Poll: Couples who ride: Is your house spic 'n span?

[TruF]

Hubby and I had to take the day off from riding so my sister could drive up from SF and pick up a piece of furniture in the late morning. I couldn't believe how much cleaner our house is after having those extra hours to straighten up a bit.

So I'm wondering how you working and bike-riding couples do it. How do you find time to work, ride, AND keep up with all the housework? Or do you?

[leinad]

We do what we can when we can, plus we have two teenagers to add to the mess so it's not the cleanest it can be. But you know the day will come when age will keep me closer to home then I'll care.

[maddmaxx]

The bikes are clean................:)

[Rober]

Ours is pretty clean all the time and we do it ourselves. I can see how it could get out of hand, though. For both of us it is just too tempting to go riding on a beautiful (or not so beautiful) day instead of devoting time to the fascinating business of housework. Today (a beautiful, sunny, 70 degrees) I spent the day painting the kitchen, a job I postponed for months, just so I can ride guilt-free next month. What gets neglected are the cars, but I don't really care about them until one breaks down...

[cyclinfool]

My wife does not ride, I do enough for the both of us. The house is one step up from a disaster. Most of the major work is kept up with but the general house keeping takes a back seat to life.

[Suzie Green]

Ours is pretty clean, though it's just the two of us as the kids are grown and living on their own now. It's mostly a time and organization thing. Clean the house on rainy days, concentrate on just one room at a time. It's harder when there are bigger jobs to do, like painting the outside. Last time it took us all summer!

[DnvrFox]

My wife and I both have MULTIPLE projects going on besides bicycling.

I have my men's singing group (they meet here) and all the music, sound systems, pitch pipes, etc., that goes with that. I have my national and local advocacy groups. Then there are the musical performances. And a bunch of other stuff.

Nora has her ladies singing group, which also meets here. She has reams of music, is always marketing her group. She likes things to be out in the open and visible so she knows where everything is. So, she has a big cloth bag for each project she is into.

Still, we manage to keep things picked up - at least to our needs.

Sometimes she will go to a function at someone else's house and come home all gloomy about the other house being neat as a pin.

I say, "Of course, they had 30 people over - they picked everythng up." Then I tell her that most folks don't have 10 projects all going on at once, either.

I'd rather have the projects than the sterile look that some of these houses have!

[Rick@OCRR]

My wife and I both ride, plus she is a teacher, so lots of books and papers about. So yeah, our house is pretty much a disaster most of the time, but it doesn't bother us (much) unless we have guests coming over, i.e. always the best reason to clean the place up!

Rick / OCRR

[TruF]

My wife and I both ride, plus she is a teacher, so lots of books and papers about. So yeah, our house is pretty much a disaster most of the time, but it doesn't bother us (much) unless we have guests coming over, i.e. always the best reason to clean the place up!

Rick / OCRR

I understand that one! Sometimes I invite people over to incent me to do a thorough cleaning. :innocent:

[mandovoodoo]

I would say sort of untidy much of the time. Rather casual. Meets minimum acceptable standards. It's a bit run down anyway, especially after the flood. Really need to gut the old part and start over.

Today wasn't atypical. Nice breakfast made by Gianna, I cooked up some chicken soup from stock I made yesterday. A short ride, her hands aren't up to long ones yet, then a brief skinny dip in the lake. I did yardwork, everyone else goofed off. When things got too hot, I played with my sailboard trying to balance it a bit, but too many waves from the power boats. Then we lounged on the porch for a while. Boy child spent most of the day nude. Girl child in her pajamas. Gianna in a light wrap or nude in the hammock. I read and lounged nude on the porch. Nobody in the boats coming by seems to notice. After a while we cooked some steaks on the grill, some pasta with mushrooms, and some brocolli. Then bulk skinny dipping and dock lounging until it got dark. Now we're doing dishes again. So the dishes have gotten done and a bit of yardwork. That's good enough!

[TruF]

I would say sort of untidy much of the time. Rather casual. Meets minimum acceptable standards. It's a bit run down anyway, especially after the flood. Really need to gut the old part and start over.

Today wasn't atypical. Nice breakfast made by Gianna, I cooked up some chicken soup from stock I made yesterday. A short ride, her hands aren't up to long ones yet, then a brief skinny dip in the lake. I did yardwork, everyone else goofed off. When things got too hot, I played with my sailboard trying to balance it a bit, but too many waves from the power boats. Then we lounged on the porch for a while. Boy child spent most of the day nude. Girl child in her pajamas. Gianna in a light wrap or nude in the hammock. I read and lounged nude on the porch. Nobody in the boats coming by seems to notice. After a while we cooked some steaks on the grill, some pasta with mushrooms, and some brocolli. Then bulk skinny dipping and dock lounging until it got dark. Now we're doing dishes again. So the dishes have gotten done and a bit of yardwork. That's good enough!

Your post inspired me to do a Google search for an appropriate image to go with it. Found this one, which made me laugh. (Not implying anything by the orangutan.)

