Unfortunately, housework is a fact of family life. I know there are some of you who claim to actually enjoy it and while I love the look and feel of a clean house, I am not in love with the process of getting it that way. Yesterday I even went so far as to suggest ways that a single parent can hire household help to free up more time to spend on other things. For those of us who do our own housework, I am curious as to whether you find it easier and better to clean house WITH your children, or whether you prefer to do your cleaning when the children are not around?
When my kids were younger, I definitely preferred to clean when they were not “under foot”—I would often do a thorough house cleaning on days they were with their dad. I could focus on dredging out their rooms, cleaning the house from top to bottom and I could do it uninterrupted. Being able to focus on the tasks at hand without the children in the house meant I could get it done in a couple hours whereas with them “helping” it might be a multi-day project.
As my kids have gotten older, however, things have changed. Now they can actually be helpful and overall the house stays tidier. Of course, I no longer clean out their rooms so those rooms have a tendency to go un-checked, but the main part of the house stays cleaner overall and it only takes a little more effort to do the weekly “deep” cleaning. Now my children are less “under foot” so I do not feel like I have to wait for them to leave to clean.
How about you? Do you find that you prefer to clean with your children in the house or out of it? As a single parent, how do you divide up or squeeze in your cleaning time and do you find it works better to have the children help out or not?