How much of your weekend is spent doing chores?

[NewEnglandLady]

Does anybody else feel like they spend the majority of the weekend cleaning, running errands and doing other various chores? Sometimes I feel like my weekend "to do" list doesn't leave me any time to do anything fun and I'm beginning to worry that I'm a weirdo. Plus, I worry that if I'm this busy BEFORE kids, I'm going to be running around like a crazy lady once the baby is here.

I feel like between my regular weekly cleaning (around 4 hours), time spent at the dog park (2 hours), trips to Target and the Grocery Store (2 hours) and other random weekend chores (several hours), it leaves very little time for me to relax. And between making dinner, laundry, vacuuming, etc. on weekdays, I don't get much time there, either.

I'm beginning to wonder if this is normal? I know that sounds like a stupid question, but I'm wondering if all of you experience something similar? Does anybody else ask other coworkers what they did over the weekend and think "how do you have time to do all these fun things??"

For the record, I used to do fun things on weekends, but since buying our house, I feel like I spend a lot more time WORKING on the house!

 

[ame]

If you saw my house, you'd see ZERO seconds. lol

I do Laundry starting on Saturday and finishing Sunday, but that seems to be all that is accomplished. Our house seriuosly looks like a bomb went off in every room.

 

[MonkeyPie]

I feel the exact same way, and it doesn't get any better with a baby added in!

 

[mrscushion]

Yes and yes.

I did get a cleaning lady now because I couldn't stand it anymore. In case I sound like a spoiled brat, I do work nonstop during the week and am away from home a lot of the time, so I really couldn't stand the 4 hours of cleaning every weekend. I still spend plenty of time grocery shopping, doing laundry, paying bills, etc.

 

[fieryred33143]

I used to be that way before becoming a mom. Because I work outside of the home, I very rarely do chores on the weekend. My daughter goes to bed early so I spend the week doing laundry, cleaning and running errands. I also take my lunch hour to run errands if I have to. My weekends are mainly spent on family activities with maybe a load or two of laundry to get done and I may run an errand during her 2-3 hour nap (though most times I nap myself )

My weekends are very precious to me since having my daughter.

 

[tyty333]

If you can afford it I highly recommend a cleaning person. If you can get someone in every other week...it really helps a lot.
I'm a SAHM now so no help for me but when we both worked it was just wonderful!

 

[misssoph]

I know what you mean, I think the only way is to drop your domestic standards!

 

[stephbolt]

NEL, I'm the same way. During the week between work, our commutes, gym, and preparing dinner, it's rare we have more than an hour or two to do anything else at night, and although there are some chores that can't wait, most of them get pushed to the weekend. Same with errands, occasionally I can stop and get one or two things done on the way home, but it's much more likely I will let it all wait for the weekend. I hate it when we are traveling on the weekend because then I feel like I'm playing catchup the entire next week.

 

[NewEnglandLady]

This makes me feel more normal. Thank you, ladies.

D and I have talked about getting a housekeeper to come in every week or two for a year now. He insists that he can do more, but I feel sort of bad since he's responsible for all things lawn related (and we have more than an acre). Plus his idea of cleaning and mine are different. I do feel like I need to lower my standards or just bite the bullet and hire somebody.

 

[Miscka]

NEL - I would hire someone stat! Our weekends have felt so much more like that than they did pre-baby, and it does kind of bum me out. Plus, like fiery, I work and want that extra time with my little guy. We just hired someone and it makes the world of difference. Still obviously have to run errands and the like, but such is life

 

[vc10um]

I can honestly say mine do not, but that's because I am, admittedly, a TERRIBLE housekeeper. And by terrible I think I'm being generous. I hate cleaning with a passion and it really takes a lot for me to get up and do ANYTHING around the house.

We'll probably end up getting a cleaning person when we buy a house, but until then, we'll just live with the warzone that is our condo...

 

[MissStepcut]

Depending on where you are, a cleaning person might cost less than you assume. I got a quote for $50/week (she would come in one day a week and do the floors, counters, kitchen, bathroom, etc.) That was for a small apartment, but nevertheless, you can't assign your free time a value of 0. Seriously.

 

[TooPatient]

Sounds familiar.

It helps when I'm able to get some done during the week, but there is still lots to do on weekends. Luckily (?) we don't do anything on Shabbat except go to services and relax (read, talk, play with dogs) so from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday I get some "relaxing" time. Of course that means that anything that didn't get done during the week has to be done Saturday night or Sunday.

 

[Sha]

Yes Yes Yes!!! For the past year I feel like all I do on the weekends is washing and cleaning and chasing after my DD. Weekends are supposed to be relaxing, and I hardly ever get to just kick back and do nothing.

