Delegating front attack

To do less, it is quite important to decide what not to do. To find this area, ask yourself where you can have a bigger tolerance for filth than the rest of the family. Maybe you can buy new clothes instead of washing? Or avert your eyes from the dishes... Once you have found one area, ask someone else in the family to take care of it for you. It might help if you offer to something else instead (that you probalby will do anyways) Then wait. Make sure you continue to waite. Hopefully your family consists of intelligent people, and when they see the debris wuild up they eventually get the message and start organising themselves. Whenever you feel like pitching in, clean some other part of the house instead. The cleaner the other parts are, the more obvious it will be what isn´t done. If they do the job properly, give them their reward...
In this way, I have so far managed to be freed of doing the laundry, and am now starting on the dishes. Instead, I do most cooking (it is a blessing, I love cooking!) and shopping, which I do anyways. It is good to keep an eye on the expenses.

A day off housekeeping...

The idea of simpler housekeeping is that it should look great and be clean, but the only thing needed to do there is to relax and enjoy. A utopia for many of us but probably feasible. Start enjoying by having one day a week off housekeeping and see what builds up. THat is true, one day per week you're not allowed to do any housekeeping at all! At your day job, you have the weekend off, so why not give yourself one day without housekeeping? It requires some thought and planning ahead, but is a good preparation for the day when you don´t need to do anything at home. It could be sunday, but it can also by an evening of relaxation during the work week. Pick your day!

Make your own lottery

To motivate the family to do househod chores, make your own lottery. Take some postit notes and cut them in four strips. Then write a small prize, such as massage, sleep-in morning, or breakfast in bed, roll it together so the glue side closes it. The family can get one per chore, or one per ten chores.

8 to be great: passion

Richard St John has done amazing work on how to achieve success, and I am trying to implement his thoughts on housekeeping.
His first to trait to achieve success is passion.ANd actually, there is a strong connection between the housework being done and spouse attraction. Doing the dishes is the best foreplay they say... If that link is solidly implanted, your house will be clean as never before!

Carkeeping

Cars are great energysteelers. They need to be washed, fueled, serviced, wiped of snow. Still, it is not on the top of my agenda, which means that it always nagging in the back of my head as something that needs to be done. Whenever I get the car back from my partner, the tank is empty. And when it is empty, there is never the right time to fill it.
I guess it all boils down to simple GTD- do it when it needs to be done and don´t whine about it.

Mrs Clean Jean´s housekeeping tips for families

This is a great book about how to make the family do the job instead of you.

Double the dishwashers

It's great to have a dishwasher. It saves quite some time, actually, I spend about half an hour less each day when I have one. The problem is, it doesn't fill itself. If it is full, or even closed, all the dirty plates will end up on the countertop, and then somebody, a.k.a. me, will have to fill it. So a better solution is to have double dishwashers. But then there needs to be room for two of them. Even better solution, a dishwasher with two drawers like the one from Fisher & Paykel http://www.fisherpaykel.com/product/dishwashing/dishwashing/

Scooba

Scooba, the lifesaver for everyone who hates vacuuming. Make sure there is nothing but furniture in the floor, and the schedule it daily, and the house will be so clean!
I'll start with trying to empty one room from floor clutter...

Cheating partner!

Well, I thought the agreement was that I did the planning and my partner bought the groceries. But when he saw the shopping list, he bailed out! First he complained abaut the length of the list- well everything is on it, so there is no need to think in the store... and eight meals actually require some ingredients! And then he asked how we would find storage for everything. And finally, he refused to go shopping alone. It was nice with the time together, but no time is saved.

Watering plants

It's nice to have plants at home but if you water them every day, it is quite a chore. I prefer to put them in the sink to soak until no more bubbles show. In that way, I water them once every three weeks. And it is better för the plants too. If you change regime, make sure to start slowly. First, soak them once a week, then twice a month s they get used to the lesser amount of water. Be adviced that some plants can't handle it.

Automated food planning and grocery list

I am responsible for making the shopping list of the week, and then my partner buys the grocery. This has not been working, because just making the complete list takes about two hours. To make my life simpler, I have made an excel application with dinners we enjoy, that then computes to a grocery list. Mission completed, at least half of the time saved! Next thing is to make sure that the dishes on the list are easy and fast to cook...

Partner strikes back

Gets a message from my partner: I'll make dinner tonight. Then he does the laundry, and finally asks me in return if I can make bake in the bread machine for tomorrow. He has already used the reciprocation rule- give, and then take, take, take. Is he on to me? Or, is he smarter? I think I´ll never know, but at this point I am certain that he can read my thoughts.
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Or maybe, more likely, he has access to the log files...

Stealth delegation by influence

There is a great book called the Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Caldini. Caldini is a scientist who falls for sales tricks every time, and finally decides to let his team of students find out why. He finds seven weapons of influence:
- reciprocation
- commitment
- consistency
- social proof
- Liking
- Authority
- Scarcity

As children are off-limits as guinea-pigs, I'll try the methods on my partner and post the results!

Chore Wars

I have been thinking about this for a while, and I am so happy somebody else got around to doing it! Get all your friends to join you for this adventure! It might not help in making you do less, but it will be by far more fun!

www.chorewars.com

Housekeeping- how avoid, simplify, delegate and automate

Housekeeping takes up by far too much of my time. In any given day, I give at least two hours doing it, and more to planning it. This is a fundamental human problem- all over the world, we spend a major part of our lives redoing what we did yesterday just to keep up.

So, by this blog, I hope to find new ways to avoid housekeeping, and still have it done- by simplifying, delegating and automating... you'll see my results, I hope there are some!