Following Grandma's Traditions Can Be the Key to Housekeeping Success

For the stay-at-home moms among us who have a hard time staying on top of the housework, one of the main reasons we all point to is the endlessness of it all. As soon as we're caught up on laundry, there's more to do. As soon as we pick up the things the kids have strewn around the house, we turn around to see one of our darlings making a new trail of toys. It's so frustrating to have nothing ever get done that we often say "What's the use?" and give up.

We should take a bit of advice from our grandmothers (and great-grandmothers) and keep a housecleaning schedule.

Remember the old fashioned dishtowels that used to say things like Errands on Monday and Washing on Wednesday? Well, what we now see as kitschy little towels that we use to decorate our kitchens used to be the way grandma ran her's.

When she was newly married, Grandma took a look at her week, and all the things she needed to do. She considered which days Grandpa needed the car, which days the produce and meats were freshest at the market, which days she wanted to do the washing and general cleaning, and which day she had lunch with her friends. Then she decided on a schedule for the week. For every day of the week, she decided on the aspect of her work that she wanted to focus on.

By scheduling her week in this way, she not only had a framework that allowed her to get all of her major work accomplished, but she also could consider herself done with it for the rest of the week. This is the key to Grandma's success, and something that has been lost along the way.

Most of us who are stay-at-home moms now were raised by working moms who weren't able to continue on with the traditions that their mothers and grandmothers had kept. Working moms have to balance their days in a much different way than stay-at-home moms do. They have to fit chores and errands into any spare moment that they can find. Most stay-at-home-moms were either at one point working moms, or worked full-time jobs before having children. We followed in the footsteps of our moms, trying to do a little bit of everything nearly every day just to try and stay on top of our house, our jobs and our kids all at once.