30 Minute Cleanup

I recently read a homeschool post (I can't remember where, but if I find it, I'll link it later) where one small part seemed to jump off the page at me.  The author said we need to be willing to take the time to DO the things that make us happy.

This might sound funny (or down right strange), but that made me think of cleaning.

What?  Doesn't cleaning make you happy?

Okay, okay, me either, but living in a clean (or at least picked up) house makes me very, very happy.  The opposite is also true.

When my home is a mess, I find my patience wearing thin faster, and I feel stressed and upset all the time.  Not good.

In the beginning of the school year I wrote about how I used to wait until the end of the school day before my kids did any of their chores.  It drove me nuts because we'd spend most of the day in a mess.  We started doing a quick cleanup before bed so everything would be clean first thing in the morning.  It was a wonderful change.

When I actually did it.  Some nights I was (and am) just too tired and didn't want to (gosh darn it). 

Which means my house was still a mess the next day.  Darn (again).

Then, one day not too long ago, I had a brilliant idea.  A super duper wonderfully brilliant idea.  Why does the quick cleanup only have to happen before bed?

Now, whenever I look around and all I see is mess, I yell, "30 minute cleanup!" and my house magically get's picked up in under 30 minutes.  How cool is that?

Crazily enough, my boys love the cleanup, a lot.  They get their chores done early and much faster than if they worked on them later on their own.

It seems that the more I learn, the more I learn there isn't one fit.  Even for the same family.  I'm learning to have fun figuring out what works best for my family today and celebrating when I make a new discovery.

What have you figured out lately?

Leah