How To Get Housework Done When You Have Little Kids
If you have at least one young child, you have probably asked yourself how to get housework done when you have little kids. Especially if you are a full-time stay at home mom, this can be one of the biggest challenges you face before your children are old enough to be much help. As a homemaker, it can be very frustrating when one of your main domains feels constantly out of control.
In this post I’m sharing 5 useful tips to help you keep a more tidy and cleanly home. These are tips I personally used (and still use) when I was doing ALL the housework as not only my children were learning but I was also learning how to teach them to develop their skills.
“The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied”
Proverbs 13:4
5 Tips How To Get Housework Done When You Have Little Kids
Tip 1: Less Stuff Is More
While there are numerous benefits to hanging on to less stuff in your house, one of the primary is without a doubt how much easier it is to keep your home tidy. You simply do not have to move as many objects if you have fewer of them.
What is the biggest pile of things moms complain most about picking up? Kids’ toys. Start there. Do you need three train sets? Do you need a whole storage tote bin full of wooden blocks? Does your 2 year old need sixteen t-shirts and four pairs of sunglasses? Probably not.
However, there are a few considerations when it comes to reducing things, though. Don’t go recklessly trashing everything in sight!
First, will you need it in the future? Is it a seasonal item such as autumn or holiday decor? That can stay even though you don’t use it much. Is it a repeated item? You likely don’t need as many as you have. Is it sentimental? Decide whether to display it or properly store it. Certain materials need to be stored in certain ways, so do a little research before chucking grandmother’s wedding gown in a cardboard box.
This article and this article have some great ideas to begin with.
Now, can you sell it to make a little money? Can you think of someone in need of this item for free? God always blesses a cheerful giver!
(2 Cor 9:6-8) Is it just junk and should have been thrown out a while ago? Appreciate it and let it go.
Tip 2: Clean As You Go aka “Little And Often”
You will never clean up a major mountainous mess if you clean a bunch of little hills instead. It may not sound like any fun to do multiple rounds of cleaning instead of one – that’s more right?! – but usually when you add up the many small sessions, it ends up being less time than the one major clean-up. Don’t forget the reduction in the stress of watching the pile build up, walking around it, tripping over it (ever been stabbed by a toy?? YIKES!), plus the energy to get yourself going on it.
It’s not worth it when you can find or make the small pockets of time instead.
First, do your best not to move on to the next part of the day until you wrap up the last one. When you switch from going on a walk to play time, first put the stroller or baby carrier in its home. When playtime turns into meal time, the toys should go away first.
Ah! But this means everything needs a home. Yes, it sure does. Having a home with a place for everything takes time to develop. Give everything a spot, not worrying about if it’s the perfect spot, and adjust the spots over time, little by little. Eventually everything will be flowing in and out of their homes consistently.
What about things that need actual cleaning, not so much putting objects away, such as sinks and mirrors? As FlyLady says, swish and swipe! You can clean your whole sink every single morning while you brush your teeth. Or evening… or whenever you do that. Even though it likely doesn’t visibly need to be done daily, it will never get soiled enough to see if you wipe it down daily (or very often).
This works for many surfaces in your home: toilets, sinks, mirrors, microwave and stove, hand railings, windows, dusty surfaces, light switch plates, tub/showers. Once you get in this habit of quickly wiping down seemingly not-that-dirty surfaces, you’ll soon find yourself living in a sparkly home more often than not.
Tip 3: Prioritize Certain Tasks
I know I just gave a nice long list of things to wipe down all the time, and this seems like a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be! Seasons come and go where there really is much less or much more time to do things. If you are spending 5-8 hours a day sitting down nursing a baby, cleaning windows and stair railings is going to sink to the bottom of the list for a while and THAT’S OKAY.
So, make a priority list.
First, make a master list of every single thing that could be done in a perfect world. Next, order the tasks in order of importance. Jot down how long each thing takes to do; I give myself a whole hour for each meal I make, but 5 minutes for watering plants. Then, tell yourself how often it should be done. Don’t water plants every day; do wash dishes after each meal. Perhaps toilet wipe down is once or twice a week. Laundry is probably daily by the time you have 3 children.
