How do you keep a clean house after you just had a baby? That’s the question we will be dealing with here.
Now, some of you moms will be thinking, “That’s what my husband or kids are for”, and you’d be right, but not everyone has the kind of situation where they can call on others in the house to help them out when they have to deal with a new baby. After you have the baby, you are going to feel tired and in need of some extra rest. The baby is going to be a lot of work as well, and you won’t have as much time as you did before to keep the house clean. You’ll have to learn some new tactics to make the most of your time and keep the house clean without relying on the methods you used to employ.
Find Someone Else to Do Some Work
You may not have a husband, boyfriend or children who are old enough to help out around the house, but there are other people you can call on to do some of the things you have to get done. Your chores can be handled by your siblings, friends or even your parents. You can call on favors and ask people to come help you every now and then to handle the things that you have trouble getting to. You might be amazed at how willing many people are to help out when you have just had a baby. They may even do far more than you asked them to and volunteer to provide additional help.
You can also hire a cleaning service to do some work for you. One such service called Diamond maid service run by Patricia says “this kind of service may be cheaper than you expect, and they can do basic cleaning as well as laundry, garbage removal and other chores that need to be done around the house”.
There are services for just about anything you can think of. You can hire drivers take you to where you need to go and food delivery services to bring you groceries or individual meals. More and more service option are appearing all the time, and as long as you can afford them, you can get by with doing a lot less for yourself, which can come in useful when you have a new baby.
Spread Out Your Chores
One way to deal with the workload you have to do is to space out your work more than you usually do. You can still do the same amount work each day, but just fit it in when the baby is sleeping or only do one small job each hour. That way, you have time for the baby and you are still getting everything done. Then it doesn’t seem like the things you have to do are quite so overwhelming. Splitting larger jobs up into smaller parts and spreading out those jobs through the day gives you time to rest and ensures that you get everything done.
Lower Your Standards Temporarily
Now, we would not recommend this to everyone, because some people are going to get offended about the suggestion, but you might want to consider lowering your standards of cleaning or decreasing your list of chores to do for a while. You have a new baby to deal with, and that is going to keep you busy. If you have a lot of things to do around the house and a lot of chores to get done, then you should think about cutting back on some of them. Not all of your chores may be absolutely necessary, and if you can live without getting some of them done, then you probably should.
That doesn’t mean that you live in a pig sty. You can still keep your house looking clean and take out the trash and do the things that make your home liveable, but you might want to reconsider some of the things that you do regularly that could be done less regularly. For instance, if you like to wash the curtains every month or clean the windows every week, then you may want to cut back on those. You can space out chores over the course of weeks or months if you have to while you try to work out what your schedule will be. This will help you have the time you need to relax and ensure that you don’t get overwhelmed with all your have to do. If you really think about it, you can probably find a few things that you can eliminate for now that are really dragging down your productivity.
Make Baby a Part of Your Chores
You may feel guilty that you have so much to do that you are not spending as much time with your baby as you would like. However, you don’t have to be looking right at your baby to be spending some time with him or her. You can just have the baby present while you do your chores and you little one will be plenty entertained and still be bonding with you.
For instance, while you are cleaning the house, you can have the baby in a bassinet in that room, just moving the bassinet from one room to the next to keep baby near you. You can just stop by and say hi to the baby every time you pass by without having to stay engaged.
You can also put baby down on the floor in a safe play area in the kitchen while you cook. You’ll want to keep the baby far enough away from the stove so that hot water and oil don’t splash on the child, but it’s okay to have a baby nearby when you are cooking, so long as you are careful.
You can handle your chores and get the things done that you want to once the baby comes along, but you may have to do things a bit differently and figure out how to incorporate the baby into what you are doing to make it work.
