How to Keep Your Bathroom Beautiful When You’re a Working Mom
Many working mothers have a dream. This dream is to be able to wake up in the morning, go downstairs to a beautiful kitchen wearing a comfortable robe, feed the kids a hearty breakfast, wave them off happily to school, and go leisurely off to work. When you return in the afternoon, the house is spotless and clean, and you can simply sit down and spend time with your happy, docile, perfectly behaved children. Sounds like the perfect advertisement for a breakfast cereal, doesn’t it? Yet for most working women, the reality is, shall we say, rather different.
Most of us come home to breakfast dishes piled in the sink (if we’re lucky) and a disgusting, foul-smelling bathroom, with towels still left on the floor after the morning’s hasty showers. No one bothered to pick them up because everyone was in a hurry to leave, and you also had no time to clean up before you rushed off to work.
So what is the secret of a clean bathroom when you are living on a tight schedule, leaving early, coming home late, helping your kids with their homework, making supper, doing the bedtime rush, and then hardly any time left for anything?
Here are some tips that might help:
- As soon as you get up in the morning, clean the toilet. It only takes a few minutes. Similarly, make it a personal household rule to clean the toilet just before you go to bed at night.
- Teach good bathroom habits to your children. Whoever takes a bath or shower should always be responsible for taking their dirty laundry to the hamper and hanging up towels afterwards.
- Once a week, check the bath for any hairs that might clog the drain. It is also useful to put a little drainer on top of the plughole to catch any stray dirt that could accumulate in the pipes.
- Wash your shower curtains regularly – and if they start to stink of mold, replace them immediately. A new shower curtain can change the mood of a bathroom very easily.
- Paint the walls and ceiling of your bathroom with a good waterproof paint. This prevents mold and peeling paint, and you hopefully won’t have to repaint for a very long time.
- Get a good area rug for your bathroom. A little oval rug or a rug made from polypropylene or acrylic is especially useful. You may also put down a bamboo rug if you want a more natural look.
- Keep the bathroom well ventilated to keep out damp or moldy smells. If you can’t keep a window open or a fan on for most of the day, leave the door open while everyone is out just to let some air in.
- Use toilet fresheners inside the toilet bowl. They really are worth the slightly extra expense and keep away bad toilet smells.
Following these rules does not mean that you will have a perfect bathroom. But it will certainly make it a more pleasant place to come home to.
Raisin Waldorf Salad
1/2 cup Sun-Maid Natural California Raisins
4 ounces diced lean ham
2 apples, diced
1/3 cup sliced celery
1/4 cup fat-free mayonnaise or plain yogurt
2 tablespoons chopped toasted walnuts, optional
4 small (6-inch) flour tortillas, optional
Instructions: Combine salad ingredients. Serve as a salad or make into sandwich rollups. For rollups, divide filling equally among tortillas and roll up, folding in the ends. Wrap in plastic wrap or aluminum foil until ready to eat.
Serves: 4
Nutrition Information per Serving: calories:188, total fat:5.7g, saturated fat:2.0g, % of calories from fat:27%, % of calories from saturated fat:10%, protein:9g, carbohydrates:28g, cholesterol:28mg, dietary fiber:3g, sodium:148mg
Recipe is courtesy of the Produce for Better Health Foundation. All PBH endorsed recipes meet the nutrition standards that maintain fruits and vegetables as a healthy food.
Secrets Of A Working Mom In The Kitchen
One of the biggest nightmares of being a working mom is keeping your kitchen clean and tidy and the way it should be. In fact, a lot depends on what goes on in your home. If, for example, you are a mother who works out of the home, the main advantage is that while the whole family is out, no one is going to make the kitchen into a worse mess. If you work from home, believe it or not, you are actually in a worse position because you will probably still go in there at some point to make a cup of coffee or take a mid-morning snack. And because you know the kids will be home soon and you won’t be able to work after that, you tend to leave clutter and mess lying around till later.
On the other hand, if you are home anyway, as soon as your work quota has finished, you can just walk straight into the kitchen and start putting things away. But if you are coming home from working in the office, chances are that you will need time to unwind before you tackle the messy kitchen that has sat there since the morning. And when you do, you are too tired to do more than a superficial job.
So what home decorating and tidying tips will help you with keeping your kitchen neat and tidy in such conditions?
- The fundamental rule of a clean kitchen is to Clean As You Go. So when you have that morning coffee, wash up your cup straight away. If you don’t have time to wash up all the breakfast bowls and plates left by your little ones because you don’t want to miss the bus, then at least pile them in the sink before you go and put the milk and cereal away.
- Teach your children to tidy up after themselves. Every child has to learn to put their plate in the sink before they leave the house.
- Don’t forget the night time tidy-up rule. No matter how busy or tired you are, every dirty dish needs to be washed up before you go to bed and the floor must be swept. You would be surprised how much mess these two simple jobs save.
- If you are fortunate enough to be able to redesign your kitchen, remember that there is no such thing as too many cupboards. If every single thing that you own has a proper home, it is much easier to put it away.
- Coordinate your colors. For a neat look in the kitchen, buy area rugs that match your curtains and dish towels. A cute blue rug on the floor that goes with the curtains and dish towels adds a feeling of neatness and uniformity.
- Be ruthless. Do you really need those old, clouded glasses that won’t scrub clean anymore simply because they belonged to Auntie Vera? And are you trying to open a science laboratory with those old jars that are way past their expiry dates? Go through your cupboards every few weeks and throw out anything that is past its expiry date. You’ll be surprised how much room you’ll suddenly find you have.
These few basic rules will make your life much easier and help you look after your kitchen even when you are on the run.
