8 Hours a Week

Dear Friends,

Since last week's post I have been a little more focused in the cleaning department. Thanks to the ladies for posting, your stories are inspiring to me! I've also been thinking about how I can be a little better in the cleaning/decluttering area. So this last week, I managed to get all my dishes in the kitchen clean, declutter a major spot that has been piled up for a LONG time and even get caught up on some laundry. But it has been building back again already, so I have been giving the topic of cleaning a little more thought. (I hope blogs posts on cleaning don't bore you!)

A friend of mine once mentioned to me that in the company she works for she has the flexibility to take something called "wife" hours. The impression I got was that as a wife, you could take up to 8 working hours per week and use them to take care of your home by cleaning, cooking, etc. When I heard this, I though it was an awesome idea! Especially since two people each working 40 + hours per week tend to get tired and housework is difficult to keep up with.

Christian and I both currently work and technically, he is in charge of the cooking and I am in charge of the cleaning. Realistically, there are often times we eat hot dogs in the microwave because he is exhausted from his job, and most of the time our dishes are dirty since I am tired from caring for babies and kiddos all day.

But a thought hit me tonight as I tried to get a little more motivated to accomplish more around the house. According to Gretchen Rubin, the author of The Happiness Project, success must be measurable. I typically don't usually measure my house cleaning in anything but results (ex: are the dishes done?), but what if I began to measure it in time? What if I worked to hit 8 hours of "wife" hours every week? How would my life/house change?

Now I realize that many of you could never clean that many hours each week, and to be honest I'm not even sure if I have that kind of time. But I do know that when I cleaned for 35 minutes one night last week it made a pretty big dent in my kitchen. I can only imagine if I spent a solid 8 hours on my house each week how it would begin to look!

So my goal this week is to spend 8 hours of cleaning before next Sunday night. I won't make myself clean at a specific time every day. I will just allow myself to do it whenever I have the energy but add up the hours.

I will track my time on the blog for you to see this week and let you know the results!

How much time do you think you spend cleaning? How has that changed since you've been married? Since you've had kids?

Thanks for reading and leaving your thoughts!

Love, Rachel