Grab my printable of it right here — and then we’ll chat about how I made it, and how to make it work for you!

Daily Tasks

I can think of a couple ways to separate jobs that need to get done at your house (although I’m sure there’s lots of ways — one of these might resonate with you to get started though):

Divide by Room: Every day, a room is assigned to it. That way you’re able to concentrate on cleaning that room, organizing it and really digging deep into that ONE room (and mostly ignoring the rest — although we’ll talk about it).

One TYPE of cleaning: Maybe you’re doing floors, or dusting, or cleaning counters and you from room to room just doing this one task. This allows you to basically have the same cleaning products for each of the rooms, which is nice.

For me, I sort of combined these…. and I’ll show you how.

Prior to do this I was trying to do FlyLady (is that even still a thing?) — but I found it REALLY overwhelming. I had small kids, a job and a husband that was gone a LOT… I needed it simple to where I could either do the bare minimum or more depending on how the day was going. If you’re overwhelmed by a system you have right now, this might be helpful!

Looking for more household management tips — be sure to check out these posts:

• 5 Reasons You HAVEN’T Started Organizing & How to Fix Them!
• Family-Tested Organizing Tips
• Baby Proofing 101: Dani Morin’s Mission for Baby Safety Awareness
• Clever Kitchen Storage: Smart solutions for smaller kitchens
• House Cleaning List {Printable}

Weekly Cleaning Schedule Example:

I did a bit of a combination of those two, and I’ll show you how it works for us:

Mondays: Kitchen/Floors

• Clean the counters
• Deep Clean Something
• Organize something
• Clean-out the fridge
• Sweep & mop our tile floors (which includes our main floor — I do all of the tile on that day)

You’ll see that I front-load our week a lot. I’m freshest, and at my best on Mondays, much less so on Fridays — so make it work for you! (I realize this isn’t true for a lot of people)

Tuesdays: Bathrooms

I should say that I don’t feel an urge to clean my ENTIRE bathroom every week — we get to the tubs/showers and hands and knees for the floor on the weekends. I tend to just do what bothers me, and anything that is gross. You do what works for you.

• Counters
• Mirrors
• Toilet
• Floor around toilet
• Organize anything that’s not working in the bathroom

My kids clean their own bathroom — and I start this early as possible. I start with them cleaning the counter, or some of the floor (kids are close to the floor — so that works well) and slowly add things as they get bigger.

Wednesdays: Bedrooms & Vacuuming

• Vacuum all the carpeted areas in the house
• Organize in the bedroom

You can see that my energy for the week has already started to peter out…. this day is lighter, and it will continue to get lighter through the end of the week.

Thursdays: Downstairs Rooms

We have a home office, a guest room/YouTube filming room, and a playroom downstairs.

Because we’re not down here a whole lot I tend to just pick an organizing project down there. I’m slowly going through our old toys to either donate or keep the items.

Fridays: Living Room/Dining Room (which is also my office)

I like to do this on Fridays in case we’re having company over the weekend.

• Dust the room (we have dark furniture)
• Vacuum out the couch/flip cushions every now and then
• Organize anything in that area

Saturday: Family Clean

I detail this in Family Routines, but it is just about 20 minutes where we go through the house and pick stuff up — mostly just tidy it, and then we deep clean an area — all together (because I desperately needed my kids to learn how to clean and I slowly realized I was going to be the example in that process).

Every week of the month is assigned an area to deep clean:

• Week One: Kitchen
• Week Two: Bathrooms (this is when we do showers/floors)
• Week Three: Bedrooms (including window sills, baseboards, etc)
• Week Four: Living Room (this is usually when the couch gets a more thorough look at, and we also dust our ceiling fans)
• If there’s a 5th week we often deep clean the freezer that week.

Does this always go according to the “plan”? No. Not at all. Often we skip the bedroom week if we’re gone or lazy one week, but I try to do the other weeks on Saturday as the main goal is to teach the kids how to do it.

We’re really just aiming for 20 minutes of deep cleaning amongst all of us — and it’s surprising how much can be done in those 20 minutes.

I also like to have some upbeat music on during that time too.

FYI, I also have my kids doing their own areas on this same routine. They have jobs in the kitchen on Monday, bathrooms Tuesdays, etc…. It’s all routine at our house!

I see a lot of hate online for giving kids jobs around the house, but I couldn’t disagree more and having had kids who moved out — I know these skills that I have helped to build will be worthwhile!

Looking for more cleaning tips? — be sure to check out these posts:

• Smelly Fridge – Here’s the Easy Ways to Clean It
• How to Clean Tile Floors
• I love cleaning {I know, I’m Crazy}: Six things to like about cleaning
• Splitting Household Chores in Marriage
• Why I Don’t Have a Cleaning Lady

Do I do nothing else?

I do a 10 minute tidy each morning. Many people call that a “reset” — it’s normally me emptying the drainer, putting dishes in the dishwasher people left out, cleaning off anything that got dumped somewhere. It’s just a quick run-through.

Think that sounds helpful — I have a little challenge right here for you:

When I had little kids I also did 5 minutes in the evening that was often me pushing a battery vacuum around to get what the toddler spilled, but we now have a robot vacuum that does most of that.

If you feel like you want to clean your bathroom counters daily, or sweet up everywhere daily — do that — I just don’t, and that’s OK too.

You Do You

Whenever I type out this list I worry that people will be grossed out that I don’t clean our shower or bathroom floors weekly.

But, we have tile that is basically the color of dirt, and I have tried to schedule it at a timeframe that I think it’s just starting to get gross when we clean it.

It is a level of dirt that I’m OK with.

You might want to go longer, or shorter, and that’s OK. We’re all doing what works for us.

What did the cleaning schedule do for me?

When I started working as a labor nurse I quickly realized my house was getting out of control, and it just made it hard for me to feel “safe” to sit down because ALL of these things felt like they should get done RIGHT NOW.

Instead, I know that the bathroom will get cleaned on Tuesdays, and as long as it’s not grossing me out too much, it can wait.

Also, no area got lost.

I have also edited this through the years, moving houses and kids getting older, what needed to be cleaned changed. BUT, the basic framework has stayed the same and it still works.

Also, when I started to work full time on my content creation/podcasting/courses business and my husband stayed home, we knew what needed to be done, and it made it easier to share chores.

I have all the tasks in a to do list and it really makes it easy!

So, do you think a cleaning schedule will work for you? How do you think you’ll organize it? Tell me in the comments!

And, grab the printable version right here:

The post Home Cleaning Schedule Printable: Make it work for YOU! appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Close your eyes. You are entering a room filled with chaos. It might be your kitchen after a big meal (possibly created by your children), or it’s a family room filled with toys and debris. You know what I’m talking about.  It’s that feeling.  The feeling of your skin crawling and not bearing to look.  You just don’t know how to start.  Where to start?  How do you feel?  Is your skin crawling at the very thought of it?  Thinking about laying in the corner sucking your thumb?

