Week 2 – Home

Welcome back! I’m so glad you made it here for Week 2 of our Babyproof Your Homeschool eCourse. If you are just now finding us, no worries! Jump on in! You can find out more information about this course at our Overview post and Week 1 here.

After a new baby joins our family, I’ve noticed that with the change in schedule and sleep deprivation it is quite easy for me to let the priorities in my home slip in their positions. Instead of choosing the greater good – sticking with Morning Liturgy first – I feebly grasp for some facade of visible order to make up for the surrounding uncertainty: an empty kitchen sink, a vacuumed rug, cleared counters. Once this realization hit however, resisting those distractions and maintaining focus on the truly important became much easier. Below are a few of the strategies I’ve used to prevent these pitfalls in the future.

Finding Clean Base Zero

Now as a preventative measure to safeguard the vital practices in our home during the newborn days, I do as much maintenance in our home before baby’s arrival that I can physically muster. Lists are made for each room and gradually ticked off until we run out of time and baby is here. I like to call this level where my home is at its most well maintained state Clean Base Zero. Achieving this individualized level gives me a physical buffer, as well as peace of mind, when I am recovering and my ability for house upkeep is greatly reduced.

A dear friend pays to have her home deep cleaned the month before baby’s expected birthday and swears by it. I have not been able to afford this option, but love the idea! If the funds are available, I encourage this brilliant alternative. But, for those whom hiring outside help is not feasible, these are our steps for reaching Clean Base Zero:

Start by decluttering. The fewer things you have in the house, the fewer things you have to maintain. Having less also makes the future cleaning easier as you are not moving as many things to reach the mess.
Go room by room and list what needs to be completed. I have provided two House Prep worksheets for this step. You can print them double sided to help keep everything together.
Be sure to consider the family car in your evaluation. Include installing the new baby’s carseat and any rearranging of the older children’s seats that may be required. Get them used to the new set-up before baby is born. It is so nice to bring baby home from the hospital in a clean vehicle and not have to climb over trash and junk when loading up for those early newborn pediatrician visits. If it is affordable for your family, have your car professionally detailed or just borrow a shop vacuum if available. The main objective for our family is the removal of trash and the random items from the house that magically migrate into our great, white 15 passenger van, Moby.
Once you have a breakdown of what needs to be done before baby’s arrival, set-up time in the upcoming days to tackle a room at a time until finished. I ordered the rooms on the worksheets in preference of our family’s priorities. Change the order to fit your family, then if you do not get to certain, less used, areas of your home you can shut the door without guilt.
As you are working through the various areas of you home, be thinking about what simple things would need to be done to maintain a functional space after this cleaning. I don’t mean “how can keep this space immaculate,” but “what are the minimal requirements for keeping this space livable during recovery.” Use another blank set of the same two worksheets above to list these thoughts.
Now that you have basic list of tasks for maintenance, divide those tasks up by one or two a day using the Weekly Housework Agenda worksheet. Use as many weeks needed until you rotated through all the tasks. Your health and proper healing is indispensable to the care of you family. Don’t over do it!!
Finally, transfer those same maintenance tasks to the House To-Dos worksheet and tack it to a prominent place on your refrigerator. Now, if your are blessed with help postpartum, you can easily delegate out things that need to be done with out racking your brain.