Clean Enough Homemaking: Establish Standards for a Peaceful Home

Do you have “clean enough” homemaking standards established that you can live with?  Today, I want to encourage you to establish some basic homemaking standards that will work for you so that you can be relaxed and happy when you are in your home.  

Close your eyes for a moment and envision a room that is clean enough for you.  What does that mean?  How do the surfaces look?  What is the general level of acceptable dust and pet hair that is ok to see in your mind?  Are there things out on the tables?  

I am not asking you to envision a perfectly clean room, though perhaps some of you might have that as your ideal standard.  I just want you to think about what clean enough means to you.  

Clean Enough is Personal

Clean enough will mean different things to different people.  My idea of clean enough in the kitchen doesn’t always line up with how the family cleans things up. 

After dinner, I have the boys clean up and load the dishwasher.  They deal with all the plates, glasses, and silverware.  When I was first teaching them how to do this, I found that they wouldn’t always do everything I wanted them to do.  That’s because the kitchen standards were inside my head.  So, I ended up clarifying what the kitchen should look like after clean up.  I made a little list and I printed it out and taped it to the inside of a kitchen cabinet.  That way they could look at the list if they forgot.  

I want them to deal with all the dishwasher things, put dishes in the sink that won’t fit in the dishwasher, and leave the pots and pans on the stove for me to deal with later.  Knives have a special place on the window ledge so that they are safely out of the sink and ready for me to hand wash the next day.  The counters should be wiped down, and the right hand side of the sink should be clear of food gunk.  To me, that is clean enough for the kitchen at night.  

When my mom visits, she has a different standard.  She makes sure that every single dish is washed and put away before she leaves the kitchen.  I absolutely love it, because there is nothing quite like waking up to a completely clean kitchen.  But, I have found that I can’t keep up with that standard.  I am exhausted at night after dinner, and I don’t have the energy to do all the dishes, especially the hand washing.  

So, instead of giving myself a massive guilt trip and exhausting myself doing the hand washing, I just move that chore until the next day.  Thankfully, we don’t have an ant problem, so I’m able to leave the pots and pans out for washing in the morning.  I have more energy in the morning, plus my husband is working during the day, so I’m not missing precious time with him by washing the pots and pans.  I can go with him on a dog walk in the evening, instead of doing the hand washing.

Dishwasher running, and hand washing left until the next day is clean enough in the kitchen for me at night.  I try to get the pots and pans washed before lunch time so that I’ll have a nice clean stove when I get ready to cook dinner.

One of the great privileges of being a homemaker is the ability to figure out what is clean enough for you and your family.  Whether you stay at home full time, or you have a job in addition to your homemaking, we get to create the atmosphere in our home.  

What is Clean Enough Homemaking?

1. Establish Your Vision

The first stop on this journey is to establish your vision of a home that is clean enough.   This is highly subjective both to your family situation and your own personal standards.

If you have a baby who is just learning how to crawl, then having clean floors is really important.  However, if you have teenagers, the clean floors may not be as big of a deal.  Maybe you have a family member who is allergic to dust.  That may mean you need to dust every day.  

If you have a potty training toddler, you will be cleaning up the bathroom a lot.  Perhaps you have a baby who is bottle feeding.  You’re going to have a lot of hand washing and drying to do.  If you’re  changing diapers, there’s going to need to be lots of trash going outside. 

Additionally, you need to think about your own personal standards.  What is your vision of clean enough at home?  Personally, I really like my flat surfaces to be relatively clean and decluttered. I learned this from Flylady! If you have never checked out her system, I highly recommend it!

If there are things that I leave out on my flat surfaces,  then they have specific places they live.  In contrast, I don’t care how organized my drawers are.  My standard is that if the drawer or cabinet can close it is good enough!!  I have tried to be super organized in my drawers, but it doesn’t always work for me.  And I really don’t care.  As long as the stuff isn’t out on the counters, I’m ok with the crazy disorganized drawers.  