I am.

A room filled with chaos makes me want to cry.

But checklists are doable.  They’re often my BEST friend when I feel overwhelmed.

That is why I created my weekly cleaning schedule.  It supports my ability to take small steps towards non-chaos.  I cling to it and it allows me to move through my home and my life peacefully.

In thinking about it — I started to really wanted a house cleaning list.  Small checklists that allow me to take small chunks of a big job.

House Cleaning List: The Benefits

• It takes large tasks into small, doable chunks.  Only have time for one checkmark — do it, and then come back!
• They are awesome if you have kids, that way they don’t have to read your mind about what needs to be done.
• If you keep up on the list, it makes each day a little more doable.
• Available — it’s RIGHT there.  Put it in a cupboard so you can just go to it when you feel overwhelmed.

Want more house cleaning tips, check out these posts:

• Smelly Fridge – Here’s the Easy Ways to Clean It
• How to Clean Tile Floors
• I love cleaning {I know, I’m Crazy}: Six things to like about cleaning
• Splitting Household Chores in Marriage
• Why I Don’t Have a Cleaning Lady

Doable Chunks

I’ve created these awesome house cleaning lists that allow you to have a generic checklist to customize for yourself.  The reality is many rooms you’re just going top to bottom and making sure it’s done.  Most rooms are going to follow the checklists I’ve created.  There’s specific ones for bedrooms, living room, kitchen and bathrooms.

Kids

Having this list makes your expectations clear to kids.   That way they are able to go down the checklist, get the items done and then get on with the work of being a kid.  Instead of you checking 12 times with your expectations never being met.

BTW, want tips to getting your kids to help out more — be sure to check out this course:

Keep Up

By doing this list each time, I feel like it’s easier every time.  It’s like magic.

Right There

I like to put these behind a cupboard door, I would print them at a smaller size (or maybe print 4 to a page) and just have them there.  You could also laminate it or put it in a sheet protector.  That way you can use a dry erase to actually check it off.

Anyway — those are the awesome benefits of a house cleaning list.

And now it’s time to go get it.  Get the small chunks, right there, easy to keep up and a great way to help your kids become responsible individuals.

Just sign up below and get them straight to your inbox!

The post House Cleaning List {Printable} appeared first on Pulling Curls.

How do I know so much about cleaning out nasty fridges? Well, I had smelly fridge and my ice tasted like plastic somehow (not great for Arizona summers). After learning a lot about how fridges circulate air and smells, along with what all the experts say to use against it — my ice now tastes fine and there’s no funky smell to the fridge. Huzzah. I want that for you too (because bad ice sucks).

FIRST STEP: Your first step is to pull EVERYTHING out. That’s right, you heard me — EVERYTHING. We went so far as to replace the liners in our produce drawer, but somehow we missed that one of the bottoms of the apples laying on it was MOLDY and just put it back in.

Take it out, look at it, smell it. Toss if in question.

BTW just casually looking for some kitchen fixes, check out these posts too:

• 5 Tips for Easy Kitchen Cabinet Organization
• 3 Kitchen Sink Hacks You Need
• Decluttering Your Kitchen
• Organize Your Kitchen: Genius ideas for your most-used room
• Kitchen Organization Hacks: Organized storage for small kitchens & cupboards!

AND, don’t miss my weekly cleaning printable:

Step #2: Clean everything with vinegar water.

I’m a HUGE fan of using vinegar in my cleaning because it’s a GREAT deodorizer and most of all, it’s cheap.

I use about 1 part vinegar to 5 cups water, along with a drop of dish soap in my cleaner I use (I eyeball this). Sometimes I throw in some essential oils for fun too.

For me (because everyone’s abilities/fridges are different) that means I:

• Emptied the entire fridge & freezer. We used our garage fridge and some coolers to keep the food cold (we have one of these that actually keeps our frozen stuff 100% fine – we actually have to defrost our freezer in our garage every few months so we’re used to this process).
• Pulled off all the liners (we use this stuff to line our shelves so if something drips it catches on that vs the actual shelf) and washed them with vinegar spray and then hot soapy water
• Pulled out all the shelves, sprayed them down with the vinegar spray and then washed with hot, soapy water in the sink.
• Sprayed down the entire fridge with the vinegar spray and wiped it all down.

I then repeated the same process in the freezer (and other extra drawers you have).

In most fridge/freezer combos it’s running the same air between the cold freezer to help cool down the fridge as well — and since they share air exchange those nasty smells can be hiding ANYWHERE in that thing.

We also ran our ice maker on “max ice” to run a few cycles of ice while we were cleaning it. We dumped all the ice out of it (watered our plants, I bet they loved it during the hot AZ summer), and dumped a couple extra loads too to make sure it had cleaned itself out.

(Our ice maker is contained within the sides of the fridge, so we’re unable to actually clean the ICE maker without undoing a lot of screws…. so this is going to have to do for now).

We did clean the bin that holds and dispensers the ice too. Again, vinegar, and hot soapy water.

Ok, so everything’s clean — what do you do now?

We chose to take an hour with nothing in it and we filled the fridge with a bunch of newspaper and baking soda.

Yes, newspaper. Just crumple it in a ball.

Everyone says that this is the BEST deodorizer you can use against smells in your fridge. In fact, if I have the issue again and don’t have time to do the full clean (this takes a while, I’m not going to lie) I will likely to put some newspaper in the fridge to see how it does…. along with some….

Baking Soda.

Hopefully you know that vinegar and baking soda are two of the very best deodorizers out there. I poured baking soda (the same kind I use in cookies or in my wash) into shallow bowls and placed them all throughout the fridge and freezer.

We chose to just let it sit like that for an hour (like in the photo above).

The shelves were all out, it was all clean and we just left it on and circulating.

A lot of tutorials say to turn off thr fridge while you clean it up but we did not do that. We probably ran the risk of getting electrocuted, but we live in Arizona and I needed to put the food back in soon so I left it on for the time we were cleaning it. I also wanted the ice maker to run a few times before we were “done”.

I saw a lot of people encouraging you to deodorize with citrus peels, coffee grounds, activated charcoal or drops of vanilla. Frankly, we didn’t have most of those things, and I really want my fridge to smell like nothing — not vanilla or citrus. So we went with what we have.

And then it sits.

What Causes Bad Fridge Odors?

While we’re waiting, you might be wondering, Hilary — what did your fridge smell like? What caused all of this?

I honestly have no idea. Which makes me the most angry. On my initial clean-out a week ago I did see some eggs had frozen in our garage but we’d brought them into the house. I felt like the eggs tasted funny when I ate them — so, I thought that was it and threw that package of eggs away.

But, the odor remained….

