@H – laundry (clothes and linens), picks things up, and cleans, mops, vacuums. The twice a week frequency means we almost never do laundry except when she’s gone or we have a disaster of some variety. Also, she knows us and knows our house and where things go so we don’t need to pick up before she comes. As I look at logs, a lot of people have entries for cleaning before their cleaning service comes. We don’t need to do that.

Laura-what does your housekeeper do when they come? Ours comes once every other week and I am trying to decide if we up it or not. I’m always looking for other things to outsource, but when I consider increasing the frequency, I think “oh, we don’t need it that much”.

@Ana – I guess I just don’t cook much! The kids eat a lot of easy stuff. Bagel bites, chicken nuggets, pasta. Then fruit and veggies for each meal, but simple stuff: microwaved frozen corn or peas. Baby carrots, bananas, strawberries. I buy a lot of semi-prepared foods for myself. Doing the dishes takes a lot less time than I think it does. Since the food is simple, so is the clean-up. I timed emptying the dishwasher and it takes like 5-7 minutes.

Thanks for elaborating– for better or for worse, my standards are pretty low, so I am always interested to see if I could be doing less somehow! More hired housecleaning isn’t in the cards for me at this point, but I definitely need to train my husband and my kids to do more.

@Alison – the kids turned me into an early riser too. Now even when I’m away from them I have trouble staying up late and sleeping in. I think I heard the phrase once that parents stop being able to sleep just as their kids start being able to. It’s not entirely true for me (I sleep fine) — but the hours have definitely shifted.

@Anjanette – thanks for your comment! I probably am on the low side, though as I’m looking at the Mosaic logs, I have a few 4.5, 5, and 6 hour weeks from people. It’s a few things: outsourcing (our housekeeper comes for 4 hours twice a week, and she is massively more efficient than I would be), sharing chores (husband does some of it), and having fairly relaxed standards. It does not bug me that the play room is messy right now, and there are puzzles on the living room floor, whereas I know that some people feel they can’t sleep in a messy house.

And yes, multi-tasking does make it hard to label time, but some people just put “kid time.” Or they put categories within it: kid time (physical care), kid time (school work), etc. Or it becomes a nudge to try to focus on one thing for 30 minutes (or even 15 minutes) at a time!

@Calee- no there is nothing fun about 4 a.m. Just so you know it’s not all peaches and light over here, my kids were up until 10 p.m. last night. That’s why they sleep until 7:30. If they went to bed at 8 like normal children, they’d probably be up at 5:30. Tonight it was 9 p.m., but still.