One thing that is becoming more clear as my eight weeks of maternity leave draws closer to an end; it’s that we need a couple of routines to take the stress out of Justen and me working full-time on opposite shifts.
Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I do all of the cleaning because that’s simply not true. Justen is ridiculously helpful when it comes to many of the household chores I hate – vacuuming and dusting to name a few, and he’s planning to take on daytime childcare so we don’t have to worry about strangers watching our baby during the day.
So, all in all, I have it pretty easy as a working mom.
Our most significant area of stress when it comes to needing routine (other than a tiny human sleep schedule) would be cleaning up around the house. Both of us start to get stressed out when the house gets to be a mess – while we have been doing our best to stay on top of it with a newborn… it has been HARD. I grew up powering through all of our chores on Saturday mornings, nearly immediately after waking up, but our other day to day routines escape me now that I’m managing my own household.
Although this weekends only system worked well growing up and when I was living alone adding a second person, and a baby to the mix threw this system for a loop.
So we’ve adjusted our weekends only cleaning routine to doing a little bit every day. Yes, I basically made a chore chart, and I love it.
I plucked out some of my favorite parts of Pinterest’s best “How to Not Suck at Cleaning Your House” posts in an effort to hold myself (ourselves) accountable.
Then, the list-making part of me went a tiny bit overboard.
I decided to also write out a different big chore for each month, and I wrote out our seasonal cleaning lists too.
Now we don’t always make the bed – primarily because between the two of our schedules there is someone sleeping in it for 12 -16 hours a day, but it’s on the routine sheet so we don’t totally blow it off when we have guests by the house who may receive a whole house tour.
I also did my best to alternate days of the week for the big stuff. This way I do one of my big chores, then I have a day off while Justen does one of his, then he gets a day off. So far it feels like a pretty solid system, but there is always room for improvement.
