July Is a Domestic Month

I typically find myself feeling quite domestic in July. The summer heat starts to keep us more indoors, the rush of school and early-summer travel is over, and somehow I just want to clean and rearrange.

This week I mixed it up in the living room, moving furniture that hadn't been shifted in years! Well, we move it out for special events, but then we put it back in the same place. This time, I decided that during the summer, our seating should be focused around the front windows, rather than the woodstove. This has never happened at the Schoolhouse before.

But we all love it, and I'm especially loving my new view as I come down the hallway (see above). The whole room seems larger and more full of greenery.

I've also been deep-cleaning my room--washing quilts, curtains, rugs, windows, flowerpots, polishing silver, rearranging the dresser, and all that . . . . also Daisy is at band camp AND turning thirteen, so I need some distraction.

Not That It Needed It

Today I borrowed the neighbor's power-washer and started in on the front deck. To my knowledge, it's never been washed in thirty-five years. It took a long time to do a little bit, so after a couple of hours I decided I'd do better working at my desk, billing for my time, and hiring a professional to do the rest. He'll be here Saturday morning.

Saturday Morning Book Cull

Clara and I attacked the upstairs Saturday morning (company's coming). Stacks and stacks of books on the floor meant we had to winnow. That's so hard for Daisy, but she did let us take out this pile--it's back to the thrift store for them, as part of our "thrift-store rental" program. Buy for a quarter, keep for a year, then redonate.

Cleaning the Kitchen: A Breakthrough

Tuesdays have long been my days for giving the kitchen its weekly once-over. I've just had a couple of problems with this task: 1. starting it, and 2. finishing it.

Today though I had a breakthrough. The job "Cleaning the Kitchen" is not actually a task: it's a series of short tasks! Each less than five minutes. I can do these one at a time, without stopping in between, and end up with a Clean Kitchen, and without feeling overwhelmed.

Here's my list, arranged in an order that works for me, so that I don't get clean things dirty (note that I start with a *tidied* kitchen--dishwasher emptied, dirty dishes washed or put in the dishwasher, food put away, and countertops generally cleared):

Dust the ceiling fan and light fixtures.

Wipe down the vent hood and warming shelf.

Clean the stovetops and fronts of the ovens.

Wipe out the microwave and wash the glass plate inside.

Wipe out the compost cupboard and change the paper liner under the bucket.

Clean the tile shelf behind the sink.

Quickly wipe the cabinet doors.

Wipe all the countertops and pop the soap dish and scrubber holder in the dishwasher.

Vacuum.

Mop.

Clean the sinks.

All of these things take less than five minutes and are *so* much easier to make it through than starting to Clean the Kitchen.

A Bare Enough Table

This mostly bare tabletop is a huge victory. If you've ever painted your kitchen cabinets, you know what I'm talking about. All the contents of every drawer, half the contents of every cupboard--all of that was everywhere until this morning.

I spent the first two hours digging out from under and then sighed a big sigh of relief and began to enjoy my sequined fruits.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

I've only had this book for four days and there is an actual mountain of discards on my kitchen floor. Good stuff, too, not trash. But things I've realized I'd rather live without.

Marie Kondo's approach to tidying is the symmetrical opposite of what I've always practiced. Before, I would ask myself: "Can I get rid of this?"

Marie has you ask: "Does this give me joy?" The answer, a lot of times, is "Not really, no." Boy, does that make it easy to let go of things.

And when things are gone, suddenly it is so much easier to keep the house clean. To keep my mind on my task; to get to that thing I was putting off; to breathe. Life is changed indeed, for the better!

Work for Each Day; Work for the Month

•Daily•

-Morning-

Tea and morning pages

Feed the animals

Check email

Run, garden, or swim

Breakfast

Bath and dressing

Make bed

Collect dirty clothes and start laundry

Clean up the kitchen

Wipe the dining table

Take vitamins

Make infused water and tea for the fridge

Tidy the front of the house

Do the Day's Work from my weekly list

Plan dinner and prepare ahead if needed

-Afternoon-

Rest

Bible

Sew

Outings

Gardening

Swim with Daisy

Prepare dinner

[I'm very much a morning person--I get up early and work hard for several hours, then slow way down after lunch.]

