Can the House Stay Neat during Lockdown?

A lot of us are haven’t stay at home right now all over the world. Even as some places start to open up, a lot of people are staying home for their safety or because not everything has opened up year. Like me, you may be stuck at home with your kids. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it definitely makes it hard to keep a neat house. It’s not so hard to make the house look neat and then go to bed or go out and have it stay neat for a while. 

In lockdown, however, bed time is more of a nice idea than anything solid. Staying at home all the time means that the house is always being messed up, so how do you stay on top of all of it?

Routines Work

What worked in the past can still work before, to a degree. You can assign each member of the family their own jobs to do, and to ensure they get them done, you can lock rewards behind accomplishments.

What we do is tell the kids that they have to do certain chores before they can watch any cartoons. We also tell them that they need to do some chores while I am making lunch or dinner, and that they only get to eat once the chores are finished. You figure out what works for you, but these are just some ideas of how we incorporate chores into the daily routine.

Spread out the Work

It can be overwhelming to keep up with housecleaning all day long. Herman who owns House Cleaning Services Orange County adds “You have to constantly clean up after everyone and make sure that everything is in its place, but if you spread it out, the work can seem more manageable”.

The house doesn’t all have to be swept first thing in the morning. Perhaps a few rooms can wait to be swept until later on in the day. You don’t have to wash dishes after each snack and mealtime. There is also the option to hire a cleaning service if you are too busy.

You can limit the dishwashing to just twice a day with smaller families and not have a big mess to deal with. Look for ways to throttle the workload instead of trying to do it all at once, especially since there will be so much housecleaning to do while in lockdown. 

A Break from the Tedium

If it is safe, you may want to take your kids out for the day or at least for a few hours. Give them time in the park, at the ice cream shop or somewhere else where they can just have some fun.

Now, they may be exhausted after all the activity, especially after being cooped up in the house for so long, so you might want to have a plan in place to deal with the chores that have piled up.

One of my favorite ways to reward the kids and give them a break is to hire a cleaning service.

You typically do this while you are out, so you don’t have to come into contact with other people and you can get your house looking nice.