I have mentioned that I use my cell phone to remind me to do things. Before I had a cell phone or a computer calendar, heck, back before I had a computer or used my husband’s comptuer - I needed a way to remember to do things.
When we lived an apartment chores were a lot easier. My husband would come home exhausted at the end of the week and go to bed early on Friday nights - very early - so I would clean the apartment while he was sleeping. I changed the bedding on the weekend. At first when the laundry bag filled up - about once a week to a week and a half - I went to the laundry up and across the street and wasted time doing the laundry - it came home in the same bag which also was washed. Then someone left a lipstick in the washing machine there - the washing machine I put all our clothes, towels, and bed linens in. Most of it had to be thrown out. Even then we were “odd sized” and had trouble replacing the clothes - plus the expense of replacing same and the rest. So we looked around and bought a very small washer and a very small dryer - really small. This turned laundry into an ongoing process most of the week. On Monday I would put the first load in the washer - a week of our shirts was all it was hold in one load. The dryer was about the same and did not have an exhaust hose, it exhausted the hot air into the adjacent air in the apartment and it took about twice as long as drying a full load of clothes does now. So this was a laborious process for most of the week - and very hot in summer with the air from the dryer heating the apartment beyond the summer heat, even with an air conditioner running.
When we moved to the house I needed to find ways to remember and “force myself” to do the household chores. I found it helpful to associate the chores to things to remind me. We have garbage pickup on Monday and Thursday - so, I started changing the towels on the same days - new towels went out on Mondays and Thursdays. Eventually I decided that I needed to change the kitchen towels more often and they became Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays, while bathroom towels stayed the same. (Shower towels are taken out when they will be used and used once.) Works well.
I used to change the bedding on Mondays as it was a new workweek. This worked okay until we started traveling for weekends more often as we often stayed away through Mondays. Since then Tuesdays is the day I change the bedding - unless there is a reason to do it on another day.
I started doing the laundry on Wednesday nights. Why? If we were going to take a weekend trip it definitely would not be while we were away and we would have clean and folded clothes for a trip leaving on Friday. I used to do the entire washing and drying on Wednesday nights, then husband started watching TV in the kitchen and blocking the basement door, so I could not conveniently do the laundry while he was sitting there and had to wait for him to go upstairs to his computer, so I ended up splitting the laundry between Wednesday and Thursday nights - and folding them Thursday and Friday mornings. Yes, “West Wing” changed my laundry schedule. :-)
Even this blog is tied to something, it is written on Wednesday night and posted late on same - or technically early on Thursday - as I do the laundry at the same time.
Actually cleaning and dealing with the house was easier before husband quit his job and is now with me all the time. My time is no longer my own - similar to him sitting in the way of doing the laundry on Wednesday nights. I may plan to do one thing - but he needs help warping his loom. I plan to do things during the afternoon - not even house related - and he has other plans. Today the eyeglasses he ordered came in, so everything I hoped to do was gone. We drove 45 minutes to Walmart in the next county (the only one with a vision department around here) plus the time there and then the drive back - and while driving home I remembered we needed to buy milk at Walmart and had to stop at another one and buy it.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Are there automatic reminders which you can tie your house chores to?
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