I then found a small Tupperware of canned beans that were leftover. Normally, I coat mine in oil so they stay good a bit longer, but that wasn’t done here and the beans were NASTY. However, only nasty when you opened the container….

I thought that was it, so I tossed those. G’Bless my trash can and the garbage men out there.

But the smell remained.

I smelled it a little when I opened the fridge to grab something. The butter had absorbed the smell so I could taste it when I had toast…. But I MOSTLY tasted it in our ice.

Our ice is in the door of our fridge. Honestly, if I lived ANYWHERE else I’d never have a water dispenser but during the summer our water tastes directly like mold, so I got a fridge with a water dispenser and ice maker in the door. Would I do it again? I doubt it. It’s been troublesome for sure….

If you’re thinking, Hilary this is so helpful to get step-by-step plans that a mere mortal can carry-out! I’m here to say I KNOW! So many of these plans involved mostly throwing all the food away — and I knew we didn’t want to resort to that, if we could find something else to fix it.

The Organized Home is like this fridge tutorial, but for organizing.

It’s a class perfect for people who feel like….

• You’re always having to clean or organize instead of sitting on the couch
• You don’t like having people over because it takes you hours to tidy up
• You live in fear of losing something important — a library book, birth certificate or keys?

The Organized Home helps you by:

• Getting your brain in gear by knowing WHY you want to organize a certain area
• Giving you systems that work that you can tailor to your own home.
• Encouragement to get up and actually do it — it’s like having a buddy with you!

Use coupon code PC10 to get 10% off when you join today!

Ok, so after it’s sit — what do you then?

You put the food back in. It really seemed like in the tutorials I read, people wanted you to keep the food out for like a full day. For us, a lot of it didn’t fit in our extra fridge or a cooler — so we only felt good about leaving it out for an hour (don’t worry — we put anything that we were extra worried about spoiling in coolers or our extra fridge). SO, that’s what we did.

I checked each item as I pulled it out, and again as I put it back in.

Anything that had even the SLIGHEST smell, I tossed it if I didn’t have a plan for it, or I put it in a Ziploc (looking at you half onion). I was sniffing many things this morning. I felt like a bloodhound!

I’m still waiting to dump another batch of ice, but then I’m hopeful it’s done for good after this.

I DID smell the smell before, but I don’t smell it now, even with everything in the fridge — so, fingers crossed.

I have a filter in my fridge (a manufacture one), but I am also going to add fridge baking soda boxes to both the fridge and the freezer to catch orders as well moving forward.

Would you add anything else to this plan — let me know in the comments! Either way I hope your fridge is smell-free once you complete these steps too!

The post Smelly Fridge – Here’s the Easy Ways to Clean It appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Before we get going though, grab my weekly cleaning checklist — you’re going to LOVE how easy this makes keeping your house clean:

Ok, let’s get onto the hacks.

Soap Magic

The bottles they sell dish soap at the store just aren’t the most helpful option. My kids somehow take half the bottle when they’re trying to wash a cup, but I spend an hour waiting for it to all drain to the cap when I want some.

There are other great options out there:

In our house we use the Scrub Daddy Soap dispenser.

Why, you might ask? A few reasons:

• Allows you to push the top and release just a small amount of soap
• You can also squirt into an area that you need more than just a smidge.

We love it, but be SURE to follow the tip on how to keep it from leaking that’s in the Amazon reviews (squirt out for a second or two to get the “vacuum” going).

Honestly, I also love Scrub Daddy sponges. I thought they were over-hyped but we LOVE them, especially the seasonal ones.

Want more cleaning tips:

• How to Clean Tile Floors With Vinegar and Baking Soda
• Six things to like about cleaning
• Why I Don’t Have a Cleaning Lady
• Making a Cleaning Schedule That Works For You
• How to Clean Your Kitchen: Cleaning in Circles

Tray It

I used to just have our items sitting by the sink, but having a small tray that holds the items helps keep them contained (otherwise my kids would just throw them back wherever). It also helps contain any spills or messes from the sponge, soap, etc.

I have heard these are all the rage as they quickly dry. We have something very similar (but it’s porcelain like this one).

Tips for picking one that works for you: Lay out your items that you want on it, and then measure to make sure you get the right size.

Pro Tip: I’m a huge fan of keeping this MINIMAL around my sink. It’s an area you clean frequently, so less is definitely more. I do feel like this dish limits how often I need to clean under those items though.

I will say that having USEFUL organizing stuff can be a HUGE help. However, there’s a lot sold that’s just junk and isn’t going to help you keep things tidy at all. Come join The Organized Home where I give tips for organization that works:

Drain It

The reality of life is that you’re going to want to hand wash a few dishes, and life is easier if they’re able to air dry rather than having to dry them each time.

I’m a huge fan of having a small dish drainer in your sink… They’re easily taken out if you want to use the whole sink, but can hold all those things you have to hand wash all the time.

Good options:

• Don’t do dishes often, this one is slim!
• Don’t want it hanging out all the time — this one can be kept under the sink and then brought out when you need it — just sits in the bottom of the sink.
• We have one very similar to this. We hand wash fairly frequently and I love it!
• The roller ones seem like a great option to store away when not in use, and I love how this one has a utensil tray (as we often are hand-washing knives).
• This one is super minimal, but seems very versatile.
• This one collapses for easy storage as well!

Like I said above, I’m all about the minimal sink area, but I’d rather just have it there to put dishes that need to dry. It’s one of the most used areas in our kitchen (I also hate hand-drying dishes).

The one thing with having a drainer is making sure that you clean it out frequently. I do it during my 10-minute tidy — join my challenge here:

Have an area in your house that isn’t working, but have ZERO ideas on how to fix it? I think that’s SO common, I hear it all the time!

Come join me in The Organized Home where we help get your mind in the game, and give you some ideas of organizing systems that work so you can implement similar things in your house. And frankly, spend less time cleaning and more time enjoying your family!

The post 3 Kitchen Sink Hacks You Need appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Cleaning Floors with Baking Soda & Vinegar

This is how I clean the floors at MY house.

Learning how to clean floor tiles took a while.  We had come from a home with hard wood floors (btw, this is my favorite hardwood cleaner), so it took some adjusting.

I do the floors on Monday.  I find that once a week is plenty often to sweep and mop.  I should say that my ceramic tile floors are the color of dirt.  Someone did a wonderful job picking them out.  Are they prettiest floors you’ll ever seen in your life?  No.  But they’re perfect for my life right now.

Vinegar and Baking Soda Floor Cleaning Recipe

I mainly use Vinegar to clean my floors.

I wouldn’t recommend using BOTH vinegar and baking soda in your cleaning solution. It causes a chemical reaction that makes them fairly useless. BUT, I do use them each separately.