•Monthly•

Dust bedrooms, utility room, halllways, bathrooms, sewing room

Wash a few windows

Clean vent hood, fans, and kitchen light (twice each month)

Frontline the cats

Discard magazines

Wash throw rugs

Cook beans and brown rice in bulk to freeze

Clear kitchen counter clutter

Bill work hours

Pedicure

Buy flowers

[Quilt is Blackberry Patch, shown with zinnias and sunflowers]

A Week's Work

•Monday: General Housekeeping and Laundry•

Change all the sheets and towels

Do all the laundry

Make bread

Clean the birdcage

Water the plants

Empty the wastebaskets

Vacuum the whole house

Plan the week's menus

•Tuesday: Cleaning the Kitchen•

Wipe the stovetops

Wipe all the counters

Wipe out the microwave

Wipe out the compost cupboard

Quick wipe in the fridge

Wash the soap dishes

Vacuum and mop the floor

Clean the sinks

Trip to library

Buy groceries for three days

•Wednesday: Ironing and Tidying•

Do the ironing

Put away all the clothes from the utility room

Tidy the utility room

Wipe the washer and dryer

Pick up Daisy's room with her

Tidy the porches and sweep them

Fifteen minutes of deep cleaning off the monthly list

One task I've put off

•Thursday: Deskwork and Hospitality•

Change the birdcage

Dust the living areas of the house

Vacuum the living areas

Change my sheets

Answer all my work emails

Planning and paperwork for volunteer jobs

Visit, entertain, or babysit in the afternoon

•Friday: Loose Ends, and Groceries•

Clean all the bathrooms

Tidy the sewing room

Bake for the weekend

Clean out my purse

Fifteen minutes of deep cleaning off the monthly list

Buy groceries for four days

[Quilt is Encyclopedia of Gemstones; flowers are hydrangeas, asparagus, and cutting garden blooms arranged by Clara]

A New Enthusiasm

In the last week I've developed a fresh wind of enthusiasm for housekeeping. It's been a couple of years since I looked at my daily, weekly, and monthly housekeeping plans, and I've enjoyed revisiting those and redesigning my days, tailored for summertime.

And this being practically the first of the month,  I have the satisfaction of starting with a blank slate.

[Quilt is Black-Eyed Susan, shown with homegrown sunflowers.]

Monday Chores

I like my Monday chores. Most of them take just a few minutes, but make a big difference to the health and happiness of the household.

Watering the plants.

Emptying the wastebaskets.

Changing the sheets and making the beds up fresh.

Changing the bird cage.

Vacuuming the floors.

It's nice to work my way down a list that isn't too challenging, but definitely makes life better.

Spring Cleaning

Today I started a week of good hard spring cleaning. I've divided the house into five parts and here I go: sitting room, dining room, and living room done.

Daisy's caught the bug and created a little bit of make-work in a clean corner, hand-washing some doll linens and using the *real* iron not plugged in.

Sigh.

The she refreshed herself with a dip into the Composer's childhood box of puppets.

Which is kind of random, but is the kind of detail that keeps me happy as I work.

Persimmon Smock Blouse

This morning I tackled some dirty chores, outside and in. The biggest was to wrassle Frederick's entire birdcage out into the back yard, take it apart, and clean it top to bottom before winter sets in. Not a fun job, and not improved by the gnats swarming my face *or* the strong hints that the cats had established a latrine nearby.

However, we do what we must! And when I'd finished my work I consoled myself with a bundle of persimmon clippings.

For your heavy-duty housework days, may I suggest this persimmon apron blouse? It wraps around back, ties with long waist ties, and sports four pockets across the front for your microfibre cloth and chocolate caramels.

 Find it in my etsy shop!

Housecleaning Festival

I need to do quite a bit of deep cleaning this week. It's my first chance in ages, a quiet week, just two girls at home, and only one trip out of town.

I decided to call it a Housecleaning Festival--like Clara's Chamber Music Festival, only domestic. If you just go by the name, you might think it's a big party, when it's actually a lot of intense and concerted effort, over several days. That's me, with the cleaning.