Give this plan a try and tweak as you go. I really mean tweak; try not to overhaul the whole thing since you’ll be re-doing most of the steps just mentioned.
There is great temptation to tell yourself you’ll get around to each task when you notice it needs to be done, but this really is a failing strategy. Most overwhelmed moms are already doing this and it’s not working. I resisted a chore schedule for myself for a long time!
But once I finally did it….. it really worked (with tweaks)! Imagine my surprise!
I was most inspired by an excellent book called “Confessions Of An Organized Homemaker.”
Read my full review and get your own copy. I truly wish I had come across this book back when I was a brand new mom scratching my head, wondering how to get housework done with little kids everywhere!
Tip 4: Have Children Help With You
There is a very sweet spot in a child’s life where they will gladly do basically anything as long as it seems fun or it is with mom. My current 11 month old LOVES to take things out. Any thing, out of any place. I made it a game. “You got a spoon from the dishwasher! GOOD BOY! You’re so smart! That’s for me. *take it from him and put in drawer* YAY you’re helping mommy! Do it again.” (he was already onto the next one) He loves this! He feels like something fun must be happening, I’m not allowing a mess to be made, and I’m making a positive environment during a mundane task.
1 and 2 year olds love to help with laundry – especially if you toss the socks on their head or play peek-a-boo with the towels. You can reach the bottom of the washer and they can put it in the dryer. Turns out, they also love to take things out of places. They stay occupied (therefore not making a mess somewhere else) and you are training them how to do and complete chores, that chores are a normal part of life that all family members participate in, and that you can have a cheerful attitude while doing it. So many birds with one stone!
If you start this helpfulness training early enough and don’t waver much, you will likely get to skip a lot of hemming and hawing from a little bit older child trying to learn to do a chore for the first time. Consistently discipline (literally, teach) them while they are younger to prevent the need to discipline them when they are more resistant. It’s so much smoother of a process for both of you.
Soon enough you can hand the whole task over to them.
Tip 5: Utilize Community
This tip is much less immediate if it’s not already established. Hopefully you have other women in your life that you can reach out to every now and then to come alongside you in this unique season of trying to figure out how to get housework done when you have little kids.
Brainstorm about who you know who is physically nearby, doesn’t also have small children, and is a positive influence to you (not someone who will encourage you in commiseration). Think of other moms you know with teens to ask to come over, empty nesters, or even someone “elderly”. Grandmothers are often lonely these days because they lack close family and they’d be more than glad to hold a baby or play with a toddler while you take 45 minutes to wipe up your whole downstairs. And some grandmas are really tough cookies and will get up and work with you! They often have very fun and wise stories from their life to share as well.
Mom, you can’t do everything all the time. God did not make a body of Christ so that we could stay disconnected. Our society has been fragmenting more and more for decades. We can turn it around with new habits! It’s hard to swim upstream in this area, but it’s very worth it. Eventually, you’ll have the opportunity to be on the helping side.
In Conclusion
Figuring out how to get housework done when you have little kids is no small task. It takes time to learn the skills, develop the time management habits, and just when you feel you have it down, you usually have a major life event that changes everything again. Do not lose heart; it’s not supposed to be a perfect flow every month of every year for your whole life. You just want to have this mindset secured so that you can glorify God in all that you do, even sweeping under the dinner table.
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.”
Colossians 3:3-24
It’s not that God visits cleaner homes more. It’s that since He called you to this life of homemaking with children under foot, He wants to guide you in doing your best with it. He hasn’t handed us impossible tasks to watch us flounder, but He does present us with challenges to grow and purify us.
Lastly, remember to bathe your plans and work in prayer, committing your intentions to the Lord. Whether He allows them all to happen or not, it’s your heart He is after. Many times He also blesses the work of our hand and the housework can start to feel like less of a burden.
“Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.”
Proverbs 16:3
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