Reged: 06/01/04
Posts: 7013
Loc: Maine (IBS-A stable since July '05!)
There's a difference between dirt and clutter. My house doesn't have much in the way of dirt. Clutter, however, is a totally different story. When you put 2 people together in a house, and they're BOTH (1) packrats, (2) addicted to yard sales, and (3) not especially tidy with their personal belongings, you've pretty much come up with the perfect recipe for messiness.
The best tip I have for cleaning is to not even try to do it all. I really only do a massive cleaning when the house gets so screwed up that it even bothers ME. Most of the time, I just "tidy". Pull all the magazines and catalogs back into one pile, take some half-finished knitting projects upstairs, hang up coats, put away tools. Stuff like that makes a huge difference, and I just do it while I'm walking through on my way to do something else - and if you keep up on it, it never has time to build up into a disaster zone. Know what I mean?
My mom was just here, and she says my house is "comfortable" and "lived-in". That works for me! If I were meant to have a home that looks like Martha Stewart's, I'd also have her staff of housekeepers and kitchen help.
Posts
Messy-ish!