I have known people who havetheir drawers super organized.  I go over to their homes and I am amazed at how organized the inside of their cabinets are.  Sometimes, I get inspired to change my ways, but I tend to gradually go back to what works for me.  

What are your personal standards for the common areas of the home?  Can you articulate them?  Are they realistic for your current life situation?  If so, then it is time to move on the the next part of this journey.

2.  Communicate Your Standards

Now that you have established your reasonable standards for clean enough homemaking, it is your job to communicate them to the members of your family.  As the primary homemaker, you have the privilege of establishing the “clean enough” standards.  Now, we don’t get to be draconic or overbearing about the standards.  We live with others who may not have the same vision for clean enough.

So, how do we do this, without causing World War 3 in our homes?  Well, it starts by working the standards through on your own.   Practice picking things up and getting the common areas to the clean enough standard a few of times a day.  I recommend before lunch and then before cooking dinner.  You could also pick up the family room area before you head to bed. As you are practicing these standards, it is really important to keep your attitude in check.  Keep a positive attitude as you work towards clean enough.

Then, I want you to talk to your spouse and children, if they are old enough, about the idea of clean enough.  What does that mean?  For your kids, that may mean that shoes and socks must go in the hall closet.  Dishes belong in the dishwasher if it is available.  School supplies must be put away once school is done.  Hats need to be hung up.

As you are influencing your family to contribute to the clean enough home, please be positive and encouraging!  That will go so much further than a negative attitude.  Bitterness will not help establish a peaceful and joyful atmosphere in your home.

 3. Adjust as Necessary 

The next component of clean enough homemaking is the willingness to adjust your standards as needed.

As you move through the phases of parenting and home life, your standards will change.   That is to be expected.  When we have toddlers, there are many brightly colored toys and the plugs are covered up for safety.  With school age children there may be sports equipment and books.  Teenagers might have headphones and video game paraphernalia. 

If something isn’t working, take a pause and try to figure out what exactly has changed.  Is your family more busy than usual?  Perhaps the expectations are too high for the given life situation.  When My boys were playing baseball, Saturdays were really busy.  Then we would be busy at church for most of the morning on Sunday.  By the time I hit Sunday afternoon, the home was messier than I would like, but I was out of energy.  I would spend Sunday afternoon feeling guilty for being tired.

That wasn’t working.  So, I decided to set up Monday mornings as a time to pick up the home from the weekend whirlwind.  The kids would be busy doing school, and as long as I didn’t schedule any appointments for that time, I would be able to get the home back to clean enough.

It worked wonderfully for that time of our lives!  I was able to relax on Sunday afternoons, knowing there was a plan to get the home back in order on Monday.  

Be willing to adjust for the different phases in your life.  Clean enough homemaking doesn’t always look the same for every family.

4.  Be Graceful

As we work on the idea of clean enough homemaking, it is important to be graceful to our loved ones.  While we may establish the standards, it may be challenging for your family to keep up with them.  Make sure the standards are reasonable, and then be graceful if it isn’t always perfect.  

Sometimes my boys leave their breakfast dishes in the sink even though I’ve already emptied out the dishwasher.  I might ask them to come back and put their dish away, or I might just take care of it for them. Either one of those choices is just fine, provided I am acting in a loving and graceful manner.  If I put their dishes away with bitterness or anger, or ask them to do it with a loud yell, that doesn’t add to the peaceful and joyful home atmosphere.  

Can it be annoying when the home seems to revert back to its cluttered state just a few moments after you’ve cleaned it?  Yes.  But we can choose to be graceful.  We can teach our children to pick up.  We can love our spouse by putting those socks in the dirty clothes.  Why?  Because we are working towards the larger goal of having a home that is clean enough.  A clean enough home is relaxed enough to offer the family grace, but also picked up enough to allow the family to enjoy the common areas.

I hope that this idea of clean enough homemaking will be helpful to you.  As we establish our vision, communicate our standards, adjust as necessary, and show grace we lay the foundation for a peaceful and joyful home that is clean enough to live in every day.