Previously, on CorporetteMoms…

I found the old thread re: Keeping a clean house interesting. We don’t have a regularly scheduled cleaning service (yet- I’m pregnant with my second so we’ll see) because I’m insanely picky and never feel like it’s up to my standards, but we use the following strategies to make this work for us:
1. my husband does dishes, countertops, trash, and mail. These are generally daily tasks that make a huge difference. He also “restocks” areas of our house with toilet paper, paper towels, etc. and does his laundry and our son’s laundry. I fully recognize we could not manage without his help.
2. Keep cleaning supplies EVERYWHERE. This makes it so easy to just clean a room while you’re already in it and thinking about it. If I had to run downstairs to gather supplies, I’d never clean my upstairs bathrooms.
-Every bathroom has its own dedicated toilet bowl cleaning solution, brush, and pack of clorox wipes
stocked at all times
– Every floor (we live in a 3 floor townhome) has its own bottle of spray cleaner (ie windex) duster (ie
pledge) and roll of paper towels at all times
-Every floor has its own floor sweeper/mopper (bona on the main floor, swiffer with dry/wet pads on the
other two floors)
3. Clean regularly
-Having the cleaning supplies so easily accessible means I’m frequently cleaning, but for a short amount of time. Our main floor 1/2 bathroom, for example, gets wiped down at least once a day. I do the counter, the mirrors, and the outside of the toilet/under the seat/the floor around the toilet every day. The inside of the toilet gets done a few times a week, and the floor a couple of times a week as well. The other bathrooms have their surfaces wiped down at least every two days and their floors dusted/mopped at least twice a week. Since I do it so frequently, it doesn’t take long at all and doesn’t have to be perfect. This keeps me from being overwhelmed with cleaning on weekends, which allows me to focus a bit of weekend time on things like dusting baseboards, scrubbing a shower, etc. since the regular maintenance is done.
-Floors on the main floor get “dusted” (ie swiffered) every day. I use the washable microfiber mopping cloth twice a week, and use a disposable wet mopping pad on them on the other days. Again, since they’re done every day it doesn’t have to be perfect to yield sparkling results.
-The glass shower doors in our bathroom were initially a problem, until we decided it was worth stocking a ridiculous amount of tilex. After every shower someone squeegies the doors and sprays tilex daily shower cleaner on them. It truly keeps them spotless, and I only touch it up with windex every few months.
4. Have a place for all of the “stuff”
We only allow magnatiles and “army men” on our main floor for my son’s toys. They have a dedicated basket with a throw blanket thrown on top to hide them. We also have a storage ottoman with homework supplies in it. That’s all he’s allowed to keep on our main floor, because that’s an adult space and needs to look nice. He gets plenty of play out of them and is welcome to bring other toys to that area, but has to put them away at the end of the day.
Baby stuff goes in storage baskets under our coffee table. Our coffee table was designed to have accompanying baskets (yay pottery barn) where you can’t see what’s inside of them, so we can just throw baby stuff in there without people seeing how cluttered and disorganized it truly is.

Basically, for what we could probably spend on a house cleaner, I spend a ridiculous amount of money on cleaning supplies. Not very environmentally friendly, but keeps the house nearly spotless.

Advice on transitioning to a regular bed, please! My 2.25 year old DS is in the zone where climbing out of his crib is imminent. We have a crib that converts into a toddler bed and a full size bed. A few weeks ago, with no preparation and sort of on a whim, we tried to move him to the toddler bed. I was getting swayed by stories from friends who said the transition was no big deal for their kids. Well, it was a big deal for ours. DS has always been a great, 8PM – 7AM kind of sleeper, sleeps through the night with no issues. Night 1 of the toddler bed, he didn’t fall asleep until after 11PM. It’s not that he kept getting up, he just kept begging for more books. Yes, I’d leave the room, but then eventually he’d get up and start wandering around, then sneaking out of his room, etc. When he finally did fall asleep, he was up every hour. We tried again at nap time the next day and ran into more of the same. Desperate for rest for all of us, he went back in his crib.

He only does well with new things when he is appropriately prepared, so obviously this failed. I also am not convinced that the toddler bed stage makes sense for him because it’s just one more transition. Plus, it seems more like his crib is defective than some big, new thing. Instead, we’re going to take the leap to a full size bed. Today, we let him pick out new bedding, a new stuffed friend for his new bed, and he even thinks he picked out his new mattress. It comes on Saturday.

Please help me not duck this up this time around. Is there anything else we could or should be doing to help him ease into his big new bed? He’s taken care of at home by family, so the number of times he’s slept anywhere other than his crib is less than 5. He did sleep in a queen size bed by himself for 2 nights over the summer when we were on vacation. The first night it took several hours to get him down, the second night took only 1 or 2 hours and he slept longer.