Goals for my Home Sweet Home

Household Goals
1. Work extra to pay for my cleaning lady!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, that is right! I just rehired my cleaning lady!!! I'm so excited I just don't even know how to express it. The back story to this is that back a couple of years ago when Lily was starting to be mobile, I started finding it very difficult to clean up the house (the way I like it) without there being 15 more messes made in the process by my sweet girl. Can anyone relate?! I'm sure I'm not the only one with little ones that feels like this. So, I got to talking to one of my great friends at work and she told me she had someone come clean her house and she (at that time) didn't even have any kids! So, it got me thinking how lovely this idea seemed. I could pay someone to come in and do what I really don't want to do, take my sweet girl out for a fun morning and come home to a spectacularly clean house!! But there were just a couple of problems with this idea.  First and foremost the money…. well this ended up not being too much of an issue at the time since I was fortunate enough to talk to my friend's cleaning lady and she offered what I think was a reasonable price for the job.  I am also fortunate enough to have a job that pays decent and allows me to work (for the most part) as much or as little as I want.  I decided I would just work extra to pay for this solution to a big stress in my life.  So that problem was solved, the next problem- I was embarrassed. Embarrassed that I was such a poor wife, mother, and homemaker that I was having trouble getting it all done and that I wanted to hire someone to do it for me!! Yikes! What was I thinking? Well, even though this was an issue, I got over it enough to go ahead and hire her!  Although, I told very few people about my big secret.  So, for 9 blissful months, I did not have to deep clean my house!! Yes, I was still embarrassed to a point. I hoped my neighbors didn't see her come- what would they think?! But, it was still so wonderful I didn't let it get to me too much.

Then things changed about about a year ago when I received the news that my wonderful full time pay for the part time work I did (from agreeing to work EVERY weekend) was going to be taken away. I knew for sure that my cleaning lady luxury would have to be the first to go. If I was working extra, it would have to go towards things that were more of a necessity.  So I began cleaning my own home again, and I guess I was in the nesting phase of being pregnant because I was actually enjoying it... for awhile.  Fast forward to now.  I still have my sweet girl making at least 50 messes a day and now Caleb will be on the move very soon.  I am still just finding it very difficult to enjoy my time home in the mornings with my babies.  All I can think about is trying to strategize which toilet to scrub during Caleb's little naps while trying to fit in a little quality one on one time with Lily in between those oh so necessary, yet inconvenient jobs.  So now, with the full support of my husband, I have decided to welcome Renee back into our lives with wide open arms.  The way I justify this is that I can work one extra eight hour shift a month and make enough money to pay for her to clean and pay a babysitter to watch the kids while I am there.  Win-win for me since I won't have to be stressed all the time about cleaning, win-win for the kids because they enjoy having someone different to play with every now and then.  Most importantly, I will be able to give them more attention while I am at home.  Lastly, win-win for Chris because he doesn't have to hear me fuss about a dirty house all the time and it takes the pressure off of him to help me do stuff around the house after he has worked all day.  Not to mention it kind of helps the economy a little by providing a job for someone and my unit/patients at work by working when there is a need!

2.  Now that I don't have to worry about deep cleaning, I can hopefully start working on other things that have been put off because I just didn't have enough time to get it all done.  So my next goal is to spend at least 30 minutes a day doing something that will keep the house in order- this may include just simply picking up or beginning to tackle the list of projects that I want to complete.  I look forward to being able to clean out some closets, drawers, and maybe even my kitchen cabinets!

3.  Laundry, laundry, laundry, and more laundry.  It seems to never end now that we are a family of four.  My goal with this is to do one load of laundry from start to finish on each of my days off (usually four a week).  This should keep it under control.  I can always do an extra load on one the days that I work if I need to.  The key to this goal is completing it to the finish.  I am really good at washing, then drying, the most of the time folding.  The big problem comes when I stop and just don't take the extra five minutes to actually put everything away.  This big problem I have drives me nuts, but I have never really gotten much better at it.

So, these are my goals to keep my house clean and in order.  What are yours??  Please share!