How do people find the time to go out all weekend every weekend?

DH's friends seem to go out all weekend, day and night, practically every weekend.

During the day, if they're not mountain climbing, hiking or camping, they're going to someone's house for a barbecue or doing something else.

In the evening, they're at the pub and then off to a club till 2 or 3 AM, or at a concert. (Most of these people are in their 40s).

When I get home from work in the evening, all I have time for is to cook supper and do the washing up.

On the weekend, I have to pay any bills and do the household budget, do grocery shopping, laundry, ironing and clean the house.

If I go out on Saturday and Sunday, the house doesn't get cleaned for 2 weeks.

If I stay out too late on Friday or Saturday night, I end up sleeping later than I want to on Saturday and Sunday morning and don't get enough of my chores done.

I don't even have children. If I did it would be at least 10x harder.

How do they do it?

During the day, if they're not mountain climbing, hiking or camping, they're going to someone's house for a barbecue or doing something else.

LOL! We're going hiking today and then to friends' for a barbecue tonight! 

But we're never out until 2am. That's way past my bedtime!

For me, it's not an issue because I don't work outside the house. I can get all my chores done during the week so that DH and I can just focus on fun on weekends.

However, the weather here is so unpredictable and, for all I know, the next three weeks might be dismal and rainy. So I tend to take advantage of the sunshine and let housework take a backseat in the summer. I'd rather be at the beach than hoovering. 

I try to plan out all my errands and things after work so that my weekends are pretty free. Have a friend that is always going somewhere on the weekends and the last few I have tagged along, tbh I feel so much more refreshed then my old weekends of sitting home most the afternoon. Sounds strange but have more energy in the week by getting out and getting less sleep on the weeknd

I think its about priorities and what is important to you.  Different people have different priorities in life and that's what makes us all unique and different.  

I am super busy- I work loads of hours, way more than my 37.5, I have rehearsals and practices during the week for various things and I'm out and about hiking, sightseeing and playing gigs on the weekends.  I suppose when I have kids I'll have to cut a bunch of that stuff out.  But my music is my priority at the moment.

I go to the post office, run errands during my lunch time.  I grocery shop at night after my rehearsals when the shops aren't busy. I buy other things online.

You know what gets put to the wayside? Cleaning my house, doing the washing up, laundry etc.  I'm not interested in keeping a clean house as it's not my priority and I hate doing it.   I don't have a garden anymore, so that's fine- no grass to keep cut, no veggies to weed, no flowers to de-slug.  This is why I am currently looking for a cleaner- its worth it to me to pay £20 a week for someone to do the things I hate.  

I sleep very little as well.  

What time do you get to beed at night? ("You" is everyone on this thread?) When do you have to wake up?

By the time I get home and have dinner cooked, it's almost 8 PM.

I don't have the energy to do much housework after dinner. I can't do laundry or Hoover in the evening because it's against my tenancy agreement (and I have a neighbour who is very sensititve to noise).

 And the only shop near me that is open after 5:30 is Marks and Spencers, which is super-expensive, doesn't have everything, only open till 7.

I live in the town centre, but work outside the town centre, so I can't do any shopping on my lunch. (I eat lunch at my desk, anyway.)

I don't care about cleaning that much, but I live in a rented house that gets inspected and I have to keep it up.

DH lived in our last flat for almost 10 years before he met me - first with his ex-wife and then with a succession of flatmates.  He is a clean person, but he has the attitude that if someone else makes a mess, it's not his responsibility, so he just left the stains and spills of his flatmates. There was dirt that was embedded so well that I physically didn't have the strength to clean it.  The oven was so filthy that the kitchen stank everytime you cooked something in it and the hobs were so dirty that only one out of the four were usable.  There were stains that were embedded in the counters that looked like they had been put in them when they were built.

DH and I were both miserable because of the condition of the flat.

I do not want the house I live in now, which was gorgeous when we moved in, to get into anything close to that state - both because we want to live in a nice home and because I'm afraid the letting agency will kick us out.  

The tenancy agreement has a whole list of rules about what and how often we are supposed to be cleaning, which includes, for example, washing the windows.

DH takes care of the garden, so I don't have to worry about that.

When I've been to the homes of some of these people I am talking about - they are always clean and tidy, probably cleaner than mine. I can understand if they went out all day and night and their houses looked like tips, but they don't.

I wish I could afford a cleaner, but I don't think I can.

How much cleaning can someone do for £20 a week, considering minimum wage is almot £6 an hour.

I think that those kinds of people fall into two categories...

people who are just do-ers and never sit down until late at night, putting everything way as they go so their houses are always tidy.

OR

people who have help.

Now my BFF Rosemary she is a dynamo...she has a high powered job, two kids, and a spotless house. And now, after 10 years of friendship, I figured out how she does it. I popped by her house to drop something off the other day and her Mother was doing her laundry, just after she had vacummed and dusted the whole house!