Best Homemade Tile Floor Cleaner

Cleaning Tile Floors with Vinegar and Dawn

I use about 1/4 vinegar, the rest hot clean water, and about 2 drops dish detergent.  I don’t add drops of essential oils — it’s just this.  It does smell VERY vinegar-y in the beginning, but that quickly wears off to just leave your house smelling fresh and clean. This vinegar solution is a great homemade cleaner. If you are using a type of swiffer mop, putting some homemade vinegar mixture in a spray bottle is one of the best to spot clean tough stains when you aren’t cleaning your entire floor. White vinegar is one of the best natural cleaners because it doesn’t have harsh chemicals that commercial cleaners have.

I HAVE used Baking Soda to clean my floors — but be VERY thoughtful about your baking soda usage.  While this is an effective method, you don’t want white baking soda residue all over your clean floors.

I do find that a baking soda paste (just some baking soda and water) is the best way to clean stubborn stains in grout — just be sure to rinse it off well (I am planning to try a Tide recipe I saw a bit ago). Using a damp mop or soft, clean cloth with plain water will give you the best results.

How to clean baking soda residue from tile floors

That’s truly the problem with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) — I’d recommend the easiest way is using just hot water to dissolve the baking soda, and rinsing your mop frequently. No matter what diy cleaner you use, make sure you pick an inconspicuous area for a patch test to know if there will be any adverse reactions with the surface of your floor.

Why You Don’t Use Baking Soda & Vinegar Together To Clean

They really just counteract each other. You may think something is happening when they bubble-up together but it ends-up with salt water. So, not helpful….

Tools I use to keep my Tile Floors Clean

Full vacuuming

I very rarely sweep with a broom or dust mop.  I have just found that a vacuum cleaner works better, with less work involved.  I use a Hoover Lynx vacuum.  I had it for about 5 years, and then it was dying (mostly the battery).  I then saw it on a smokin’ deal at Costco and bought it AGAIN.  I still LOVE IT.  Sometimes we have to take a straightened coat hanger to unplug the thing when my kids think it can do pieces of paper — but most of the time it sucks, sucks, sucks.  {stop you and your dirty mind}

Nightly Vacuuming

I had wanted one for SO long — I finally broke down and got a robotic vacuum.

We got this one on Amazon for a steal (plus I had a gift card from my birthday).  It has very few bells and whistles.  After about a year we just noticed it wasn’t picking up anything.  I’d see it go over crumbs/dirt, dust particles and not pick it up at all.  It was frustrating and we felt like it wasn’t a good choice.

Then, one day my daughter had a playdate and somehow left the door open while the vacuum was going.  And yes, it made a break for freedom.  We didn’t realize it was gone til’ the next day and, of course, it had rained.

That’s right — our last robotic vacuum committed suicide.

SO, we got another one.

This time we spent a LOT of time looking at our options.

We finally decided on this one.  It had the things we wanted:

• A lot of suction (I love how Eufy shares how much suction is in each of its vacuums — I’ve had a hard time seeing it on other vacuums).
• We were able to create barriers with their magnetic strips.
• We could program it to run pretty easily.

I love it.

It’s not gotten suck hardly at all (we didn’t notice the other one was gone for so long because it was always stuck somewhere), the magnetic strips are a great way of keeping it from eating cords.  The suction is great, and I am SO glad to finally see our house floors cleaned each time.

No more crumbs between our toes! It’s a great success!

You can learn more about Eufy vs iLife vs Roomba.  You can get the 30c at Amazon and at Eufy (and sales are sometimes better on one or the other).

Hand Vac

I have a little Black and Decker hand vac that I use is an effective way to clean up quick spills.  I also use it to really get into corners, etc.  I recommend every house have one of these.  My main complaint would be that the filter fills up really easily.  And, while easy to clean — it is kind of a pain.

Broom & Dustpan

I will also say that I have a small broom/dust pan that I keep by our washing machine.  Sometimes that is just as easy as pulling out any of these tools to clean up.  I have mine hanging on a Command Hook — so it’s simple to use and put back.

Best Mop to Clean Tile Floors

I used a Rubbermaid mop.  I have had to replace it 3 times at this point.  One time it just broke off at the head, the 2nd time it wouldn’t squirt right and I just got #3.  I will say that Rubbermaid has been good to work with and they feel like it might be my choice in cleaner that’s doing it.  I tend to alternate between just Vinegar per their instructions and then this one.  I find that the less dish soap I use, the better.  Now, I only put a couple of drops in.

My one beef with this mop is that you’re still using the dirty mop head each time, and the dirt just builds up.  I am now using this one I like how it easily rinses and does a great job wringing out the pad with each dunk in the solution.

It’s very simlar to this one (which I can’t find for sale anymore):

Perks of that type of mop:

• It wrings out the solution really well (you could also make your own diy floor cleaner once their’s is gone) and floors don’t get too wet.
• It rinses the mop each time
• It has a soft mop head and a scrubby head — great!

Steam Clean Tile Floors

When I get around to it, I steam my floors with my steam clean machine.  I don’t actually think it cleans all that better then a regular mop, but I do think there’s something to switching up cleaning tactics and how it makes things cleaner overall.  But, my cleaning philosophy is a blog for another day…

When my kids are on break (like spring break) I usually have them cleaning tile grout with grout cleaner, a scrub brush and a rag.  Kids are GREAT at cleaning grout.  They’re close to it and it works well!

What do you do with your floors?  I’m always working on it.  We have at LEAST 1100 square feet of tile here, with little kids.

If you liked this post — be sure to sign up for my weekly cleaning schedule (Floors are done on Mondays at my house) — and check out my other cleaning posts below that:

This post was originally written in April 2014, but has been updated.

The post How to Clean Tile Floors appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Trust me, my weekly cleaning schedule is often a topic of conversation (I even talked about it on my podcast) at both work and with my friends.  They wonder how I can be so OCD (me, wondering how other people can’t be) and how I make it through all those tasks.  They figure I must love cleaning.  Frankly, I don’t usually mind cleaning.  Here’s 6 things I like about cleaning.  Maybe, by reading these 6 things you can think of cleaning in a new way at your house?

BTW, I think one of the reasons I like cleaning so much is because I am organized.  Good organization at your house makes cleaning SO much easier, as a good amount of cleaning is actually putting stuff away.  This course gives you a firm foundation.

Do you wish this was more like you:

• You can have guests over at a moment’s notice because you know your home looks AOK
• You wish you could relax more, in a comfortable, easily tidied-up room
• You know where your important documents, etc are stored so you can grab them when necessary

If so — check this course out.  You can even save 10% with code PC10.

I love cleaning my house

What I like about cleaning

I like to clean to see the follow-through.

I like seeing a job start to finish.  There is something great to having a pan that is disGUSTing and then just you with some soap and elbow grease make it look good as new.  I can do that in a matter of minutes.  Go me! Who doesn’t love the sense of accomplishment that comes with knocking out those household chores?

