“Is that enough airing out?
I wash sheets twice a week.”
I’ll give you bonus points for the twice a week sheet change.
@emilybee, lol.
I was sitting on a sofa in the living room a few minutes ago. Reading CC. My shoes were a couple of feet away from me on the floor.
My wife looked at the shoes and said, “Good. I am going to throw those shoes away when you get up and leave the room”.
I put my shoes on immediately. My wife has me well trained. 
Good luck to you with your husband.
Our bathrooms get cleaned often, dishes are done immediately after eating, we don’t eat in many rooms of our house, and the floors get cleaned regularly. I tend to leave paper on flat surfaces. My husband has to have “space” and wants things to be “tidy” but he would be fine sleeping on the same sheets for weeks, would leave things in the fridge for months/years, and wouldn’t notice mold growing wherever. So we all see “clean” differently.
I think I won’t mention here how infrequently we wash our sheets… Let’s just say that we have extremely low water bills.
I would like to be neat, but I hate cleaning. I really do. My husband is always doing outdoor projects and bringing dirt in, the dogs sometimes like to wipe their butts on the carpet. I give up. I feel like my life is in little dusty piles around the house. We have a nice 5,000 SF house on the water, and we barely ask people over, because then we’d have to clean. It’s kind of pathetic.
There are pilers and filers. I am a piler. So I have weeks worth of clothing outside the closet so I can grab and go and my office space is piled high. But I am a clean piler. H is a packrat and he is not a clean freak by any stretch. And we both like everything we use everyday at our fingertips on the kitchen counter. So I guess we are clean messy people.
busdriver: You work full time. So does your husband. I don’t. I need something to do besides read CC.
Alh, I wish I could use that as an excuse, but I can’t. I have an irregular schedule with plenty of time off, but it’s just that cleaning isn’t any fun at, nor is cooking. I also dislike shopping, God I need a wife! Sometimes life is full of chores, and those never end.
I have a crew of four who come in every other Friday to clean my house. I would give up a whole lot of things before I’d ever give up my housekeeping service. I keep it picked up in the interim, but they keep it CLEAN.
I hate cleaning, too. I set the kitchen timer for small increments, 20 or 30 minutes, to make it bearable. It’s amazing how much you can get done in that much allotted time if you play “beat the clock”. You can also get a lot done during tv commercials - unless you are using that time for CC! Those are the ways I try to keep on top of something I really dislike doing and find boring.
You know, doschicos, I’ve thought about doing that kitchen timer thing. It really works? Maybe I’ll get off my butt and try that!
Only person who ever asked us to remove shoes was a former Japanese neighbor. OTOH, my older relatives had a strict rule against wearing hats in their homes.
I tried a housecleaning service once, and it was two ladies for two hours. All they did was clean three bathrooms (and one was pretty clean already). I thought, Jeez, I could have done that in 30 minutes!
I guess you need the right people.
I found that I’m much happier when I return home after being away for a week or so if the house is clean. So I make an effort to tidy up and clean where needed, make sure the bedroom is clean and the sheets are new and then we can come home and be happy and relaxed instead of depressed.
Being in an open and minimalist place, especially the beach or the desert and coming back to all your… stuff…just feels like “home, crap home” unless I do something about it in advance.
@busdriver11 It works for me although I do have a housekeeper 2x a month who does the whole house - bathrooms, baseboards, vacuuming, that kind of thing. I use my timer strategy for the day-to-day stuff and the project oriented stuff like cleaning out closets. I would go batty if I tried to tackle a cleaning project of an hour or two. But if I break it down to 3-4 cleaning bursts in a day, for example, I can get it done and I think I am actually more productive as I can stay on task and work diligently for a shorter period of time .
Sounds like you need to find yourself a good housekeeper. You and your husband work hard and deserve it. There are good people out there. I’ve used the same person for 17 years. The other thing I like about a housekeeper, more when my kids were young and I was busier, was that it forced me to declutter 2x a month and get surfaces picked up so she could clean. I’ve always had the house cleaning scheduled for Fridays. That way, if I wish to entertain, I know my house will be super clean 2 weekends a month.
I always justified the expense of housecleaning by rationalizing that it is cheaper than marital counseling and divorce. 
“I always justified the expense of housecleaning by rationalizing that it is cheaper than marital counseling and divorce.”
Oh yeah, I could justify that! I guess we need to find the right person, jyst have so much time I have no good excuse.
“I like surfaces clean and minimalist. I don’t like lots of clutter, stuff on the fridge for example or knick knacks all over. It stresses me out.”
My D is buying a place and I’m hopeful she will take at least some of the knickknacks - crystal vases, Lladros, stuff like that. The older I get, the less I care about any of it.
And nothing on the fridge. Ever! I have cabinet fronts on my refrigerator / freezer so it couldn’t become a bulletin board even if I wanted to.
This doesn’t really count as clutter, but in my laundry room I have two yardsticks (with animal characters at the bottom) that were personalized and given to us as a gift when our kids were babies - the kind where you mark off at intervals how tall they’ve grown. The marks went off the stick and onto the wall as the kids got older. That room really needs painting but my H refuses to cover up those marks - it was such a tradition to “measure” them every few months. You can trace how she overtook him in early adolescence and then he regained the lead
@Pizzagirl, We have a yardstick too and we took it with us when we moved. It’s a 6’2" inch yard stick. Nobody makes it to 6’ in our family so marking a wall was not an issue.
I understand your husband.
I was laid of my job two months ago and decided to use my downtime wisely and de-clutter my house. I went room by room and got rid of anything I have not used in 6 months. It took me about 3 weeks to rid myself of the clutter I had amassed over the last 17 years. I then decided a organized house needed to be updated. I have painted every room with the exception of my master bedroom and bath. Totally redid the landscape in the front and backyards. It’s like living in a brand new home. I’m about 80% complete and it feels great.
Wow! You are energetic, @Grainraiser. That’s a lot to pull off in 2 months. Kudos!