Share Our Lives: Saving Time On Chores

It's the first "Share Our Lives" of the year with Sarah, Dara, Joanne, Adrienne, and Jen. (Click on each name to go their blogs.) I'm late on posting this partly because I found this topic hard to write about and partly because we had a very full weekend and, by the time it came to blogging last night, my brain was mush. So I stared at my computer for about an hour and then fell asleep. Hopefully, I'm feeling a little more inspired this morning :)

As I said above, I found this topic hard to write about and here are some ideas I brainstormed about how we save time on chores.

1) letting dishes air dry

We don't have a dishwasher (have never had a dishwasher the entire time we've lived together), and so our dishes have to be hand washed and hand dried. We rarely dry dishes, instead letting them air dry. It does take up extra space on the counter but it save us time. 

2) tidying as we go

One habit we've tried to instill in the kids is "clean up as you go." If you were to drop by our house unexpectedly, our house would be fairly tidy. That isn't to say there aren't "pain points" -- there absolutely are, but we try to keep things fairly picked up around here. (For those who are curious, the "pain points" are my desk, our kitchen counters (see: no dishwasher above), and potentially, the back table.) This does save time when we want to clean something because, usually, there is very little tidying needed.

3) owning a smaller house

If you were ever come to visit us, you would see that our house is not very large. We don't have a lot of extra space so we use it all. However, a bonus side benefit is that does mean that we don't have a lot to clean! When we had our weekly housecleaning nights a few years ago, working together, we could get half the house cleaned in an hour.

4) working together to get tasks done

We often work together to get chores done. You won't often find just one of us doing a chore. Often I'll be folding laundry, one kid will be washing dishes, one kid will be cleaning a room, and Dave is doing something outside. That is definitely not always the case but it feels like it goes faster if we're all doing something.

5) getting the kids to do more

Now that the kids are older, we get them to do more. Chores go a lot faster when four people are doing things. I feel like we need to get better at assigning specific chores to the kids but the expectation is, if a parent asks you to do something (wash dishes, fold laundry, clean the dining room, start supper, etc), you do it. It definitely helps cut down on what Dave and I do when the kids take on some of the responsibility as well.

A photo from 2018 when I decided the kids needed to do more because this is a boring, pictureless, post :)

So there are my not so exciting tips for "saving time on chores." Since I've written then after some of you have published your posts, I will share that I did not let myself look at your ideas first, even though I was tempted. I'm off now to read about your time saving tips. Hopefully, I'll find something to implement in our lives because saving time on chores leaves more time for fun stuff!!!