The Cost of Clean

For stay-at-home parents, it is always a challenge to explain to the working-out-of-the-home spouses what gets done during the day.

For myself, I try to use a checklist.  This way, Tammi can easily see what has (and has not) been done while she’s been fixing dog stomachs and killing cats (that’s what I imagine she does).  It’s not really a honey-do-list. In fact, it’s almost the opposite of that because I write the list as the chore is completed. 

As I was vacuuming the floor today, something I do at least three times a week, I started to wonder how much time I will spend vacuuming this year?  As an even scarier thought, how much time will I spend vacuuming this same space during the next ten years?

I reviewed my top four chores, all to-dos that must get done either daily or more than once a week:

• Flooring — vacuuming and washing carpets and steaming the laminate flooring)
• Laundry — both actual work time and time it takes to get one load washed, dried and folded
•  Dishes — never ending
• And picking up toys — seriously, stop buying the kids toys

 I’m not going to break down the entire calculation, but it is not rocket science.  And I’m certain I have made some errors.  Instead, I’ll just tell you how much time I spend on each of the chores on any given week and then give you the final numbers.

• Flooring — 30 minutes three times a week vacuuming and about an hour a week steaming all the laminate flooring (we have three very hairy dogs)
• Dishes — 30 minutes a day every damn day
• Laundry — roughly 105 minutes of washing and drying time, plus about 45 minutes of loading, transferring, folding and putting away since the family goes through an average of eight loads a week
• Toys — about 20 minutes three times a week

So, in time, what is the cost per year of a clean house?

Chore	Hours per Year	Days per Year
Flooring	182	7.5
Dishes	182.5	7.5
Laundry work time	208	8.66
Laundry actual time	728	86.66
Toys	31.2	1.3
Grand Total	1,331.7

Or to put it another way, if I start cleaning Jan. 1^st just after kissing my wife Happy New Year then I could work continuously — without breaks for sleeping, eating or beer drinking — until Feb. 25^th at 7 p.m., just after the boys go to bed.  Ahh, I’d have to work through my birthday.

Over the next ten years, while living in this house, I will spend 554.26 days cleaning. And that’s just the top four chores — it doesn't include pool maintenance, lawn care, house repair, dusting, windows, grocery shopping, other errands, etc.