Please wash your hands.

Please wash your hands, originally uploaded by C book on photo sharing site www.flickr.com

Upscale hotels taught me a trick I’ve been using for years in my home: use wash cloths as hand towels in your bathroom. Place a basket or stack of them on your counter and have a second, wicker basket on your floor or under the sink to hold damp, used ones. Keep your sink clean by wiping it out with the cloth before tossing it. (I use a wicker trash basket to prevent mold build-up before laundry day.) For households of one or two, the same towel can be used several times but for larger families it is a good idea to consider them “one-use” before they hit the second basket. Wash them with a little bleach so they stay white and germ-free.

-Prevents the spread of germs
-Keeps your sink clean
-Helps avoid that “smelly towel” syndrome created by everyone using the same towel which, of course, never actually dries.

Cleaning Style of a Do-It-Yourselfer

From the blog of “Skdo” from Midwest,United States

“My process for cleaning our home”

• Begin with checking email, reading friends’ blogs and posting to own blog
• Check email again, just in case I have received one in the last ½ hour
• Eat dinner and dish up seconds
• Spellcheck latest blog post and correct stupid errors like “Grameboy”
• Walk into living room, kitchen, dining room area, sigh heavily and ponder where to begin
• Walk into living room, put everything that is on the floor onto the ottoman for later sorting
• Decide jeans are too tight for cleaning, climb stairs and put on PJ pants
• Pick up needy cat, listen to her purr, ponder lying down on bed with said cat, decide marital peace and a clean house are currently higher priorites
• Descend stairs, enter office, pull up MS Word on laptop to jot down process thus far so I don’t have to remember too much
• Wonder if I do in fact have adult ADD as some have suggested
• Keep typing draft of this blog post
• Return to living room to put stuff that is on floor onto ottoman
• Find obscure things on living room floor, like super mega sized ice scraper, blame children
• Hang up coats that previously filled hall closet but had to be removed so maintenance could spray enzyme cleaner on the hallway carpet after TT flooded the hallway
• Realize I forgot to blog the story about TT flooding the hallway with his bathwater
• Seriously wonder where husband is…have no idea

Read the rest of her blog entry here: http://skdo.blogspot.com/2006/09/my-process-for-cleaning-our-home.html

Beloved Housekeeper

When I moved from Minneapolis to The Lakes Area I knew it would be difficult to leave my families – there were definite tears. Now I look forward to filling my schedule with new families in the coming months.

Housekeepers and their families become attached. In this case, “Aunt Mary” was included in a family plot – a place of honor.

link to the original photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shani_stuff/389681175/

Volunteer Work

Mex035D.JPG, originally uploaded by indigo56524.

Diane cleaning new dorm rooms at the Rio Bravo Mission Orphanage in Reynosa, Mexico during Christmas vacation ‘06.

This orphanage was literally created from real estate used as a dump & was donated by Reynosa’s Mayor in the early 90’s. Several years of volunteer work by church groups were required to clean out trash heaps. The orphanage is a haven for abandoned or abused children where they live with house parents, go to school, learn English and are given great amounts of love.

Team Cleaning – Family Style

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chefranden/115106583/

“If I can do it with one arm, you can do it with two.”
Growing up in a family of 9 meant organization or anarchy. My mother, with the use of only ONE arm due to polio, had the cleanest home in the neighborhood. How? She had a Saturday morning cleaning list and no TV, friends or playtime was allowed until it was completed. We were taught that as a family each member must contribute for the good of all. Each of us wrote our name next to a small, medium and larger task so everyone knew who was responsible for a great job done or who was called back if it needed a touch-up. There were no gender-specific jobs: boys washed dishes and learned to sew, girls mowed lawn and cleaned the garage.