41–50 of 81 posts
P.S. 3-4 years old is a good time to start them helping around the house. They can't do a ton at that age but every like bit helps. Macro effect of many micro optimizations.
My "brain hack" for this is to instil a habit: whenever I put something down I ask myself "is this where I want this object to be forever?" The answer is usually no, so I put in a place I'm happy for it to stay forever.
This one might seem trivial, but I start cleaning by picking up the floor first. This makes it easier to move around, which is a prerequisite for almost every other task.
How bad does the situation have to be that picking up stuff from the ground enables you to move freely?
Then we started including our kids in the weekly cleaning. We don't give them money "for nothing" so they see this as a chance to earn some income instead of a chore. Now everyone does their part and noone is feeling like it's a giant deal.
Mine is to have a cleaner - my only extravagance. It does worry me that my kids have never seen me hoover or clean a bathroom Ive always wanted 2 dishwashers - one clean, one dirty - then cycle them. So the as the clean dishes get moved they get moved to the dirty one, then repeat We've all got to have dreams
If you have five cabinets full of a myriad of variations of bowls, trays, plates, cups, glasses, widgets, pots and pans that you use at uneven rates, even two dishwashers won't be very helpful.
Never ever wait until the dishwasher is totally full. It’s an efficient device: put it on twice a day, on the quickest setting it has, and don’t feel guilty about it. Result: it’s never “a thing” that needs to be handled. Emptying it is easy. Takes one minute. You always have clean things. Sounds ridiculous, I know. Trust me.
Do you have any evidence to support this? What's the usage in kWh per run and the cost of detergent? On the highest setting mine will get through plates that have been sitting around for a week (don't judge). That costs me one run and one tablet of detergent. You're suggesting running it on the lowest setting 5-10x as often and using 5-10x the amount of detergent. The cost in time loading and emptying seems to be equ…
at my current rates that's 30p per run in electricity, 32.5p for the dishwasher tablet (26gbp/80 tablets). So 62.5p per load.
1.25gbp per day
(1.25*365)/12 =
38.020833333333336~ gbp/month.
If you get in the habit of doing this every time, even as new items are shifted from where they belong, the house quickly "rebounds" to a more consistent and predictable state.
Pay for cleaning. This may work better or worse depending on the age of your kids... But vacuuming, cleaning surfaces, changing beds, etc. can be ousourced and saves LOTS of time.
Definitely considering this. My kids are too young to help much around the house yet
Last year we started to pay for cleaning / washing / ironing and it saves a lot of time - like 6 hours a week to get all done.
Also, doing groceries the right way is important. What we ended up doing:
- everything non perishable or long time (water etc), buy a lot and put in the basement
- what you can, buy through Amazon subscriptions for a regular delivery
- once a week, do the short term groceries - veggies, fruits, meat. We do it with kids on a farm where you can harvest your own food. It's actually a great activity !
As the last one, maybe a bit controversial, but I almost never repair stuff anymore. If it's something cheap and I would need to spend an hour or two to repair it, I just throw out and buy a new one. I may would like to have more time to do those things (sometimes I still do when it's to show the kids something interesting), but overall this attitude is a huge time saver.
At some point, if your earnings are enough, you just have to put time before money.
It's interesting that as we developed technologies like dishwashers, vacuum cleaners and washing machines we used these machines to do more work rather than save time. My dad would wear a shirt for a week when he was young, now he puts a clean one on every day. Perhaps you can just do less, try time-boxing.
I wear under-shirts for this very reason. Sweat and oil from my skin will be absorbed by the under-shirt. These are cheap garments that are never meant to be seen so you can safely wash them after every use. Grey or skin colour is the best colour for an undershirt. White is fine unless you wear a white shirt. It should be a t-shirt rather than a vest (so it covers the armpits) but it's essential that it's a V-neck shirt so that it's not visible when your collar is open (your underwear should never be visible).