It's the weekend. You've been working all week and you're knackered. The kids want attention. You look round the house. There are piles of clothes and toys everywhere, sticky finger marks on the walls, you can see bits of toast under the table, you still haven't located your daughter's dirty socks which she took off and hid somewhere in the living room last week and your neighbours are coming round for dinner tonight. You can't face a full cleaning spree. Don't worry. WorkingMums is here to give you some handy tips to looking like you have done a cleaning spree without actually having to do it.
1. Get a big bin liner when the kids are asleep. Ruthlessly put every bit of paper, small broken plastic toy, magazine, odd sock etc, in the bin liner - harden your heart. I know you want to save all their artwork, but it is better if you put the best ones on the wall and get rid of the rest. How many of your attempts to draw a circle did your parents keep? If you have an extra five minutes, have two bin liners and put the toys that are not totally broken in one and take them to a charity shop after hiding in a top secret place in case the kids find it before you get to the charity shop and reclaim the toys as "their favourites". Shove all clothes in a drawer with tops on one side and bottoms on other, but vaguely fold the tops to avoid ironing [see later]. When quizzed by partner, refer to it as "a well planned system". You risk the chance here that, as only you know the system, your partner will never put the clothes away, but this will probably happen anyway so what the hell. What's more, the kids will pull all the clothes out at some stage in any case and you need a quick and easy system for repairing the damage.
2. Do not clean the oven/fridge unless you move or until the kids leave home.
3. Only wash clothes that have been worn on significant numbers of occasions or are covered in mud, etc. Convince yourself this is ecological. Ditto sheets. Helpfully young children often wet the bed so you have probably changed them a lot anyway.
4. If your children's beds are covered in toys, bits of paper, etc, put them all down one end in a nice group with a cute teddy bear at the front sitting on all the papers. Appearance is all.
5. Spray furniture polish in the corners of every room so it smells as if you have been polishing.
6. Use the excuse that your children are afraid of the sound of Hoovers to avoid having to Hoover more than once a month. Convince yourself that this is healthy: quote research suggesting houses that are too clean cause asthma in children.
7. Only iron if absolutely necessary. Otherwise buy drip dry material or just hang all clothes up in a cupboard after washing and make the kids wear layers if the crinkles don't disappear. That way only the top layer has to be ironed.
8. Get the kids to do assorted tasks and put on a cd a la Mary Poppins. Turn washing up into some kind of disco fantasia. Ditto cleaning the walls. It is amazing how interested small people can be in cleaning marks off walls. However, be aware that sometimes they can appear to take the task far too seriously and something you think would take five minutes becomes a half-day marathon as they scrub away at imaginary stains.
9. Never clean windows or cars. That's what rain is for.
10. Buy a lot of those cheap Ikea storage boxes and bung everything into them. This also provides hours of fun in later months when the kids rediscover old toys.
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