Keeping a Clean House as a Work at Home Mom?
One of the big things that slips for a lot of work at home moms is that perfectly clean house. You know, the one all stay at home moms are supposed to maintain.
Even for a stay at home mom, keeping a perfect house is one heck of a lot of work. Any time the kids are at home you can count on new messes being made. It’s not easy keeping up with the messes, and the kids can only help as well as is appropriate for their ages. Often that means they make more messes than they can clean well.
But it gets worse when you add a work at home job into the stay at home mix. Suddenly there’s something more demanding hours of your time. Depending on exactly what you do you can’t always limit things to just when the kids are asleep… especially if you want time with your husband. It’s a tough mix.
Working at home is serious, even though many people think it is little more than a hobby. I speak from experience in this area, as it took literally years to get my inlaws to understand that first my job as an at home medical transcriptionist was a real job, and then that my home business did indeed bring in real money.
The balance between work, family and a clean house is tough, and the perfectly clean house often ends up at the bottom of the list. After all, the kids won’t stay young forever, and your family needs the money you bring in from working. Anything more than a clean enough house can be tough to maintain.
I find my best balance by doing some basic housework each day, but having a regular deep cleaning day. I get much less business done that day, but it feels good to get a cleaner home out of it.
For every work at home mom it’s going to be different. Some find it works best for them to dedicate a certain time every day to clean, or maybe a few shorter spurts of cleaning every day. Others spread it out more.
When your children are young is the time to enjoy them. Leave perfection for later. You need to be there for them, and there for your job or business. You don’t have to feel guilty about not having a clean home when you don’t have enough time due to being a good parent. And if working at home is what it takes to be there for the kids, that’s a good priority too.
[tags]work at home,stay at home moms, stay at home,home business,family,parenting[/tags]
I’m a WAHM, and the house gets cleaned when I have just had too much for the day. This doesn’t happen often, but I can clean a bathroom in under 3 minutes when needed 😉
You make some very good points here. Thanks. I felt better about my choices after reading this article. (And my messy house.)
Awww, what a nice article, I feel so much better about my home. I am a total FlyLady flunky and we all blissfully live in chaos.
My girls really help around the house so they keep things really neat. On the otherhand, my husband is a pig. Do you have any advice for us girls because we’re tired of cleaning up after his mess?
Sometimes you just can’t change him. If he’s used to being picked up after because that’s what his mother did, it’s going to be tough.
What I don’t know is what you’ve tried already. How much has the issue been discussed? Do you flat out ask him to help out?
I have to do that most times with my husband. Once in a while he starts cleaning on his own, but it’s more common that I have to ask him, and even then what he considers done is not what I consider done.
I so see your point. I’m supposed to be working at home and taking care of my 4-year-old. Somehow there is a little voice in my head saying that I should clean up the house first before I sit behind the computer. But that way I never get to work.
My husband does work at home as well, but is taken more seriously. When he tells DD not to disturb him, she listens! How come he expects me to do all the house work as well and manage our daughter while I’m trying to work just the same?
Yes, he does earn more than me. But that is probably only because he actually gets to work…
You have to make yourself be taken seriously. It takes time to change such habits…
and believe me, my kids would sooner ask me than Daddy, just because I’m there all the time. He doesn’t work at home, after all.
Just think about the roles mothers and fathers traditionally take. The core of the problem is adjusting your situation to the fact that you both work.
You have this expectation of yourself that you should be working, but also the traditional expectations of keeping up your home and being there for the kids. Your husband has the traditional role of being the breadwinner, and less responsibility for the rest, although more than fathers used to do.
I’ve always felt these things should be divided in part by how much you are working to support your family, not by income. This gets challenging if your hours are being cut due to taking on too many other duties, so you have to speak up about the hours you would like to be able to work.
Try working out something of a schedule for each of you. Get strict with your DD about listening to you during your working hours. It’s hard, and something I struggle with too, but if you want to get things done and her Daddy is there and not working, she needs to learn to cooperate with you both.
There’s also something to ability and preference for these things, of course. My husband does more yard work because he prefers it. I can do it, but it’s more tedious to me.
It also helps to let him do housework as much as possible in his own way. The way my husband loads the dishwasher drives me nuts! But I’ve learned to not speak up unless he has done something that will keep the upper spin arm from rotating. The job is getting done, and that’s what counts.