Here at The (real) Stepford Wives Club we don't spend every moment cleaning, but we sure do spend a good chunk of our week tending to our homes, gardens, planning and preparing healthy meals.
Here's what we know -- a happy home is a clean home. Cleaning our homes isn't a chore but a privilege and opportunity to show our families how much we care. A tidy home is a direct reflection on our husbands. There is nothing more humiliating than a good friend dropping by for coffee and seeing the house in shambles. When we have a guest enter our homes we don't continue folding our husbands boxer briefs, or prattle on while they help themselves to coffee as we shout above the vacuum cleaner. When a guest enters our home, we are always prepared.
It takes but a minute to set out the tea or coffee pot, arrange a few home-made cookies or whip up some tea sandwiches. Make your guests feel at home and they interrupted nothing -- is what we say. We even will drop in each other from time to time so we keep these skills at the ready.
Deli luncheon meats can placed on white or wheat home-made bread with dab of soften butter with lemon. Or a touch of Dijon mustard. Trim the crusts and slice into whatever shape you fancy, while you wait for the kettle to boil. Slice some fruit, maybe some carrot sticks with a festive dip (keep dip on hand for such occasions).
It might be old fashioned, but even peanut butter or cream cheese, on celery is a welcome treat, especially if served with whatever homemade goodies you have. All these can whipped up in jiffy.
We do have cleaning schedules, which we abide by. Tuesday's and Fridays traditionally are just for cleaning/ laundry and ironing. Monday's Wednesday's and Thursday's are for errands, appointments and shopping/meal preparations. This leaves our weekends completely free to spend time with our families and serve our husbands.
Shred shred shred!
Our homes are free of annoying clutter, because we go through the house daily with a garbage bag and throw it out! We don't hide it in the closet. When our husbands pay the bills we keep them until the next bill arrives, he checks it for errors and then we shred the previous months bill. While tax related items should be kept in an organized file, there's no need to keep the gas bill for years on end, Even bank statements are paperless nowadays, so you don't need to hang on to a mountain of paper work.
For items and documents that should be saved, a box will do the trick and stored with the years. When you keep your paper down to a minumin you will be amazed how many years it would take to fill a bankers box! We find Club Memebrs can easily hold 10 years of tax returns in one box, complete with receipts. When we put one into the box, at one end, we pull one from the opposite end and shred it, we divide by year for easy locating. It eliminates many headaches.
