How to Keep Your House (Mostly) Clean with Kids

Have children? Find it impossible to keep your house clean? Me too! But I have figured out how to keep my home "mostly clean." Here are my cleaning tips!

One of my personal mottos is “a clean home equals a clean mind.” I probably ripped that off from some cult leader or something, but if I did – man that’s one persuasive cult leader. Because I cannot function properly when my house is a mess.

Before I had my daughters, I prided myself on a spick and span home. A place where you could confidently eat off the floors. Now that I have children, I pride myself on a clean home even more. Because, dudes, it can be really hard to keep your home clean with kids.

Not that I’m remotely saying individuals without children don’t have busy lives that leave little room for cleaning. But the difference is when you don’t have kids and you clean your home – it tends to stay clean. Sometimes for an ENTIRE DAY.

Yellow Tree Dresser

I have a thing for trees. And also tree dressers. Here's another tree dresser project I tackled. I think it looks pretty good if I say so myself!

Yes, I have a thing for trees. Obviously. And apparently I also have a thing for painting them on dressers, because this is my second tree dresser project. This is going to be more of a “teaser” post than a full-fledged one. (Meaning a few hundred words long and not a novella.) A much bigger and more detailed post that will feature the entire room this tree dresser resides in.

I wanted to share the before and after, but somehow the before photos that I am absolutely certain I took have vanished without a trace. I easily found the before photos of a cradle I also repainted with the dresser lurking in the background. But as for the photos of the dresser that I took on the exact same day? Nada.

Love Arrow Sign – Handpainted During Labour!

This love arrow sign was handpainted while I was in labour with my second child. Here's how you can make one too! Contractions not required...

All you need is love – or so the song goes. But in the case of this handpainted sign all I needed was 23 hours of slow labour and nothing to do with my time other than distract myself with online yoga and crafts.

I had started this DIY a couple of weeks before I had my second daughter (who is three weeks old today). I first had to paint the 1×4 with several coats of white paint before I could stencil on the letters. Once that task was completed all that was left was the actual painting of the letters, which I did by hand with an artist’s brush whilst listening to my iTunes playlist “Relax” and trying to dance off contractions. There’s nothing like the imminent arrival of an infant to get the creative – and motivational – juices flowing.

Neutral Soft Green and Beige Baby Bedroom

A bedroom with a green dresser, a leaf basket and a superhero cape hanging on a hook with the words "neutral baby bedroom." Click to visit post.

Even though I finished this room going on three years ago, I’ve never posted photos of it in its entirety. But this particular space in my house has certainly been on my mind again as of late since bambino numero dos is only days away. I spent a lot of time in this room with my first baby – I slept the first six months of her life on a cot next to the crib. I’ve always said that’s exactly why I designed it with myself in mind. Because I’m selfish like that. Which is totally fine with me.

As you can see, I definitely didn’t go the pink versus blue route, which is pretty common nowadays I’d say. I think most people tend to lean towards a more neutral baby bedroom, aka “nursery.” (I have such a hard time using that word – I don’t know why, but for some reason it rubs me the wrong way… like “panties” and “mancave”… le barf.)

Tree Branch Mobile

Super charming and whimsical DIY tree branch mobile made with a spray-painted poplar branch, stuffed birds and fishing line.

Along with catching up on blogging in general, I need to catch up on blogging about all the DIY projects I did before my daughter was born. True, I’ve done a few homey things since she came into my life that blessed September day, but for the most part it’s been 16 months of laundry, dishes and more laundry (and of course playing!). The laundry sitch has been particularly hairy of late because our washing machine is on its way out (and BTW, this is our second laundry machine to futz out on us this year).

The first one was nearing that magical ten year mark that somehow in appliance years equals 90 human years, so that was that. Then, we got a replacement free of charge thanks to some lovely family members. Unfortunately, that one didn’t belong to said members originally and thus we don’t know how old it actually was. And now it’s dying too. Sob.

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