I think of home as a production center. Home is a place where comfort, orderliness, and peace should roll off its 'assembly-line', each and every day. While this may seem like an unattainable goal, it really isn't. It's all about making sure that some basic, but very crucial, things get accomplished so regularly that they become almost unconscious habits. You wouldn't think about leaving the house without brushing your teeth, and these home maintenance chores are at the same level.
There are three things that I do every day, with the exception of being mortally ill, and then I have them done by someone else...usually hubby. I think of these three as being the foundation from where all other homemaking tasks begin. These three things have been proven and time-tested through my years of raising children, working outside the home, and even when I had an in-home daycare. They aren't everything that home-making entails, but they have gotten me through tough and ridiculously-busy times.
1. I get all the dishes done by the end of the day, at the latest. This works even if you don't have a dishwasher; after years of standing over the sink, I can attest to this. I pick my time, but I make sure that they are done once a day, every day. Garbage, if full, is taken out.
2. The bed is made. This job, in my view, is a loving gesture to yourself and your family. There is nothing better than to pull the sheets back from a neatly made bed at the end of an exhausting day.
3. I do a load of laundry. I have a pretty wicker clothes basket, and I like to finish the load, fold it, and put it in there to be put away the next day. The next day it is put away consistently, and I do the next load. Remember this is a mindset where laundry is done every day.
4. This is optional, but this idea helps too. I try to figure out what we are having for dinner, and if I have the time I try to put it together in the morning. (Yes, I have made spaghetti sauce at 6 a.m., before I really had my eyes opened...lol!) Crock pots are your best friends here, and it's also helpful to cut up some vegetables, toss up a salad, make some jello, some various forms of preliminary food prep. If I can, I try to make up casseroles and main dishes in the morning, because I'm one of those crazy morning people. That way, you can just pop it in the microwave or oven in the evening, and it almost feels like someone else made your meal...almost. At least, try to have an idea of what you want for dinner. This will relieve so much stress come 5:00, and as you sail past the fast-food joints back to a home-cooked meal, you'll be glad you did.
No matter how crazy the world outside is--and we all have those crazy times-- if these three things are done for your household, your home will welcome you with open arms. You will also have three of the most important things a home provides, clean dishes, clean clothes, and a clean place to rest.
(Image: "Study of a Breezy Window" Colored Pencil by Cory Jaeger-Kenat, 1998)
In my cleaning business, I would say that lack of dusting is the prime
mess maker of a house. Dust combines with grease in kitchens and over
time makes an inpenetrable goop that sticks to every surface, from cups
to range tops to the outside of cupboards. To me, dusting my kitchen
once a week is every bit as important as keeping up on the dishes and
wiping down my counters. This includes the top of the fridge...you'd be
amazed at what accumulates there...and the sides and tops of cupboard
doors. I even dust the top of my washing machine and dryer, and the top
of the water heater. It just seems to me that things work better if
they're not bathed in dust.
Granted, I clean for people with
special needs, who often struggle with the organizational skills of
housework. It gives me first hand knowledge of a.) how much dust can
really accumulate in a house just in a month and b.) how much dust can
damage a house. I have seen dust rise like silt waves on walls behind
furniture and coat surfaces like a grey lint coat. And I've seen dust
bunnies that have transformed into some sort of under-the-bed ferile
rodents. When you consider that dust is actually a not-so-lovely combo
of hair, skin cells, dirt, and bacteria, and how it can affect the
breathing of those compromised with lung ailments such as asthma...well,
suddenly, dusting is not just a dainty, busy-work task for a little
maid with a feather duster.
The secrets of thorough, quick
dusting are to do it regularly and not to look for dust, but instead to
dust every surface as if it already IS dusty...whether you can see the
dust or not. I use Swiffers--the best invention to mankind--and try to
stay away from the furniture polish. (I know that there are waxy
buildup is supposedly a thing of the 1950s, but I'm still afraid that
my woodworker father will hear the hiss of that lemon-yellow aerosol
can from across town and come at the speed of sound, hurtling himself
onto my coffee table, braving putting his life on the line for
authentic varnished oak.)
So, I use Swiffers (honestly, this is
not some sort of product placement, honest), and I work from top to
bottom. I do all the upper corners, door frames and lightly brush the
walls. Mother-in-law, no smug smile and smeared white glove for you!
