Feeling like you’re caring for your home all the time, mama? Tired of being the mom who cleans all the time? Here are 2 ways to spend more time with your children and less time with your housework.
“Mommy! Will you play with me?”
The question cut to my heart because, quite frankly, I didn’t want to play with my daughter. At least not right then. Thinking of my to-do list, I knew everything that needed cleaned in my home.
But then again, my daughter wouldn’t stay 6 forever. And she wouldn’t always ask to spend time with me. I knew, as hard as it was to walk away from what “should” be done, I needed to use that moment to spend time with my little girl instead.
What’s a mom to do?
As moms, we’re faced with the age-old dilemma of raising our kids and caring for our house. Both are huge responsibilities that need our time, attention, and energy.
Only one reaps eternal rewards, though – raising our children.
It’s our children who grow into adults. And the time we pour into them while they’re young will affect their entire lives. If we’re intentional about investing into their spiritual growth, too, our efforts will affect them for eternity.
Clearly, while our children are in our homes, our mothering becomes the greater priority. In a few short years, our homes can be as spic and span as we’d like when our children our gone.
Yet as much as we may know that raising our children is the more important priority, it doesn’t take away the fact that our houses need cleaned.
In fact, if our houses are cluttered, filthy wrecks instead of loving havens, it will actually be harder to raise our children. When we can’t find the things we need because of mess or when stress builds in our families because of the clutter, it’s easy to realize cleaning our homes is important.
But what’s a mom to do?
2 Ways to Not Be The Mom Who Cleans All the Time
Since we know motherhood is important and homemaking is necessary, how do we, as moms, juggle both? As a clarification, the mere idea of juggling both – along with marriage, jobs, other relationships, and other interests – is exhausting. Yet women attempt it every day.
I think the important thing to remember is that because it’s an impossibility to juggle it all, we need to continually find ways to make things work in our current season of life. Then we need to give ourselves grace as we try to make the best of all the demands.
The trick is in finding a way to bring order to our homes but not to be remembered as moms who are so busy cleaning or organizing. How can we be remembered for taking time for our families?
I can think of two possibilities:
1. Don’t focus on cleaning.
Personally, this seems like a stretch for me – especially because my husband and I both thrive with neatness and order. But if you have a tolerance for mess, then don’t be afraid to have relaxed standards for your home.
If mess isn’t an option, you could always hire a cleaning lady – maybe having outside help even once a month could be a huge sanity saver.
2. Create a workable homemaking routine.
Hiring help may not be in your budget, though. If that’s the case, I strongly suggest creating a workable routine for your homemaking.
Your routine doesn’t have to be fancy. In fact, it may just involve a few Non-Negotiable Daily Chores and about an hour of maintenance cleaning every weekend. (Right now, this approach works SO well in my season of life.)
If your children are old enough, by all means get them involved in your homemaking – your husband, too. Since you’re all contributing to the mess in your home, there’s no way you can do it all by yourself. It’s a good thing for everyone to contribute to your home by having specific chores.
(If you all work on your home together at the same time, you might be surprised at how quickly the work gets done.)
In my home, it’s been helpful to take extra time every year to do a deep clean – and declutter the whole house. By making sure our home isn’t bursting at the seams with unnecessary stuff, it’s easier to keep it cleaned the rest of the year. Maintenance cleaning isn’t that difficult.
Finding the time for that decluttering and deep cleaning may be a little tricky, but it will be well worth it. And, if you involve your family in that process, too, you’re not the mom who is so busy cleaning the house – you’re a family who is working on maintaining and caring for your home together. And that’s a good lesson for everyone to learn.
By creating a workable homemaking routine the entire family can adopt, we as moms can devote our time to our children and still manage our homes without feeling like we’re so stressed.
What have you done to not become a mom who cleans all the time? What kind of homemaking routine do you use to make your life easier?
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All images courtesy of Stock Adobe and Unsplash.
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Jane says
So true! I haven’t been able to spend much time cleaning due to health issues since having kids. But it doesn’t mean I feel like playing with them still. What I have learnt about myself is that I enjoy doing stuff with my kids that has a teaching element – like getting outdoors or baking. So I try to make time for those kind of things regularly.