Project Messy House

Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life.  Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner.  Unschooling will often look different with each family.  This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy.  I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family.  Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more.  Thank you for taking time to read my blog!

One of the biggest challenges of unschooling three children and allowing them to fully explore their interests is that our house usually looks like a tornado touched down or there was a working blender with the top off.  I'm sure I'm not alone in this struggle.  So today I'm going to write about my plan to win the battle with the messy house. So simply by having a plan, it would be me 1, messy house 0, right?  Ok, here we go... 

1. I will do dishes daily.  We recently stopped using the dishwasher and I use vinegar and water to wash our dishes and surprisingly, they are cleaner by doing this.  It also seems like we are healthier.  It does take a while longer, but instead of waiting for the dishwasher to run, I just wash, dry and put them away and the kitchen is all sparkly clean rather than having another job of unloading the dishwasher.  I just have vinegar and water in a spray bottle and use it to clean everything.  Sometimes I add a little lemon juice.  Then throughout the day, we just use the same dishes and clean them off after each meal along with wiping off the table and counters.  I often will just clear the table and clean the dishes in the morning in the evening so we can have family time rather than spending all my time cleaning dishes.  I think family time is more important than cleaning, but that's just me.  Then after everyone goes to bed, I think yoga is more important than cleaning.  Others may feel differently.  One thing I have learned is baby boy loves helping with dishes.  So he is currently in training.  I do slack off with the dishes at times and the above description is how it would be in a perfect world, however, dishes are never catastrophic.  They are manageable even if I skipped a day.

2. I throw a load of laundry in the washer and dryer each night and then we fold them in the morning.  I cycle the laundry where we do clothes, diapers and soiled undies, towels and sheets, diapers and soiled undies, clothes.  Can you tell I'm potty training?  Anyway, this is easy to maintain.  I will occasionally get a bit lazy and skip a couple days, but never anything that takes over my life to the point where I want to blow the house up.  My oldest son does a great job at sorting laundry.  I often will give him whatever change I have in my purse for helping out and he likes to count his money to see if he has enough saved up yet for a pet Macaw.  He also enjoys helping with laundry, so he is in training.  I usually use soap nuts for laundry, but occasionally will purchase some organic laundry soap if we get a bad batch of nuts or if the kitten decides to knock them on the floor and play with them, not that this would ever happen.  ;)

3. I take out the trash in the bathrooms and kitchen Monday and Friday and that seems to do the job.  I also take out recycling.  There's a tall kitchen can in the kitchen for recycling and I keep the trash cans small so I can't slack off and have an overly stinky kitchen.  The trash is easy and rarely an issue.

4. We will have Thursdays free this fall, so Thursday will be my designated cleaning day.  The plan is to vacuum, dust, and clean the bathrooms and laundry room.  This is where my dedication to the messy house war will be challenged.  This is the area where the toys will mock me as I try to shove a vacuum across the floor and living in the woods, there will be new spider webs in every corner.  I don't know where they come from.  This is a challenge before all challenges to run a vacuum across the floor when there are dolls and cars everywhere you look and my daughter will just change clothes when she feels it is meant to happen and wherever she is at the time, is where the clothes seem to stay.  This is where I have to be a mean mom and sometimes that just seems like way too much work when I'd prefer to just cuddle with the cuties.  So at this point, the house thinks it may defeat me, but I have a backup plan.  Whatever doesn't get done on Thursdays, my husband will help me do on Sundays.  So it will get done and I will be victorious, right?  The kids love taking the vinegar bottle and rag and wipe down the walls and windows, so this will be their job on Thursdays.  Plus, my oldest son loves to vacuum, but will at times suck up things that aren't dirt, so that can be a problem.  He's in training.

5. Once a month, I will dedicate a day to cleaning behind the frig and stove and washing windows and organizing closets and fun things like this.  It will more than likely be the 1st Wednesday of the month.  This is an important step of project messy house and I have not kept up with, but would like to start.  The house will be so happy. 

So this is my plan.  Do you think I can do it?  Some of these things I do fairly regularly and some of them scare me, but I'm pretty confident that I can win this battle of the messy house.  I WILL BE VICTORIOUS!