Cleaning gives me a sense of control.

I like the control.  Lets face it, my kids and my husband do plenty of things that drive me INSANE that I can’t fix at all — but give me some dusty baseboards, and I CAN DO THAT.  Within just a few minutes it’s back to perfection.  No one else does that for me.  I love you baseboards.

I love living in a clean house

I like clean stuff.  Is there anything better than climbing into a bed with clean sheets or cleaning out a junk drawer? I don’t tolerate dirt very well.  It’s not usually something my eyeballs can ignore for a long time.  I HATE bare feet on dirty floors.  It drives my mind NUTS to have all those little pieces on my feet.  It makes me happy to walk on clean floors.

I also just did a podcast about getting my family to clean:

Cleaning gives me motivation to do more!

Having clean stuff gives me motivation to clean more in other rooms.

Related Post: How to clean tile floors with vinegar and baking soda

I love to clean and organize!

Honestly, I REALLY like to organize.  I like to pull everything out and then weed out what I don’t need, and then figure out the best way to put it all back.  And yes, I do mean the BEST way.  That part, is somewhat problematic.  BUT, it SO nice to look at a space that was just a jumbled mess of stuff I really didn’t need and then looking at something that is able to be utilized. {makes my heart swoon}

Honestly, there is nothing more motivating to keep cleaning than a clean house.

I like that I can limit cleaning

I create a time limit.  I LOVE using timers to make the job not seem endless.  My mind can do 20 minutes of scrubbing the shower, it can’t really do a nubulous “when it’s done” type thing.  I try to just start in the dirtiest part, so that it’s looks pretty well done when that timer rings.

Doing a quick, frantic clean can lead to a LOT of benefits!

What do you enjoy about cleaning?

I find a lot of joy in making something that seems un-useable, useable — which is why I love this book.  I swear it’s my cleaning bible.  I’m actually friends with Katelyn IRL and whenever I have a stain, she’s my first call!  She even has a ton of awesome uses for bar keepers friend! It’s a good idea to think about some cleaning tasks that you actually enjoy to not get burned out cleaning your own home. Maybe you like to wipe down the kitchen counters or fold a warm load of laundry. Focus on the good things!

Why do I like cleaning so much?

I mainly like being DONE.  That’s the whole thing of the cleaning schedule.  I need jobs that have a start and a finish.  I also need to know that I’m done.  See #3 — if I see dirty stuff part of my mind wants to clean it then… which would actually allow my mind NO time to rest.  It’s just so NICE to be DONE with the things I need to do and the move on to things I WANT to do.

{reality check}

I don’t ALWAYS love cleaning….

The reality is that cleaning can be hard.  Sometimes it makes me hot and sweaty, sometimes I wish I had different tools or that my family wasn’t so messy.

But other times, especially when I’m groovin’ with my tunes I’m thrilled to have a clean house and be able to breathe and relax in the Zen.

Do you like cleaning?  If you HATE cleaning, could you concentrate on one of these 6 benefits to make it a little more tolerable?  Get it done.

How to love cleaning

You don’t have to be a neat freak to have a clean home. And if you don’t already love cleaning it’s going to take a little bit of time to love the cleaning process. The easiest way to love cleaning is to start with simple tasks that don’t take much time so you can see the end product of a clean space.

Don’t think you are going to fall in love with cleaning your entire house the first time you start a cleaning routine. I’m going to be honest, you may never LOVE cleaning, but you will love how it feels to have a tidy home on a regular basis. A messy house is not good for your mental health, so take a deep breath and know that in the long run it’s going to be a great thing for you and your family!

While you’re here, grab my printable cleaning lists (makes it easy to have a to-do list already printed for each room) and check out my other cleaning posts below that.

This post was originally written in 2014, and has been updated.

The post I love cleaning {I know, I’m Crazy}: Six things to like about cleaning appeared first on Pulling Curls.

I get a TON of questions on how to split up chores in marriage, so much that I actually did a podcast on it. Episode 009 talks about it from Parenting & Pregnancy Untangled:

Feeling Alone in Household Chores

You watch the clock, only 15 more minutes…. 10 minutes…. 5 minutes….. {rrrrrrr}- the garage door opens and DAD’S home! Dad comes in, flops on the couch and turns on the TV and tickles a happy baby and wonders what’s for dinner. 

As a stay-at-home mom, you’ve been dealing with a screaming baby who wants to pull every object within reach onto the floor, fighting kids, and trying to figure out dinner when all you own are saltines and hamburger.  

You still need to vacuum, was the dirty laundry, make dinner and clean the bathrooms. And your husband is enjoying his leisure time on the couch as the kids play like little angels.

And you want. to. scream.

You’ve been working all day too! When’s your leisure time? If your husband was a bachelor, he would still need to do the laundry and clean the bathroom? Can’t he do his fair share and help out more?

Yes, yes he can. While I have always worked outside the home, I have been at the home the majority of the time. We found some ways that helped us splitting up domestic work in marriage in a way that we were both agreeable to.

Before we get into it, if getting your family members to help with chores is something you struggle with, I talk about in my course Family Routines.  I’ll talk about implementing chore routines and getting kids involved.  I think you’ll love it — in fact, I guarantee it.  Join for a month or a year — you can cancel at any time — you can even save 10% with code PC10.

Talking About Household Chores with Your Spouse

Talk with your spouse about how you’re feeling, your mental load and how much work you’re doing and maybe what they could do to help you out? Don’t blame them, instead look at your chore list and find a better way to share housework. I think when you think that one parent will stay home, you envision them doing the majority of the housework — like June Cleaver. Newsflash, June’s kids were all in school and I never saw her spending hours and hours at a PTO fundraiser. 

Pro Tip: Be sure to have this talk NOT at 5 pm when you’re riled up and angry at the injustice of it all! *that is a key point — be calm when you talk about it!

Pro Tip #2: Remember you’re on the same team. It’s you attacking household tasks, not attacking each other.

Did June Cleaver Have it Right?

If you are the stay at home parent, it is natural that you to take a larger chunk of the jobs. There are small tasks that you can do during the day. If your spouse is working outside the home, that’s not an option for them. But there are different tasks they can do to share the work of domestic duties.

When you look at it rationally it really is fair that you take a bit more share of work. Plus, showing the kids how to do chores is an important part of a mom’s job. You have to be doing chores to teach them. Be sure to take what is best to teach when you split them up!

This one’s going to be a surprise — but I’m gonna tell you to….

Make A List of Chores in your Marriage

Make a list of the chores:

• Laundry
• Floors (mopping, vacuuming, etc)
• Dusting
• Bathrooms
• Cooking
• Kitchen cleaning
• Deep Cleaning
• Financial/bill paying
• Grocery Shopping

Then, maybe mark the ones you each don’t mind doing (as much) 

For instance, I love cleaning counters.  Call me crazy?  I just love perfection after it’s done. Maybe you love to have time at the grocery store by yourself, so that can be on your to-do list.