My new strategy is to concentrate all my house cleaning/chores on Saturday, so that I have Sunday to relax and do fun/family activitees. Before I used to do cleaning on Sat and Sun - but that made me feel like the whole weekend was work. I tried it last week, and even though I felt REALLY tired by Saturday evening, it was great to have the whole Sunday to do whatever I wanted to.

 

[April20]

Whenever I've been working full time, I've had an every other week cleaning person. I refuse to spend the entire w/e cleaning when I work hard all week and need to have a couple of days to decompress and spend with DH.

Get a cleaning person. It rocks!

 

[Jennifer W]

I don't spend time on chores at the weekend, but we do shop and cook together, which takes up a bit of time. I don't think of that as a chore though, it's nice time that we enjoy. We usually stop for coffee after we've bought groceries, or lunch if it's that time of day - make a bit of a treat of it.

House cleaning - we do the bare minimum to keep it hygienic, mostly during the week. DH wakes up ridiculously early most days, so he'll usually clean the worst of the kitchen before Amelia and I get up. The rest of it we just tackle as and when it strikes us as too slovenly even by our standards....

I resent every moment spent on dull stuff, particularly at the weekends. I pay people to do whatever I can get them to do, and deal with the rest in a blitzkrieg whirl round the place in the shortest time humanly possible. I skip a whole lot of stuff entirely. J probably does most of it anyway, but I only remember the stuff that I do (because I resent it). We'll have a blitz on it before visitors arrive, but we try not to invite picky tidy people so we don't have to do too much.

 

[Dreamer_D]

I used to be that way before becoming a mom. Because I work outside of the home, I very rarely do chores on the weekend. My daughter goes to bed early so I spend the week doing laundry, cleaning and running errands. I also take my lunch hour to run errands if I have to. My weekends are mainly spent on family activities with maybe a load or two of laundry to get done and I may run an errand during her 2-3 hour nap (though most times I nap myself )

My weekends are very precious to me since having my daughter.

Yup.

And we have a cleaning person who is awesome.

Otherwise, tidying and cleaning are low on the priority list. I have made a conscious effort to have a relaxed and low key lifestyle and that means many "to dos" became "not gonna happens".

 

[Dreamer_D]

I don't spend time on chores at the weekend, but we do shop and cook together, which takes up a bit of time. I don't think of that as a chore though, it's nice time that we enjoy. We usually stop for coffee after we've bought groceries, or lunch if it's that time of day - make a bit of a treat of it.

House cleaning - we do the bare minimum to keep it hygienic, mostly during the week. DH wakes up ridiculously early most days, so he'll usually clean the worst of the kitchen before Amelia and I get up. The rest of it we just tackle as and when it strikes us as too slovenly even by our standards....

I resent every moment spent on dull stuff, particularly at the weekends. I pay people to do whatever I can get them to do, and deal with the rest in a blitzkrieg whirl round the place in the shortest time humanly possible. I skip a whole lot of stuff entirely. J probably does most of it anyway, but I only remember the stuff that I do (because I resent it). We'll have a blitz on it before visitors arrive, but we try not to invite picky tidy people so we don't have to do too much.

I think we are twins m'dear

 

[Jennifer W]

Good to know - if you're ever in Scotland, come and see us (now I know you won't need me to scrub the house first...)

 

[NewEnglandLady]

I have to admit that I work harder to make sure all the dishes are in the dishwasher, the counters are wiped down, etc. in the morning because our dog walker comes over every day and she's a clean freak. It's probably good for me.

I love having house guests that aren't picky. Much less stressful. But when my mom comes into town? Forget it, I spend DAYS scrubbing everything down. And then she STILL cleans because she's convinced the dogs get everything dirty. Which they do, but she raised four kids, so she should understand!

 

[Jennifer W]

Our dog makes a million times more mess than our kid - I think our house would actually be quite presentable if it wasn't for the wire-coated dog. There is always hair everywhere, and it's not the kind of coat you can go at with a brush every day - we have to groom so carefully, because she goes fluffy if we're not paying attention!

 

[zoebartlett]

I think a large part of it is how big one's house is and how much maintenance there is in general. We don't have kids, so that helps. The condo we live in now is about 1400 sq. ft., and it's not too hard to keep clean and tidy if we stay on top of things. A very thorough deep cleaning of the whole house takes 2 hours probably, maybe more if that includes filing paperwork and mail. I HATE that job. Sometimes we slack and then we spend a good amount of time cleaning up clutter, but we try not to let that happen too often. My husband and I have always lived in condos, so we've never had a yard to take care. That frees up a bunch of our time, which I'm so happy about because I hate yard work. I did enough of it as a kid. D. feels the same way.

