal wasnt to cause the least discomfort to both parties, the goal was to get the house vacuumed appropriately. What he was doing before isn’t relevant, because it wasn’t sufficient. What she was doing before isn’t relevant because she did more than necessary to reach a level of acceptable cleanliness.
So given the new amount, she wanted to split duties 50/50, he was focused on what he was doing before.
Yeah if you take sides on what the proper amount is initially its much easier to solve.
Sides?
I don’t think sides is the right word. Starting with an assumption of what the right amount of vacuuming is makes it easier.
The right amount depends on how fast they get dirty. She might have been right if her experience was with pets. His might have been if he was rarely at home. It depends on what their current combined situation is, and weekly or monthly could be reasonable amounts too.
exactly. that assumption cannot be made it is part of the topic of discussion. I made the assumption the assumption could only be made if a person were bias. But yes a household with several kids and cats and a golden retriever will be different than two single folks with no pets.
I vacuum the house every day with roombas. It’s actually nice always walking on clean surfaces. The roombas have had some disasters but still worth.
Two months ago or so, I started wiping my floors about twice a week with a damp cloth, because I’ve got dust mite allergy, and yeah, the clean surfaces are crazy. When I’m not wearing socks, I can easily tell, if I haven’t wiped for a few days.
But also, everything else in my room collects dust much less quickly, I guess because I scoop it off the floor before it can settle everywhere else.
And my floor now also has this shine to it, which always makes it look like I’m trying to sell the place.Exactly, walking on dusty floors gets stuff on your feet after a while. And after a night of sleep, at least in my house, the ac will have blown a lil bit of dust on the floor.
Once its cleaned the wooden flooring feels almost sticky because it cleans your feet as you walk instead of making it dirtier.
Every 2-3 days I walk around the house pushing a swiffer mop and it has helped a ton with keeping dust at bay.
I have daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks, including both home and car maintenance. I put them on my calendar so I don’t lose track. Especially when I’m traveling a lot for work, “when was the last time I washed my bedsheets?!?”
Cleaning the kitchen is the thing I keep on top of best because I want my food to be clean and safe and for cooking to be enjoyable.
Compared to some I have dated, I have some personal standards that are higher. I think I’m pretty good at recognizing that though and dialing back to a compromise when appropriate. But I also draw lines where I have to. Someone bringing their cat into the equation; they must be 100% responsible for their cat and they must take good care of it. Someone who lets litter age, or lets cat vomit sit for any period of time after discovery, or doesn’t vacuum hair and litter dust up at a high frequency I find acceptable is a no. Just no. We’re not compatible and that sort of mismatch does not get better with time. Even if we haven’t moved in together and I’m just visiting their place, that’s something that will strongly sway me towards breaking up.
I have broken up with one person due to mismatch in our cleaning expectations. It happened well before there were conversations about moving in together. Conversations leading up to it were cordial, open, and without blame. As far as breakups go, not a bad one from my perspective.
how you share the load with other people you live with.
I do everything because the other two people I live with do nothing and are absolute pigs. No… I take that back. Pigs are cleaner.
Oh no! I hope you all can get along still anyway.
In general, I mostly focus on pet > plants > bathroom > kitchen > everything else.
All the time. Someone’s gotta do it.
I vacuum, polish, sweep and tidy up twice a week
There are a bunch of infographics I like for this question, philosophically/asperationally anyway: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+often+should+you+clean&t=fpas&iax=images&ia=images
Now being regimented enough to stick to those schedules is the hard part for me.
Daily/weekly - dishes, trash, laundry always get done, but with the six year old plus two full time jobs they can *linger* for an extra day at times, lol
edit: typo
The first image I clicked on started with “Daily - Make Bed” and I noped out of the whole thing. There’s cleaning that needs done regularly for health and there’s tasks that get more onerous the longer you leave them (like laundry). But I’ll never understand the obsession with making beds.
Maybe people have more complex bedding setups, but mostly I just have a duvet on top and fitted sheet below. What difference does it make to anyone if I lay the duvet out flat and smooth each day? I’m immediately going to move it around when I go to bed, and I spend almost no time in my bedroom when I’m not in my bed. It’s the equivalent of saying “Daily - Fold the end of the toilet paper into a neat triangle”. If anything, immediately covering your used bedsheets with a duvet is trapping in moisture. At least the German habit of hanging your duvet out to air each day serves a purpose!
Husband makes the bed every day. I don’t care about that but washing the sheets every week and showering before bed keeps it nice. He likes it made because he sits on there to relax and because it makes him feel more in control I think. I do it if he has to leave early because he likes it, even though it does nothing for me. I think to him it is akin to decluttering, making an organized environment in the bedroom.
hehe, yeah hence my ‘aspirational’ comment. I think of em as more guidelines than strict must-dos. also I forget that cleaning the blinds is even a thing until i go look these up and see that on the list, lol.
I started with the cadence that I found from somewhere on the internet. Then I adjusted the timing to what felt good to me.
I found that https://github.com/grocy/grocy worked well for me to setup these kinds of things as chores. I guess that a callender would work too. I just like to have everything on one page.
I had to scroll all the way to the bottom to find a comment that mentioned using an app if some kind to help organize these tasks.
This one sounds interesting, I’ll check it out.