Then, maybe make a list of things you hate how your husband does (and/or he hates how you do)

My husband didn’t appreciate how I folded clothes.  I’ll give you 3 guesses as to who folds clothes now.

Negotiate Household Chores

Now it’s time for the big negotiation. If there’s things that one minds that the other one hates, it makes sense to split that.

Keeping in mind that the lists should be balanced, also keeping in mind that leaving the home for work needs to be balanced into this equation as well.

How we split household chores in our marriage:

For me, I needed something that I didn’t mind getting put off for a few days when my husband was extra busy, then he could binge work and get a bunch of it done. We settled on him folding clothes. I don’t mind baskets piling up a bit and he never liked how I folded it anyway.

Now that he is only working from home part-time, each one tends to do the chores if they aren’t outside of the home working that day. Or, if I have a lot of deadlines, or if I’m at my away job as a nurse, he does the jobs for that day. The traditional roles of daily things that need to be done might change on a regular basis.

I have my cleaning schedule on Tick-tick on the shared list.  He can access what domestic responsibilities are supposed to be done every day. He’s seen me do it enough to know my personal preferences of how I like it done (he’s so great at that, really) and I really like just HAVING it done. 

My cleaning schedule is such a well-oiled machine it doesn’t take a lot of time away from his part time job (he works from home a few hours every day).

Mix It Up Because You Love Each Other

Ebb and flow.  My friend Lara wrote a great post on serving your husband.  There’s nothing wrong with showing love and doing their jobs when they’re over their head, have less time, and vice versa. Love is sharing and serving.

For each couple, it is going to work differently, but I think there is nothing wrong with saying that you are NOT June Cleaver, and you never saw June Cleaver at Mommy and Me reading group or swim lessons, or teaching her babies how to read. It’s just a different life.

If you’re not even married yet, NOW is the time to say that you really hope for a household that shares responsibility.

The good thing about doing it before you’re married is that you’re calm with no feelings in the game. The key to this is NOT being angry. It’s all about assumptions people make before they have kids. It’s about what our parents did (which, likely didn’t work well either). It’s about talking and finding out what works for YOU. 

You have a unique marriage that needs to be honored in your division of housework. You can both be happy. You just need to talk iout the decision-making process so one person doesn’t take the brunt of the chores. And adjust when needed. Traditional gender roles for domestic tasks may or may not be the best way to divide household labor for your family.

Do you have any other tips for splitting household duties in marriage? Put them below!  Be sure to sign up for my newsletter including my cleaning alerts!

You might be interested in some of my other cleaning posts:

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The post Splitting Household Chores in Marriage appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Big thanks to our sponsor The Organized Home — if you’re looking to clean things up faster, grab that course!

In this episode

Cleaning products during pregnancy

Great microfiber cloths

The Saturday clean episode.

Other things that might interest you

Producer: Drew Erickson

Check out my other parenting podcasts:

Transcript

[00:00:00.000] – Hilary Erickson

Hey, guys. Welcome back to the Pulling Curls Podcast. Today on Episode 184, we are talking about spring cleaning, so let’s untangle it and clean it and shine it.

[00:00:19.480] – Hilary Erickson

Hi, I’m Hilary Erickson, the curly head behind the Pulling Curls Podcast: pregnancy and parenting untangled. There’s no right answer for every family, but on this show, we hope to give you some ideas to make life simpler at your house. Life’s tangled just like my hair.

[00:00:40.840] – Hilary Erickson

Spring cleaning. I was going to try and get an expert to come on this podcast to talk to me about cleaning. We have had my friend, Samantha, on to talk about cleaning products during pregnancy, which I’ll link to that episode in the show notes. It is super interesting. But I just thought, cleaning… I think we all are like, what are the cleaning tips? And every once in a while, I find one that I’m really amazed by. But today I want to give you my three best spring cleaning tips, and they are probably not going to be mind blowing, but maybe you’ll see that you’re the same as me, and maybe it’ll give you some ideas. I don’t know. Let’s get to it.

[00:01:13.530] – Hilary Erickson

Do you ever just feel like it’s unfair that some people can have company over at a moment’s notice? Their house is just super easy to clean up and they can relax on the couch with Netflix while you feel like you always have things to do around your house. That can totally be you. The Organized Home is here to help you simplify organizing. We’re talking about decluttering, zones, organization systems that actually work. We’ve got assignments and challenges. I hope you’ll join us. You can use coupon code UNTANGLED. Look for the Organized Home, link in the show notes.

[00:01:43.380] – Hilary Erickson

Okay, my first tip is micro fiber cloths. I absolutely hate how they feel on my hands. I don’t know how it has all these little things that grab onto every little skin cell on my hands and clings to it. I hate them, but man, oh man, do they clean better. And I know a lot of people love to buy them from fancy cleaning supplies. I am telling you, if you have a Costco membership, they probably have something similar at Sam’s Club.

[00:02:04.980] – Hilary Erickson

There’s a giant bag of yellow micro fiber cloths from Costco. It’s so cheap and I love them and I don’t feel bad when they get bleached or whatever happens to them because they’re super cheap. They really do clean better. I don’t know why. That’s why I don’t have an expert on this podcast. They just clean better, I find. So microfiber cloth, if you hate how they’re feeling, you can always wear rubber gloves. But I also hate how rubber gloves feel. So I just like sojourn on. I just make it work for me. Are these blowing your mind yet?

[00:02:31.140] – Hilary Erickson

Number two, stop buying cleaning supplies. Okay, so we don’t buy a lot of cleaning supplies around our house. We have a few stuck at the back of the closet. We have goo gone because it can be helpful for specific things. We have some carpet cleaner. But in general, in our house, we are cleaning with homemade cleaning supplies. And then we went to my parents house and we were cleaning, and they only have store bought cleaning supplies, which is apparently what I grew up with.

[00:02:55.000] – Hilary Erickson

So I’ve clearly changed. But we were all dying from the fumes, dying. And then I really just didn’t feel like they cleaned any better. So if you’re big into buying your 409 or your scrubbing bubbles or something like that at the store, try the homemade cleaning things. We use one that has a little bit of vinegar and a tea two drops of dish soap into a cleaning bottle. You can look up recipes for this online. I think I have the vinegar one that I’ll link to. And then I found a great one about tide online where you put in a teaspoon of tide to a gallon of water and then you’re supposed to put in bleach if it’s bleach safe. But I usually don’t put in bleach because it can hurt my fiber glass shower bottom.

