There’s something about the darker afternoons that makes me want to light every candle in the house and stay in. And there’s something about home educating through the winter that makes me realise just how lived in our house really is.
When the children went to school, the house had a few quiet hours to recover each day. Everyone left, the dust settled, literally, and by pick-up time it felt like home again. Now our home is the classroom, the art studio, the science lab and the canteen. All day, every day.
I love it. I wouldn’t change it. But I won’t pretend it’s tidy.
A house that never gets a break
Our kitchen table does about six jobs before lunch. One minute it’s covered in maps, the next it’s a baking-as-maths experiment, then it’s an art project involving more glitter than anyone asked for. Add two very fluffy cats who shed on every surface, and you get the picture.
What I hadn’t expected was how much the mess would affect the learning itself. A cluttered table doesn’t invite anyone to sit down and be curious. A clear one does. The days that start in a calm, clean space are almost always our best days.
Rhythm, not perfection
In home education we talk a lot about rhythms rather than strict timetables, and I’ve slowly started thinking about the house in the same way.
For a while, cleaning was eating into everything. Friday afternoons that were meant for a museum trip or a walk by the bay turned into scrubbing the bathroom. I started to resent it, and honestly, so did the children.
So now we split it. The everyday stuff is part of our rhythm, and the bigger jobs are where I’m happy to get help.
What works for us
A few small things have made a real difference:
- A ten-minute reset at the end of the learning day. Everyone puts things back. It’s become as normal as packing away a school bag.
- Life skills count. Wiping tables, sorting laundry and feeding the cats are all part of learning. The children are surprisingly good at it when it’s not framed as a punishment.
- One clear surface, always. Whatever else is going on, the kitchen table gets cleared before the next activity starts.
- Outsource the big jobs. The oven, the grout, steam cleaning a sofa covered in cat hair. These are the jobs that eat a whole weekend, and they’re exactly the ones worth handing over.
When a proper deep clean makes sense
Having done up an old house from scratch and moved cities since, I know the moments when a top-to-bottom clean really earns its keep.
Moving into a new place is the big one. You want to start fresh, not live with someone else’s limescale. After any kind of building work is another. Anyone who has renovated knows that dust finds its way into places you didn’t know existed. And then there’s simply the change of season, when the house needs a reset before everyone hunkers down for winter.
For anyone in Dublin
We’re in Cardiff, but I know plenty of you reading are in Ireland, so this bit is for you. If you’re looking for help with house cleaning in Dublin, Granny’s Cleaning are well worth a look.
They cover exactly the moments I mentioned: move-in and end of tenancy cleans, after-builders cleans, one-off deep cleans, and regular weekly or fortnightly visits. A few things stood out to me as a parent and a pet owner:
- Their products are safe around children and pets.
- They can bring a steam cleaner for sofas and upholstery, which is a lifesaver with cats.
- Their cleaners are Garda vetted and insured.
- They work 24/7, every day, so they fit around whatever your days look like.
- You pay once the clean is finished and you’ve checked it over.
- If anything isn’t right, they come back and put it right for free.
They’ve got over 400 reviews, and at the time of writing a one-off deep clean is €31 an hour with products included, with regular cleans cheaper per hour.
A calm space to learn and live
Our home will never look like a show home, and I’m at peace with that. It’s a place where real life and real learning happen, glitter and all.
But a calm, clean space makes room for the good stuff: the curious questions, the long afternoons reading together, the projects that spread across the table for days. If you’re in Dublin and you need a little help getting there, Granny’s Cleaning is a lovely place to start.
This is a collaborative post with Granny’s Cleaning.
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