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a101/petealtra/d1243e26.jpg

[CACycling]

Our place is usually presentable (my wife might disagree with that on occasion). She hasn't been employed since we had kids but helped a lot at the kids schools when they were younger and now she is spending 5 - 6 hours a day helping out her aging mother so stay at home mom never really described her. She has been a La Leche League Leader for years so she gives monthly classes and helps breastfeeding moms with problems. Even with all of that, she does a great job keeping up with the housework during the week. I do most of the cooking on weekends so she doesn't have to deal with that and we've got 2 teenaged sons who actually do a lot to help around the house (although their bedroom doors are best left closed). Living in a condo limits yardwork to blowing off the patio. I will say the place looks much nicer when we are preparing to host a dinner party for 20 or 30 friends.

[SSP]

My GF is a national caliber runner, and I'm a dedicated cyclist, and we're both getting into tri's.

We call our house - T3. :roflmao2:

It's messy sometimes, but we try to tidy it up at least once a month.

[zonatandem]

If you don't throw stuff around to begin with you don't have a mess to clean up.
Big compliment when grandkids were over visiting years ago. Grandchild dropped food on kitchen floor and is ready to throw it in the garbage. Daughter-in-law says: "You can eat it, this is grandma's floor!"
Besides being a hell of a great stoker/wife she is a great housekeeper too.

[conurejade]

The bikes are clean................:)

+1

I'm not 'a couple' so I'm not sure if my vote counts, but....

My living space is so so - cluttered but not filthy. My car gets washed maybe once a year. My birds and my bikes are clean. Can you tell where my priorities are? :p

[Red Rider]

Bwahahahaha! House is clean, hee-hee-hee! :roflmao2:

I wish.

The downstairs is darned near immaculate because cgallagh vacuums and mops the floors. I do the bathrooms on a regular basis because I can't bear a dirty bathroom. Upstairs is a different story, however.

We had a housekeeper for about 3 years; she came every other week and I was forced to tidy up before she came so she could clean efficiently. I let her go last year, when the market began to tank. I just don't have the funds.

So we tolerate some dust and disorganization (I have a basket of clothes to iron and one to fold) because we'd rather ride.

We fit in cleaning when we can. I never thought it would come to this, but hey, one must have priorities.

[Spokes man]

. . . I read and lounged nude on the porch. Nobody in the boats coming by seems to notice. After a while we cooked some steaks on the grill . . .

Here's hoping you didn't stand TOO close to the grill . . . that spatter from steaks could be deadly! :D

At our place, at times I am tempted to fire up the gas-powered leaf blower, bring it inside and just blow the joint out. So far I haven't yielded to temptation . . . yet.

[HopedaleHills]

With just the two of us, our place stays pretty clean and tidy. We have fallen into a routine where we use early Sat morning to clean and do errands, which leaves the rest of the weekend to ride. Unless of course there is a bike event early Sat morning, then the cleaning waits a week.

[John E]

Our house is typically cluttered and just clean enough to keep the health department from shutting us down. I am making an effort to clear things out, but frugal do-it-yourselfers with multiple hobbies and interests tend to accumulate a lot of stuff over the years, and we have lived in the same house for 27 years. Son #1 moved out about 3 years ago, but we are still storing some of his possessions, school papers, etc. (His apartment is immaculate. :) )

[Beverly]

+1

I'm not 'a couple' so I'm not sure if my vote counts, but....

My living space is so so - cluttered but not filthy. My car gets washed maybe once a year. My birds and my bikes are clean. Can you tell where my priorities are? :p

I'm not a 'couple' either and I think we have a tougher time as we're the only ones to do things around the house....cleaning, maintenance, yard work, etc.

My mother always described my house as clean but "lived in":) I imagine that's a good description for many of us. The overall condition is clean but you'll find piles of papers on the computer that need to be filed, clothes stacked on the dryer waiting for someone to put them away, dishes in the sink drainer that need to be put away or other similar things around the house. The only things that gets cleaned every week are the bathrooms and kitchen floor. Clutter drives me crazy so I don't let it pile up too much.

I've become a lot more relaxed about housekeeping as I've grown older. Maybe it's because there aren't as many people in the house to mess it up now:D

[SaiKaiTai]

Another one in the "clean for visitors" camp.
I'd like to keep things a bit tidier than Mr S but I've kind of given up the fight.
It's more fun to ride than to clean.

[swan652]

I'm not a couple either, but I'll throw my two cents in. There's woman clean and then there's man clean. My house is man clean and it's quite satisfactory to me.

[Litespeed]

Well let's put it this way, my husband and I spend more time on the bikes and other fun things then we do on the house. There is a lot of room for improvement as far as housekeeping goes, when you really start looking around, but at least we pretty much pick up after ourselves. All the bikes live IN the house and when they need cleaning or just fiddling with (which is just about every night), my husband will take them in the garage and I don't see him for hours. Yes, the outside yard could use some work, but we are just to busy (now that we are retired) to not do what we want to do. We never have company and we don't have kids so no one wants to really see us. Life is to short to worry about a little stain or dust. As long as the health department doesn't come here, I'm good with it.

[Litespeed]

Oh -- another thing. People who are organized are just to lazy to look for things.