Blogger Friend School Assignment #103

Assignment: How do you keep energized so you can get it all done? bouncy music? treat it like a workout? Do you use a schedule?, a housekeeping binder system? luck of the draw system?.. or is this an area where you need encouragement? Do you need God’s help to keep order and beauty in your dwelling place? Take this week to tell us how You diligently keep going with your housekeeping chores.

I thought it might come to this at some point, so here goes - my simple solution for keeping myself organized, on top of household chores and meals and everything else that goes into care for my home is this: I have a full time, live in maid.

Now before you hate me, let me explain. I live in Singapore. I've lived in Asia for nine years, and culturally it's commonplace. I had a part time maid for 4 years when we lived in China because it was so cheap it seemed criminal NOT to have one. Here, I held out for four years before my husband's heavy travel schedule and my severe allergy to dust mites (which are almost impossible to control in this humidity) drove us to hire a wonderful Filipino woman who manages my home with songs and prayers on her lips all day.

I am by nature quite energetic and organized, but even so my best system before can't compare to having someone take care of it all for me. I do have to say that having her has made me even more organized - I have to sit down once a week and plan out what we will eat for every meal (before I just did dinners) and I'm now able to finally tackle those around the house clutter projects (like reorganizing my recipes according to what we actually eat!)

Before we had our maid, we tried several different systems, usually settling back on doing a 4 day school week with one day for cleaning. I'd make a list of everything that needed to be done and the kids (who are box checkers) checked them off as we went. I do miss my kids participating in housekeeping (they don't). I need to think creatively about what chores they should still do. When my kids fought before, their consequence was always to do a job together. That doesn't work as well now - I find I have to invent chores for them. But this is hardly something to complain about!

Can we still be blogger school friends now that my secret's out?