Three rooms are already brighter. Celebrating with a new-to-me yellow and strawberry tablecloth I nabbed on our camping excursion, and a little Mozart opera while we work.

A Cleaning Day and a Crib Quilt

I got lucky this morning: the house needed quite a bit of work and all four of my children were free. No one was rehearsing, or painting a deck, or getting a haircut. So we started at ten sharp to power down my housecleaning list and I was astonished at how much we got accomplished in an hour.

I started dreaming big with my list, passing by it on the table and casually adding more and more far-fetched chores to the bottom of it, until everything that had been nagging at me was included. And they all got done.

Some mothers see their workload go down as their children leave home. I don't see how this can be. When all the kids are gone, I'll have to do everything myself!

And I've got another crib quilt in the shop. I did a lot of piecing last month and my mother is catching up on the quilting--that's how they appear so rapidly, in case you wonder. This one was reminding me of a big bowl of cut-up peaches, maybe with a little cream and sugar . . . .

A Pearly Jug of Privet

It's good to have a more at-home week. I had been ignoring the cleaning needs in my kitchen but this week I'm working my way down a list: light fixtures, floor scrub, cabinets sorted and wiped down.

And the sitting room needed a deep clean. Out with the orchids past their prime. Out with the amaryllis bulbs I'm STILL waiting on. Not interested anymore!

More in the mood for a big jug of privet cut from the hedge. Oh, the subtle fragrance!

Running, Resting, and Cleaning

Friday has always been my rest day from running. Monday through Thursday I run or work out at the gym, Saturday is the long run. Friday is the day off that enables me to crank out the seven or eight miles on Saturday morning.

This fall I discovered that rest day is perfect for cleaning. I get up, and I automatically feel ready to expend a great deal of energy right at 7:30, in stretchy clothes. This translates into a perfect time to do all my major housecleaning tasks. So I put on a running shirt and grubby pants and get to it. I always run before breakfast, so I usually do the worst cleaning before breakfast, too--all the bathrooms scrubbed. Then I keep on going, and if I focus I have the whole house done by 11:00 (with a break for Daisy's school and concurrent crochet, of course). Then take a bath. And have a cup of cocoa.

So glad to have discovered this reservoir of physical energy! This works great for me this year.

"More Is Not Always Better"

"In housekeeping, more is not always better. Order and cleanliness should not cost more than the value they bring in health, efficiency, and convenience."

--Cheryl Mendelson, Home Comforts

One Tiny Thing

I can't help leaving something of a trail behind me in my bedroom where I am changing clothes and rushing out, or bringing clean things in but then answering the phone before I get them put away.

So what I do over the course of the day is tell myself, One Tiny Thing. Each time I go in the room I do One Tiny Thing to make it look nicer, or be tidier, or to serve us better.

Then usually by bedtime, I have laid out a trail of peace and order.

"Scrubbing the Tiles"

"There was something rather satisfying, she found, in scrubbing the tiles of the kitchen floor. The clean, sweet-smelling wetness, which grew as she retreated backwards from it on her knees, delighted her, and although she doubted if anyone would ever notice the result of her labors, she was content with her small reward of a job well done."

--Miss Read, No Holly for Miss Quinn

A Scrubby, Grubby Day

The mental list of things in my house that needed to be actually *scrubbed* had gotten serious. I left my workout clothes on this morning because I was going to get dirty.

First Frederick's cage came apart in about seventeen gigantic metal panels. A chore that's best tackled outside in the sunshine with a big bottle of soap and a garden hose, but I wasn't waiting any longer for that kind of weather. I know, disgusting to do it in the house but everything was thoroughly vinegarised afterwards. Whew. Much better.

The floor behind the woodstove where the mysterious black liquid by-product of a wood fire drips onto the floor when I'm not looking. Whatever. It's clean now.

Then. The kitchen floor, by hand, with a brush. These floors are very soft pine, with most of the finish gone. The thing about scrubbing them is there's really no end to what you can scrub off with a stiff brush--it's actual wood coming up. So you take up as much as you think the floor can spare, balanced by how far down the stains go. The floor's a little thinner now, but that description you always read about tables in the flagstoned kitchens of rural England, and how they're scrubbed white? That's what I did, but only where things were really bad.

And now they're really good.