Saturday, July 23, 2011

Of cleaning and allowances...

This has been a hectic week! We had bible school all week long, so in anticipation of being very busy, I cleaned my house on Saturday. This is not how I normally do things, and I have missed my usual daily grind a lot.

So, I thought that I would make a blog about how I normally clean, just because I am convinced that it is the best way to get the house clean and retain my sanity. First off, I'm really nuts about having my house really clean, because I was raised by Dina Watson and she is the most obsessive cleaner in the whole world. My mom loves, loves, loves to clean. And she is perfect about it (my mom is pretty near perfect, period). I am as far from perfect as human beings come. And I definately do not like to clean. But I work really hard to have a clean house because, someday, my mother will agree that it really is a clean house. Someday. I hope. And also because I was raised in this nutso way that everything has to be a certain way.

Now, as to how I go about doing it: On Mondays, I clean the bathrooms. (I do this on Mondays because I feel that this is the absolute most important thing to get done in the week. If something happens and my week goes all wacky, I will have this done.)

Tuesdays, I run the vaccum and sweep/mop the floors. (I do this on Tuesdays because I hate doing it and I want to get it out of the way.)

Wednesdays, I do the girls' laundry. (In the summer, I do all of our laundry, for two reasons. One, there is less to do with mostly t-shirts and shorts, and two, I hang things on the line.)

Thursdays, I dust. Fridays, I do our laundry. (In the summer, Friday is a day to catch up on strange things, like, for example, I clean the windows a lot in the summer to let the sun shine in). And on Saturdays, I wash the whites. Sunday is my day off, every week, no exceptions.

I use Saturdays to do odd things that need doing once a month. On the first Saturday of the month, I give the dogs a bath. On the second, I clean the refrigerator/kitchen. I'm supposed to wash the sheets one of those Saturdays, but sometimes that gets pushed to the back burner.

Also, the girls have chores every day. They are age appropriate things, like making their beds and setting the table. Every Saturday night they then receive an allowance of five dollars. I know that's kind of a debated thing, to give them an allowance. But I feel that it's important for a lot of reasons. First of all, they receive four dollars bills and four quarters. Fifty cents (ten percent) goes into their Sunday School envelopes. Fifty cents goes into their piggy banks to save. And the remaining four dollars is theirs. They can use this to shop, if they want. If they are invited to a birthday party, the money for the gift comes from their money. I am hopeful that this is teaching them to be responsible with their money.