Saturday Chores Cleaning Tips

Usually Saturday mornings we do a lot of chores around here. I start taking a look on Friday evening at what needs to get done.It is not as complicated as it my seem. There is a chart of our fridge that says who does what each day and on Saturday. Everyone has one dishwasher day each week and a couple of other chores on Saturday as well as 1-2 nights that they clean up after dinner. I just recently did a
re-org and the new assignments seem to be working out pretty well.  I also throw in whatever else needs doing as needed on Saturday morning. For example, wiping the door frames, switch plates and banisters and spider hunting.

I put the bathroom cleaning supplies in a tote so they just have to pick it up and get to work. There are 2 full baths upstairs and a guest bath downstairs, (Ian has downstairs, Jacob hall bath, Emily and Sarah take turns with the master bath). Something that works amazing on the soap scum in the bathroom is dryer sheets. I kid you not! Take a couple in the shower with you, wipe everything down, rinse it before you get out and everything sparkles! If the shower is especially bad, get some Fume-Free Easy Off oven cleaner. It MUST be FUME-FREE. Spray it all over before you go to bed and wipe/rinse it down in the morning. Did you know that if you use bar soap you will have a much more difficult mess to clean up? The shower gel type stuff leaves much less residue behind.

To save money we use cloth dish towels instead of paper towels. I have always had a basket on the counter with a couple dozen towels, (we go through most of them each day). Last week Steve put an under the counter basket up above the sink so it frees up some counter space for me.

Use a slightly damp micro-fiber towel to dust with. It traps the dust instead of putting it back into the air.

I use baskets for toys and misc. all over the house. It makes things a little easier to pick up and organize and fells less cluttered. There is a basket for all the electronic charges and various cords that are used fairly regularly. A basket for mail and papers. One for bread, (bread, bagels, etc) and another for snacks.  The basket on the end table is for Nintendo Gameboys and cartridges. We have several laundry baskets and use them for tossing in the toys then putting them away from there. In the garage I use a lot of Rubbermaid bins for storage. No one has a laundry hamper in their room. I would never get all the laundry clean if I didn't have them put their laundry in the basket next to the washer everyday. I only do 4-5 loads of wash a week with my new front load high efficiency machines, by the way!

I use Borax to clean a lot of things, bathroom and kitchen. Also baking soda and vinegar. A magic eraser is a must have in any house, I think! You can wash your stove top parts, (burner pans and knobs), in the dishwasher once in awhile. Did you know that hand sanitizer will take ink, any Sharpie, off of most surfaces? Baby wipes are great for ink pen stains on clothes. Take the shower curtain down and throw it in the washer with a load of towels and some Borax. You can toss it into the dryer with the towels for about 10 minutes and hang it back up while it is still warm.

Ants? Sprinkle corn meal around outside for them and they will soon be gone....for awhile anyway. The always come back. An exterminator told me about this. It works and is animal and kid safe. They carry it into their nest and when they eat it, well, ants should definitely not eat corn meal!

Tomorrow a few of us are heading over to the Scripps Ranch Farmer's Market in the morning to pay for our beef and pig order with Da Le Ranch. www.daleranch.com  Although, I hear that the Poway Farmer's Market has the best produce so we may pop over there as well!

Thanks Angie for the info on the babysitting class for Emily! Can anyone recommend a carpet cleaning company for us?