I’m essentially a work-at-home-mom. I’m not ashamed of the title, and I find that I get judged a lot less for it than I did when I was a work-from-home-person. People have a tendency to assume you’re lazy or an anti-feminism Suzy Homemaker if you tell them you work for yourself when you don’t have any kids. I assume they do that because of social norms or something, but it doesn’t much matter to me, as I am the only one who can judge my own self-worth.
That totally unrelated point being said, time-management is a serious issue for me as a work-at-home mom. Throughout the day I need to find time to keep the house clean, the laundry done, the people and animals of the house cared for and fed, my own work done, as well caring for myself in whatever form that happens to take. This is hard. No, this is not another blog about a mom who can’t handle the responsibilities plenty of people swear that their mothers handled no problem and whines about it (though I can sympathize), or really anything like that. I’m not even going to go off on a rant that I almost just started about how more is expected of us as PEOPLE, not just as moms, than ever before. This is a post about one of the many things I do to manage my life and my household. Once a month I polish all of my wooden furniture.
Today is Friday. I have a cleaning schedule that I pretty much stick to. I believe in it, and it’s what works for me. I regularly read and visit other mom blogs such as A Bowl Full of Lemons and Clean Mama, and I adapt some of their ideas to fit my lifestyle when appropriate. My cleaning schedule is pretty much like theirs. On Fridays, I do a rotating set of monthly and semi-monthly chores. On the first Friday of the month, I polish my wooden furniture.
Why I Do this Monthly
I like the look of well polished, clean wooden furniture. It isn’t practical, or good for the wood, for me to do this on a daily basis, and I have too many things to keep together to do it weekly. I suppose I could do it less often, but I have pets and a toddler, so finger and paw prints start to show up pretty quickly. I do a quick swipe of the most used furniture before gatherings or visitors to keep things from getting too out of hand. Again, this is just what works for ME. I grew up in a household where the wood furniture was polished on a weekly basis. Great, good, that works for you. Do it whenever you can, if you can. Have your cleaning lady do it, fine. I do it the first Friday of every month.
The Process
I use Pledge lemon furniture cleaner for this. It’s what I grew up using, I don’t think it smells overly chemical-y, and I appreciate the results. Also, one can of it lasts a super long time when you’re only doing this monthly. I’ve been itching to try a homemade version, since many of my homemade cleaners have been superior to the store bought stuff in both performance and cost, but this last can I bought appears to be bottomless, so maybe I’ll give it a try when it’s gone. I also use a microfiber cleaning cloth 
(Zwipes are my favorite, because you can get a ton of them for very little and they work for almost everything).
I start at the top of the house and work my way down. This works best for me because my laundry room is in the basement, so once I’m done down there, I just throw the cloths in the laundry and go about my day. The whole process takes less than fifteen minutes. For each piece of wooden furniture, I take everything off of it, spray the top with a little Pledge, and wipe along the grain of the wood. Then I use the already damp cloth to wipe down the sides and front. I replace everything I took off of it and repeat for each piece of furniture in the house. There are things I don’t take everything off of, like Baby Girl’s crib. This I just wipe down with the damp cloth. Also the entertainment centers…too many cords. Sometimes I skip taking everything off of the bookshelves and DVD storage shelves, but if I do, I try not to skip it two months in a row or those things start to look grimy! Usually one cloth will get me through the entire task, but sometimes I need two.
I intend to try out some different furniture oils to reduce scratches and things on some of my nicer furniture in the future, but right now it seems silly since a lot of my furniture needs to be refinished anyhow. Do you have a favorite one?
Happy Polishing!
Happiness is Now 