feuervogel | (Reply)

Our carpet used to be Really Bad. Perhaps not as bad as 11 years with cats, but 12 years of twice-yearly vacuuming had left their marks. Getting (and using) a steam cleaner made a huge difference, not like new, but from "I feel gross every time I go from the front door to the kitchen" to "this carpet is warn but serviceable." Unfortunately, after another month or two it would be quite bad again in the high-traffic areas.

After Amber was born, we bought an iRobot Roomba and programmed it to run 3x/week. The regular vacuuming made a huge difference in keeping the carpet looking nice. Not only did it force us to pick up the floor 3x/week, which kept that from deteriorating, but the carpet stayed looking nice for 9-12 months at a time instead of 2.

Just saying, the regular vacuuming sounds like a good strategy. I have no good plan for the clutter because it eats our house too. It's just less important to me than other things, except when I'm looking for something I can't find. And every time I do de-clutter, I get annoyed that it becomes *harder* to find things, because I know my tape measure had been sitting right in that pile in the corner over there, and now I've gone and put it away, and I have no clue where it really is.

--Beth