An on-going project I have is dealing with stuff in our garage. I have a lot of school stuff that needs to be organized better, but lately I've been procrastinating dealing with it. If I tried to take care of it all at once, that could easily take a whole weekend (or two), most likely.

ETA: I forgot to mention errands. I put those off til the weekend, and depending on how many I have to do, it could take 30 minutes or 3 hours.

 

[zoebartlett]

If you have a cleaning person, do any of you feel guilty or do you think it's your best investment ever?

My husband would LOVE to have someone come in, not necessarily every week but twice a month, let's say. We hired a woman to deep-clean our place right before our wedding and honeymoon. We had so much going on and we knew that we wanted to come home to a spotless house. I have to admit it, as much as I fought it, it was soooooooo nice to come home and not have to do a thing for a while.

Ever since then, my husband's wanted to hire someone to clean regularly. I can't get on board with that though because it's just the two of us. I'd feel so guilty having someone come in to clean up after us, simply because we're (at times) too lazy to do it ourselves if we fall behind. Plus, I don't like the idea of parting with the money.

 

[yssie]

Zoe - we're planning on hiring cleaning help, and it's just the two of us - we've been asking around for recommendations.

We both work 9-5 - which in reality is closer to 8-6, and for us the extra expense will be worth every penny. It's not like we don't clean up after ourselves, but... there's always more stuff than putting away what you just used that needs to be done, y'know? Vacuuming, gardening, dusting, cleaning bathrooms... We really just wouldn't otherwise have time to keep this house as clean as we'd (okay, I'd!) like and do anything else. Yeah, it's pricey, and it does sometimes feel unnecessarily lavish given that there's only two of us, but... we're both just SO much happier when we don't have a full day of housekeeping ahead - and SO much crabbier when we do, it's worth it for us. Like you and your DH we thought it was a huge waste of money before we tried it - but then we were sold!

We both pass grocery stores on the way home, so we're just getting what we need as we need it and thankfully avoiding the weekend masses.

 

[natascha]

Not having pets helps. A lot.

When I lived at home, we had a couple of dogs. Everything would always be covered in hair even though we vacuumed every three days. Now we vacuum once every two weeks, although we sometimes do the kitchen more often. We also don't wear shoes in the apartment so everything is cleaner.

We usually don't spend to much time on chores in the weekend. My SO washes the dishes and wipes the counter tops every day after I have cooked. I usually end up picking up the grocery's on my way home from school (although we need to start doing weekly shops or something, our food bill is through the roof) and do any errands directly after school when possible. But we don't have that many errands, banking and stuff we handle over the internet. Laundry is done at the shared laundry room where you can book two or three machines and then in three hours total you have up too 6 loads of washing clean and dry. Doing the whole bathroom takes about 30 min ( every two weeks but I wipe of the sink and such more often) the same with the floors (vacuuming and moping) and dusting is like 15 min. More in depth cleaning is done a couple of times a year and the it takes two days. Cooking is what takes the most time but i am becoming an expert at fast recipes,however, why oh why do I have to cook from scratch? Stuff coming out of a box like fish sticks and potato mash weirds me out so whats a girl to do?

The other thing that takes so much time is just picking up stuff, wherever I go through I seem to create a mess. Don't know how I do it.

I have a friend that is defiantly my idol when it comes to chores . She and her SO have what the call super Tuesdays. Every other Tuesday during dinner they create a meal plan. After that they through in a load in the washing machine then go shopping, come back take care of the wash then clean the whole apartment. It takes them an intense 4 hours but the they are done for the next two weeks!

 

[Sha]

I agree that dogs and kiddos (and new houses) add a lot to the workload. I had busy weekends before I had my DD, but also quite a bit of time to myself to kick back. NEL, I would definitely have a closer look at your schedule to see if you things could be rearranged before the baby comes. If you're doing so much on the weekends already...I can't imagine how full your schedule is going to be with a baby added to the mix. I would say my workload (things to do) doubled/tripled since having my DD, and I believe other parents would say the same. There's no way you would be able to keep up your current schedule with a baby - so maybe now is a good time to reshuffle things, while also making sure you get some down time for yourself.

Does your DH help with the chores or walking the dog? Is there anything that you can pass on to him? Anything that you can shorten, reslot to the weekdays or just eliminate from the schedule? It sounds like you're doing a lot. Thankfully my DH does the cooking and some laundry, so generally I focus on the cleaning and DD. Even then, it's still a lot! I have no clue how women who work and have to do all the house chores & childcare do it!! It's insane and also really unbalanced, IMO.