[00:03:37.020] – Hilary Erickson

So usually I find that this does okay without the bleach and then a drop of dish soap and boom, you’re ready to go. And those are the two we have in there. I use my cricket, guys, because I’m super crafty to label our bottles, vinegar, tide. I do have a window cleaner that I buy store bought. If you guys have a great homemade window cleaner that you like to make, tell me on Instagram. I would love to make my own. I just don’t. Anyway, we just have those in there. That’s what we use. They do a great job. Now, keep in mind, those two things do not disinfect. I did try my own alcohol based cleaner, but ultimately I think I like the pre moistened wipes. So if I actually have to disinfected, meaning I’ve spilled like Turkey juice all over the counter, I will use an antibacterial wipe for that.

[00:04:18.520] – Hilary Erickson

But other than that, I have a weakness for the foaming mirror cleaner. Does anybody love that? I get it at Costco. Love it. I don’t know. I just cleaned my microwave with front with it the other day and we have the buttons on the glass. Such a mistake. I absolutely love that glass cleaner. But otherwise, the fumes are crazy in some of these cleaners. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. I’m just so sensitive.

[00:04:39.590] – Hilary Erickson

Finally, tip number three, and this is a rough one. Get your kids to do it with you. Now, obviously, if you have a newborn baby, you can skip tip number three. But I think I envisioned, because this is how my mom did it, that my kids would go and clean a wall without me. And they, yes, will go and swipe a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser over that wall a couple of times and then be like, It’s done. And it’s not going to be done. So ultimately, I’ve decided that our entire family has to clean at the same time. Sometimes we’re not even in the same room. But in order to teach my kids to clean, I’ve had to clean with them. So we do Saturday clean every Saturday where we all clean together. I absolutely don’t love it. They absolutely don’t love it. But I think I’m teaching them to clean better. And sometimes we’re ending up having a good time together. Sometimes we’re not.

[00:05:27.800] – Hilary Erickson

But I think we all hope that we kids can get to a stage, and I think they can with routine jobs like cleaning the bathroom, stuff like that. But when you’re wanting to give them a spring cleaning job, something they haven’t done, or it takes a little bit more muscle or whatever, it’s just going to do you better if you can get in there and do it with them. Might not work all the time. Little kids love to come and clean with you.

[00:05:46.780] – Hilary Erickson

So if you can just keep them loving that for until 18 years, that’s all you need to do. Anyway, I don’t love that tip, but it’s something that I’ve just realized I need to do. So don’t get me wrong, though. Every minute that I’m spending cleaning with my kids, when we are all cleaning like bathrooms, cleaning the grout and stuff like that, I’m like, when am I getting a maid or housekeeper? I can’t. I cannot. But I can. Anyway, those are my spring cleaning tips. I hope nobody’s mind was blown by any of those. I would love to know what you thought of these tips. If you have any tips on your own, come find me over on Instagram or you can comment on the blog post at pullingcurls.com. I would love to hear what you guys think. Tell me, tell me, tell me.

[00:06:25.400] – Hilary Erickson

Don’t miss next week’s episode where we are talking about taking care of your bottom, a different spring cleaning, if you will. And then the week after that, we are talking about teaching reading, which is something I absolutely love to do. I think it’s a good one for anyone to do because I think we can all be better teachers of all those kids that are learning to read. Stay tuned for those. They are great episodes.

[00:06:43.710] – Hilary Erickson

Thanks so much for joining us on today’s episode. The Pulling Curls podcast grows when you share us on social media or leave a review. If you do, please tag us so that we can share and send you a virtual hug, which, frankly, is my favorite hugging. Until next time, we hope you have a tangle free day.

The post Spring Cleaning Tips — Episode 184 appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Hiring a housekeeping service is a big step — and one I’ve certainly considered — today I’m going to tell you why I choose NOT to have professional cleaners.

Confession: Life is busy. My life is busy and I would guess yours is too. Between work, school, and kids, sometimes my dream of a clean home falls to the bottom of the pile.

With my kids often that pile is pretty dirty.

Sometimes I look at their bathroom and sigh a tired sigh and walk away.

I’ve certainly asked myself if professional housekeepers might be the right choice. I think it’s something a lot of us consider at different times.

Hiring professional house cleaners would be awesome in a lot of ways.

Today I’m going to talk about my four main reasons for not having a maid or house keeper.

Before we get too deep into this, a BIG part of my reason WAS my kids, and I really felt like I could help them learn how to clean, while also making it easier on myself… I found that I was able to do that, and I compiled all my best tips into Family Routines. If that sounds like the route you’d like to go, I’d recommend it!

Ok, onto WHY we don’t have a cleaner:

Why not hire a cleaning service?

While I know there are a lot of reasons for hiring cleaning professionals I am going to talk about the reasons I have chosen, for now, not to.

#1 What would professional housecleaners do?

The reality is, about 80% of my “cleaning” time is used putting stuff away and organizing. This is not something cleaning people do. Unless your cleaning person is living in your home or part of your every day life they likely don’t know where all the little things go.

I don’t know about you but having things put away incorrectly would actually add time to other tasks if I had to go looking for them.

Personally, I use my 10-minute tidy to stay on top of this with a small time commitment!

#2 What am I teaching my kids?

There is zero chance my children are going to have cleaning ladies in college, or for the vast majority of their early adult life. If I hired a maid now, is that what are they going to think life is like?

I need to teach my kids how to deep clean NOW. I wanted to be that example that we could make it work with what we have.

THEY ARE MY MAID. Or, they should be. Especially for their own spaces. Kids need to learn how to clean.

I will say that getting my kids to help out more was work by myself and by my husband, but it’s paid off by them having some life skills and also us not having that added expense. I don’t want you to think it magically happened — but I do have my best tips in here.

Honestly, this one’s a big deal to me. Learning to clean and organize as they grow are the best ways to make sure when children leave our home they have the knowledge they need to clean their own living spaces when they’re grown.

Hard work isn’t a punishment, especially when most of the messes are their own. At the end of the day kids can do a great job, they just need to be taught how.

I think there can be real joy in seeing a job well done — sometimes I even love cleaning.

#3 You clean before the maid comes

A lot of my friends have maids, and I think it’s funny that many of them end up cleaning every single time before the maid comes. Maybe they’re talking about just tidying up so they can vacuum or whatnot — but HONESTLY, a lot of what they’re doing to prepare for the cleaning companies is what cleaning is.

The actual CLEANING part isn’t too much.

#4 How much time would a maid really save me?

When I use my cleaning schedule, I spend MAYBE 30 minutes max per day cleaning. Most days, a lot less.

I know plenty of people (especially bloggers) who feel like they “can make a lot more money in that cleaning time” and hire a cleaning lady. Personally, I haven’t seen that. Between the hourly rate, the time spent finding a good house cleaner, meeting to discuss what you want with new cleaners, etc that is a lot of money and time.

For me, one of the best parts of cleaning is the solitude time. It gives me time to think about the changes I want to make in my life or with my kids. Time to think if I really need everything sitting on my kitchen counters or if the rocking chair works best in the master bedroom or if it would be better in the family room.

