Sneaky Household Habits

"The best time to plan my next book is while I'm doing the dishes."

                                                                                                    Agatha Christie


When I was young, the best compliment my mother could get in life was that her floors were so clean you could eat off them. Cleanliness was literally considered next to Godliness so I think most women of my mother's generation took their housework seriously. They even had their chores mapped out and aligned to which day of the week each had to be done.  And as my grandmother would say, it grieved them if they couldn't get it done then for whatever reason.  
I don't hold quite the same view about it all.  In fact, I always try to do my housework in a sly, sneaky way.  I don't really want to spend much time at it because I hold the view that I have better things to do with my time.  That may or may not be true, especially these days.
During my long weekly phone calls home, I usually dust the whole house.  Once I tried mopping the floor but it winded me too much and my mother thought something was wrong with me.  While I wait for coffee to brew or a kettle to boil, I ajax the kitchen sink or tidy the spice bottles.  If I am dressed and ready to leave (there's my punctuality thing kicking in) and hubby is not, I will give the kitchen backsplash an extra spritz and wipe or sweep the garage mat or tidy the recyclables.  I will only reorganize my cupboards if there is a good program on the radio that I can listen to while I go about it.
The really (and only) great thing about the lengthy commercial breaks on t.v. these days is how much can be accomplished during that time.  I can do my repetitions with my weights, goldfish can be fed, bookshelf tidied, windows shined, mats shaken out the front door, a load of laundry folded, or the linen closet sorted.  Then maybe the show is back on.
There are the occasional times when I will get a momentum going and do a complete clean through the whole house room by room; however this is more to do with company coming than strictly for cleanliness reasons these days.
On Pinterest I've read those lists telling you how to organize household chores efficiently; I was especially interested in the ones that showed how to keep your house clean in just 15 minutes a day.  I realized I was more or less already doing it just like they suggested.
And by the way, I certainly don't think doing housework is beneath me or any such thing.  In fact, hubby had a regular cleaning lady when I first moved in and it was my decision to let her go.  I figure as long as I am able to keep the house clean, I should do it.  It is yet another way to keep the body moving, albeit sneakily.