My mother always used to tell me to Divide and Conquer when it came to cleaning my room. I didn’t like cleaning my room as a kid and I am not that great of a housekeeper as an adult.

This weekend the housecleaning became monumental and something had to be done. At first we worked on the Divide and Conquer theory. We sat down as a family and portioned off the house into sections and each person was in charge of a ZONE. The littlest kids were in charge of the playroom which of course ended up messier than when they started but at least they were busy while the rest of us attacked our respective zones. This worked pretty well - we got the dining room, living room and kitchen cleaned up.

It is now Monday morning and while the general living space of the house is tidy there are still dust bunnies lurking and the bedrooms and bathroom needs to be reclaimed. So, this morning my tactic is to tackle one small thing in each room as I enter and leave that room. Hopefully, in a couple of days the scale of the project will be small enough that I can go back into divide and conquer mode. Divide and Conquer works great when you have a retreat to go to while you are dividing and conquering - If I help one kid clean their room and we get it sqeaky clean but then the bathroom is still dirty and the other rooms in the house are a mess I get discouraged quickly.

And the laundry….well forget it - somedays I am reminded of the old Star Trek episode about the Tribles.