 

[sillyberry]

If you have a cleaning person, do any of you feel guilty or do you think it's your best investment ever?

I pretty much don't clean. I straighten up, but I don't clean. So I either live dirty or hire someone.

So I hire someone.

They do a better job in less time, have all the proper supplies and equipment, and it pays someone a salary. I can then spend that time being either productive or enjoying life, both of which I value over time spent cleaning.

So absolutely no guilt whatsoever!!!

 

[Dreamer_D]

If you have a cleaning person, do any of you feel guilty or do you think it's your best investment ever?

My husband would LOVE to have someone come in, not necessarily every week but twice a month, let's say. We hired a woman to deep-clean our place right before our wedding and honeymoon. We had so much going on and we knew that we wanted to come home to a spotless house. I have to admit it, as much as I fought it, it was soooooooo nice to come home and not have to do a thing for a while.

Ever since then, my husband's wanted to hire someone to clean regularly. I can't get on board with that though because it's just the two of us. I'd feel so guilty having someone come in to clean up after us, simply because we're (at times) too lazy to do it ourselves if we fall behind. Plus, I don't like the idea of parting with the money.

I feel that. Especially now that I am on maternity leave and at home. It feels pretty... lazy... to sit on my duff on PS with a napping baby while she cleans. But I have had a cleaning person for 10 years now -- ever since graduate school when my roomates and I shared the cost -- so I got over it.

I just shut up that part of my brain that feels guilty because not only does it help me, it helps her too. This is her employment, she is self-employed not working for a company who steals her wages, and we pay her $25 per hour. I do not think she could earn that at another job, and she can work part time and still be home for her kids. I consider it a good thing to employ her, and though I sometimes feel guitly, I also know that I am helping her and our economy.

 

[Haven]

We've been talking about hiring a cleaning person for a while now. This thread has me convinced that we should do it.

We have a small ranch home, it's something like 1300 sq. ft. total. No kids, three cats, and two dogs.

We like to keep the house pretty clean, and we do it a bit at a time now. It took us a while to find a good rhythm though, and I'll admit that some nights I'm too tired from work to clean what I know I should clean. During the week we vacuum and mop the floors, clean the kitchen counters and floor multiple times a day, and keep every *thing* put away. It's rare that there is stuff lying around the house. I only deal with the mail once a week, though, so I do keep a pile of it in my mail drawer until Saturday. It's hidden.

Weekends do get busy, especially in the fall. DH maintains our yard on his own, so he's constantly sweeping the driveway or raking leaves or mowing the lawns or weeding, or doing whatever else you have to do in a yard. I clean the bathrooms on Fridays, and dust the entire house, and vacuum if necessary. Oh, and we have to vacuum our sofas and wash linens and all the throws and sofa covers on Friday or Saturday, as well. (This is the biggest pet-related PITA, I have to say.)

All told, we probably spend anywhere from two to eight hours a weekend maintaining the house. We don't mind it, though, because we love the way it feels when the house is clean. Actually, I *need* the house to be really clean, otherwise I feel stifled and can't be creative, and then I'd just shrivel up and become miserable.

We're going to wash our windows this weekend. We have a small home, but it is ALL windows. That is going to take up some serious time.

It seems like people spend a lot of time running errands. For some reason, I feel like I rarely have errands to run. I shop for food every other day, but that's a quick trip to the tiny grocery store nearby. Other than a monthly visit to the bank to pay our mortgage, and maybe a monthly trip to pick up some toiletry odd or end, I can't think of the errands we need to run. Pet food and supplies, there's another one. I can't think of much else.

We've spent the last couple weekends purging unused belongings. It feels SO GOOOOOOOD.

 

[Jennifer W]

I don't have errands to run either - I pay bills by direct debit (or they'd be forgotten about) and mostly shop online. I dont go to the library since I got my kindle. There's nothing much else I can thing of. Trips to the garage twice a year now I don't service the car myself, I suppose? That's about it.

Paying for a cleaner - I never felt guilty about this, because I pay way over the odds (in recognition of just how hard it is to keep a house clean if J and I live in it). Also, someone is getting well paid work once or twice a week in a warm, dry environment, with tea, coffee and biscuits available, plus access to tv, music etc to make the chores go by faster, so there are worse jobs in the world. I also offer paid vacations and have been ok with the cleaner bringing her kid during school holidays (he's a nice kid, and I'm out anyway).

Mostly though, I don't feel guilty because cleaning stuff isn't my job - it isn't like someone else is doing it so I don't have to, more like someone else is doing it because I'm not going to.