Working my way down, I then get to the tables, end-tables and seats of
chairs, paying especially close attention to the legs and backs of
chairs. As mentioned before, I do this religiously every week...every
Tuesday, as a matter of fact. Yes, I really am that Felix Unger-ish....
But you can see your reflection in my coffee tables, and that's a cheap thrill.
It's a brilliant winter morning with only a dusting of snow. I don't
have a cleaning job today, so I'm able to work in the studio...yippee!
Got a new painting loaded on the Loud Colors website called "Cocktails
and Salmon Colored Roses". It always feels so good to finish a
painting. I keep looking at it, thinking I should tweak it some more,
but sometimes I just get tired of being so darned perfectionistic.
Besides, the woman in the work looks kinda quirky and kinda tragic, and
the whole feeling of the piece is pretty and expressionistic at the same
time. Does everything I do have to be so controlled, for Heaven's
sake? I certainly hope not! Just got an email from a patron and I think
two more small works have just sold.
On Thursdays, my husband's
workout partner comes over for dinner. So after making the bed and
putting away last night's dishes, (and tearing myself away from
Facebook) I'm busy making cranberry meatballs, rice, and chopping up the
last half of the remaining cabbage in the fridge for coleslaw. Oops--
out of chili sauce for the meatballs, so I'll just have to use ketchup.
Improvised on the brown sugar, too, using white sugar with a small
pouring of molasses. Nearly out of onion too, so dried minced onion went
into the meatballs, and the remaining fresh onion will go into the
coleslaw. I've never really thought a recipe should be followed like
it's another Commandment--and besides I'm allergic to grocery stores(!)
Tossed the meatballs into the crock pot to cook while I answer a few
things on the computer, write out an invoice, and jot down my thoughts
on this blog.
Puttering around in my kitchen makes me think about
some of the things I learned from my mom (which is amazing because I
avoided housework like the plague when I was a kid.)
1. Focus on the corners when you clean a floor--the middle will take care of itself.
2. Use what you have.
3. Don't add salt to your dishes--people use salt shakers often without even tasting the food, anyway.
4. Wash your dishes as you cook.
5. Figure out dessert and plan the rest of the meal around that.
6. If you don't cook enough, there will always be food left over--because everyone is afraid to eat too much.
7. Tea pretty much makes the day go round.
Well, I'm back to the easel. Catch you later.
(Image: "Cocktails and Salmon Roses" Acrylic on Canvas, Cory Jaeger-Kenat, 2010.)
Today
is laundry day for this hip housewife. Mondays have been laundry days
since I began to run my own house at the age of seventeen. Mondays were
laundry days for me back when I was in college, loading up my banged up
blue Cavalier with sometimes up to thirteen (!) baskets destined for
the laundromat. Did you know a laundromat can actually be a great place
to study? Well, then again, not the ideal...but it worked at the time.
Mondays
have been laundry days for generations of women long before I came on
the scene. All the way back to covered wagons and pioneer times, when
wrestling soaking heavy dresses, overalls, and petticoats on a washboard
demanded the renewed energy--and faith--gained from a day of worship on
Sunday.
It is a curious joy today to step into
my narrow washroom, just off the kitchen. The room was definitely built
for one. Winter coats and gear on wall-hooks grab me as I go past, and
we'll hopefully ignore one corner, where empty moving boxes, bags of
potatoes and onions, and a vacuum cleaner all squeeze for space. I
can't keep that spot neat no matter how I try.
Sun sparks off the
snow on this record snow-fall day, diamond dazzling through my
curtainless window over the washing machine. It occurs to me that I
like to do my laundry on Mondays for many reasons. First of all because
it works. Monday laundry day insures that we have fresh bedding,
towels, and clothes for the entire week. But it also ties me to women
throughout time, to women with washboards and clotheslines, to women
stirring clothes in vats of boiling water and lye, to women pounding
clothes on rocks in cold mountain streams. Clothes will always need to
be washed, I'm convinced, even when we're flying around like the
Jetsons--and who knows, maybe they'll still be done on Monday.
I
am so lucky. I pour liquid soap that smells of mandarin oranges into my
humming washer, watch as the bubbles begin to form. I adore the
strait-laced scent of bleach; it brings to mind images of
turn-of-the-century maid servants with their ruffled caps and aprons.
Everything comes out dry and soft, and so warm, I just want to wrap it
around me. Such a luxury to start the week with everything neat, clean
and folded--temporary perfection.