I’ve found this to be a great time to think about individual family members and their needs and to come up with blog ideas!

It’s mindless, quiet work and often allows your mind to wander to other things you’d like to improve or you can listen to podcasts or audiobooks.  These make listening while cleaning a LOT easier!

Final Thoughts on Hiring a Cleaning Professional

Anyway — these are the reasons I have for not choosing to have a house cleaner at this time.

Honestly, once it’s just my husband and myself I may hire one. It would be really nice to have someone else clean toilets and my kitchen floor.  I won’t have kids to teach or do the dirty work. But, honestly – with just him and I… maybe I won’t need one anyway.

I am in no way judging someone who DOES have a maid I don’t know every circumstance in people’s lives. The bottom line is this is your choice to make. I’m just sharing my feelings and if you’re considering it — I think you should really consider WHY you want one. You may actually need more help with organizing and decluttering than the actual cleaning.

Think about what it will REALLY do for you and then, by all means — get one if you feel it’s worth it.

Thinking you’d like to make cleaning easier and more of a family affair — check out Family Routines.  We do a Saturday clean which has been a game changer, and it’s all outlined in that book (and only takes about 20 minutes).

The post Why I Don’t Have a Cleaning Lady appeared first on Pulling Curls.

Best Robot Vacuum — Eufy vs iLife vs Roomba

There are a LOT of smart robot vacuums on the market anymore, how do you know which one of them is the best vacuum cleaners to buy? I wanted to share my experience with three of the most popular robot brands and what the main differences are.

Review of the Eufy 30C

Full disclosure, we were given an Eufy 30c after our iLife vacuum died — however, we had decided on purchasing the 30c before contacting the company to see if they were willing to work with us — this review wasn’t required and the whole review is my honest opinion.

We briefly thought about getting the less-expensive 11 or 11s, but after realizing the suction was a lot more — and that’s what PICKS UP STUFF — we really wanted more suction.  I really like how you can see exactly what you’re getting with the Eufy Vacs!

The Eufy 30C is our 2nd robot vacuum and out of the box I noticed a few things:

• It’s louder than the iLife (although, if you add in the iLife squeaky wheels, the iLife is louder), probably due to the suction
• It’s SO slim to the ground, it can get under things other vacuums couldn’t
• It is WAY easier to schedule, because of the app.  Plus, I can ask Alexa to make it run.  #winning
• Their customer service is on TOP of things.  Any complaints on Amazon are quickly addressed and fixed.

It was easy to set up and get going.  It says that it needs many feet on either side, but we have it under a table and it does fine (as did the iLife).

It does a great job.  Things aren’t getting zoomed over and missed.

It does well at going in between the chairs at our kitchen table and it doesn’t get stuck.

It does suck up wires/cords more than the iLife — so I need to be more careful with that (it comes with zip ties to help control that problem on your own).

Also, when it finds a lot of crumbs/dirt in an area it kicks up the suction to maximum so that it can get that area very clean.  That’s nice in a house like ours, where the kitchen is a LOT dirtier than the living area. 

The Eufy is available on their site and also on Amazon (and I’d check prices because they vary — and each one has sales sometimes).

A note on the Alexa Skill:

It is, sadly, SUPER handy to be able to ask Alexa to get the Eufy to vacuum our house. You can also ask it to pause, and to go home (although, the go home feature doesn’t seem to work as well — especially if it is in a complicated situation at the time you ask it to go home).

WE LIVE IN THE FUTURE PEOPLE!!!!

BTW, if you haven’t heard of Eufy before, they are part of the Ankar — a battery company I LOVE (I love their charging and spare batteries for my phone!)

Cons of the Eufy 30c

I don’t like that you can’t pick what you want the vacuum to DO in the app — it just does the last function it did.  So, that’s sort of annoying.

The magnetic tape is sort of expensive, but I am grateful that we have a way to keep it out of spots.  That is a big selling point at this price point!

Review of the iLife A4

This was our first robotic vacuum.  We got it on a great price on an Amazon prime day, and I would call it an “entry level” robotic vacuum.

That low price point does show after a bit.

The first month was great.  My husband did a good job cleaning the dirt cup out, and the filters, but with time it just stopped sucking up as much.

It got REALLY loud.  Somehow the wheels seemed kind of off-kilter and it would squeak and sort of rumble a lot as it went along.

But, out of the box, it was the quietest of the three vacuums.

However, it still does a good job at getting into the corners (a HUGE plus of robot vacuums, since they have those side brushes that regular vacuums don’t have).  It does run automated, although sometimes gets off its schedule and it’s hard to know how to fix it.

It also didn’t suck up wires quite as ambitiously as the other two.

Cons of the iLife A4 Robotic Vacuum

• Seems to have a short shelf life, most people say it doesn’t last much more than a year (very true in our case, in fact –we stopped running it frequently because it just didn’t do a great job)
• There is no way to keep it out of certain areas — our Christmas tree skirt had a few skirmishes with it.
• It got stuck a LOT.  In fact, most times it was stuck somewhere.  It was a happy day when it made it back home.

Review of the iRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum

My mom has this vacuum.

This guy is crazy expensive.  In fact, I’m not sure they sell it anymore, it seems like the 960 has taken its place?

** No, the 980 is still the powerhouse of the iRobot brands — it has a better motor, just harder to find.

But it really is a luxury vacuum.  It does SUCH A good job at vacuuming.

And so good, you’ll think you have a maid doing the vacuuming for you because it is SO loud (seriously, like a regular vacuum loud).

I love the set of sensors to create virtual walls or virtual boundaries keep it out of certain spots. They are nice, much nicer than the magnetic tape.

This vacuum does clean in a back and forth, straight lines pattern… which can be nice, but I decided it was probably not necessary.

Cons of the Roomba 980

• It’s pretty tall at 4″ — so the other two (especially the 30c) has a low-profile design that can get under things that it can’t — which is really nice when you have furniture you’d like it to sweep under
• It’s SO loud. I could never run it at night.
• The cost. Yowzas, it’s almost $300 more than the Eufy 30c.

I liked this video that compared the 3 brands (not the 3 exact vacuums I’ve mentioned though):

Ultimately, my choice boiled down to a few things:

• I wanted to be able to keep the vacuum out of an area, without having to make a barricade of laundry baskets (which I could).
• I wanted strong suction power.

I love how up-front Eufy is about its suction! I can’t seem to find the suction specs on any of the other vacuums. BUT, I was initially thinking of just getting the Eufy 11s — but after seeing how much MORE suction the 30c had, I was won over. Plus, you can often find the Euphy 30c on a great sale, that doesn’t make it much more!

So, ultimately, I think I made the best choice in getting the Eufy 30c. Of course, that’s the choice I made, and humans are like that — but I think you’ll love it too. If you have any questions about it, ask me in the comments!

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