Being a new parent can be exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. On one hand, you have a new bundle of joy that gives you many reasons to live and hope for a long life. But on the other, you can no longer remember when you’ve last experienced sleeping for eight full uninterrupted hours.
And it’s probably going to be like that for the next decade or two of your life. Although if you decide that you don’t want another child, you might be able to cut down that time to half. Or at least, until your kid is old enough to make their own food or sleep through the night on their own bed.
But until then, you won’t have a hold on your time unless you hire a babysitter to watch your kid while you catch up on some much-needed rest, which you must actually do from time to time if you want to keep your sanity. However, aside from taking care of your baby, there’s one other responsibility weighing on your shoulders — keeping the house clean.
Juggling these two tasks simultaneously without rest can drive anyone insane, which means you’re going to need all the help you can get. Fortunately, while maintaining the house can seem like a handful, there are ways to make it easier for you. In fact, here are four cleaning tips that can be your life-savers:
Develop a Daily Cleaning System
To say that babies are messy would be an understatement. Not only do they make a mess of everything, but they also go through so many clothes in one day because they keep soiling themselves with pee, poop, or food. And that means piles of laundry, crumbs on the floor, or mountains of dirty dishes every day.
This is exactly why you need to develop a daily cleaning system that will work for you. That’s not to say that you should vacuum the carpet or do the laundry every day but rotating around these chores will help you keep the house cleaner instead of trying to do everything at once.
Schedule the Big Cleanups
You won’t be able to do everything on your own, though, and you shouldn’t try because you’ll only tire yourself out in the process. Save the big cleanups for the professionals because no rule says you can’t bring in the big guns, aka outside help, to maintain your home. That’s what home services are for, after all.
So if your sofa is full of tough stains from spilled drinks or food crumbs in between the cushions, you should call professional upholstery cleaners to take care of the job. This way, you won’t have to worry about dust mites or insects hurting your baby when you’re lounging in the living room.
Adapt the “Claygo” Mindset
If you’ve never heard of the “claygo” policy used in most school lunchrooms, it means “clean as you go,” which can be a great cleaning mindset to practice. That’s because when there’s something dirty in the house, most people tend to procrastinate. And you might think that you’ll be able to do it later, but you won’t because your attention will be focused on other things then.
So instead of postponing minor chores like putting the dirty dishes in the dishwasher or separating your whites from your coloreds, why not claygo and do them immediately? Most small chores will only take a few minutes of your time, and you’ll be able to accomplish them at once. But if you procrastinate, then you’ll keep procrastinating until all your tasks pile on top of one another, and they will be harder to face.
Invest in Quality Organizers
With a baby in tow, you won’t have the luxury of time to waste looking for things that don’t want to be found, which is why you need to put everything in plain sight. Don’t rain on the importance of organizing. Keeping most, if not all, of your things organized in durable storage boxes can have you spend less time looking and more time doing.
Plus, you have to trust in the power of a good label maker and start labeling everything, so you’ll always know where to look. By properly labeling and organizing your items, you won’t have to turn the house upside down whenever you need to find something that needs your urgent attention.
Parenthood is not easy; you have so many things to take care of all at once and not enough time or hands to do them. But you do them anyway because you have a small kid depending on you to be strong. That’s why if you can lighten your load for even just a tiny bit, you need to seize the opportunity.
