5 Homemaking Opinions No One Asked For

I wish I was thinking about Jane Austen, but this is what really occupies my mind.

1. It should be possible to tidy a messy room in 5 minutes if an adult tidies, 10 minutes if a child tidies. Purge accordingly.

2. For the above reason, children’s bedrooms should have almost no toys in them.¹ Telling a child to clean a room that houses bins and bins of toys is setting them up to fail. One bin of toys plus three stuffed animals. My kids and I don’t fight about them cleaning their room because they can actually clean it.

3. Dryers eat your clothes and gorge your electricity bill. We saved $55 last month by only running the dryer once a week instead of four times a week. We use drying racks for nearly everything and save the dryer for towels and emergencies.

4. Dishwashers are the dryers of the kitchen. They scratch your glasses, dull your knives, and fail to clean anything that you didn’t pre-rinse.

5. The only thing worse than a dishwasher is a glass cooktop. “Easy to clean,” my foot. Sure, if two cleaners, a scrubby, a rag, and a razor blade is your idea of “easy to clean.”

   

Bonus opinion from Almanzo’s father in Farmer Boy:

“Haste makes waste, but a lazy man'd rather get his work done fast than do it himself...all it saves is time, son. And what good is time, with nothing to do? You want to sit and twiddle your thumbs, all these stormy winter days?”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy

1. My kids have a full toy closet, a dollhouse, and two cupboards full of toys downstairs, so don’t worry that they’re missing out on childhood.