And this is why my house looks like its been hit by a bomb...also, I would rather bake a cake then clean, which is why we always have a cake on the go!!!

When I get home from work in the evening, all I have time for is to cook supper and do the washing up.

On the weekend, I have to pay any bills and do the household budget, do grocery shopping, laundry, ironing and clean the house.

If I go out on Saturday and Sunday, the house doesn't get cleaned for 2 weeks.

If I stay out too late on Friday or Saturday night, I end up sleeping later than I want to on Saturday and Sunday morning and don't get enough of my chores done.

I don't even have children. If I did it would be at least 10x harder.

How do they do it?

How sad Does your husband not help at all? Could you not look to be more organised so some of this stuff could be done quicker?

To be honest, I don't really understand how the things you've listed could take you all week and all weekend? Do you have a really big house?

Pay Bills - Could you use something like Excel or mint.com to help? Or consider switching to Direct Debits? I don't think I spend more than an hour a month paying bills. What do you need to do? Call them up and pay over the phone? Could you pay online or call during your lunch hour? Then you could log everything into a google doc to access from everywhere. My Water, Rent and Council tax are all Direct Debits, we get electricity and gas quarterly, but I just log in online to send the meter readings and that's it.

Grocery Shopping - I get my Groceries delivered from Ocado, I pay £10 a month for unlimited deliveries and get one £40 shop delivered a week. It's really simple and takes almost zero time with auto-shop

Laundry - We have three small laundry bins and laundry gets separated as we go, as soon as one is full it gets put in the washing machine and either tumble dried, or if the weather is lovely, hung outside. Again, as long as it doesn't build up it doesn't take much time, sometimes I put a wash/dry on before we go to bed so we have clean clothes in the morning. We probably do no more than two loads a week, easily doable on the weekend.

Cleaning the house - We got the house spotless and then clean as we go, so like if I cook dinner I'll clean as I cook and then my DB will do all the dishes and wipe the surfaces afterwards, sometimes we'll both be in there, he'll be cleaning behind the fridge or something whilst I cook. We Vacuum on weeknights and tidy when things get messy, we now tend to clean on Saturday morning before we go out, we're normally up pretty early  then spend a couple of hours on the house before going out at around 11am


I, like phatbeetle probably work 70+ hours a week, but always find time to be out all weekend, and often during the week as well. My Boyfriend and I actually had a discussion a couple months ago as I thought he was leaving way too much to be done on the weekend and not enough time for fun and it was getting me down, now we try and do as much as possible during the week so we can spend more of our weekends going out and having fun

Like this weekend, last night the boy and I went to dinner after work (around 7-9:30) then it was still light so we went to the park to go for a bike ride until it got pitch black (around 11) then we came home and watched TV for an hour, got up at 8:30 this morning. I've put a load of laundry on already (wash & dry heh heh), and I've done the coffee mugs from this morning, I also sprayed the shower done after I got out.

We're going out in about an hour to meet friends at Borough Market, then we're going to Rough Trade to hunt for Records, then we have a Birthday Party this evening until late, tomorrow I have 10 people coming over for a BBQ, then we'll go to the pub. There's plenty of time slots in there to get things done, but really there's not much to do as we've been doing little stuff all week  

During the week I don't get home until 7:30 at the earliest, my DB commutes London to Brighton so is home around 7, often I'll ask him to do some dinner prep work like chopping onions or pre-heating the oven or whatever, so when I get home I just breeze through dinner. We have dinner around 9pm, which still leaves 2 hours before we go to bed.

We go to be around 11-11:30, DB gets up around 6:30am I get up at 7:30am. So we're both out at least 12 hours a day during the week.

I don't have the energy to do much housework after dinner. I can't do laundry or Hoover in the evening because it's against my tenancy agreement (and I have a neighbour who is very sensititve to noise).

One thing I always do in the evening is washing clothes. That way they're done and ready to go out on the line first thing in the morning, which only takes a couple of minutes.

And I get a lot done early in the morning, too. I was up before 7am today, and DH is just about to wake up now (10am). In those three hours, I did a load of washing, ran the dishwasher, cleaned the bathroom and tidied up a bit.

x-posted with cheesebiscuit!  

I do try to get some laundry done in the evening, but I can only do one small load, if any, because I'm not allowed to have the washing machine on after 9PM.

Pay Bills - Could you use something like Excel or mint.com to help? Or consider switching to Direct Debits? I don't think I spend more than an hour a month paying bills. What do you need to do? Call them up and pay over the phone? Could you pay online or call during your lunch hour? Then you could log everything into a google doc to access from everywhere. My Water, Rent and Council tax are all Direct Debits, we get electricity and gas quarterly, but I just log in online to send the meter readings and that's it.

Paying bills doesn't take that much time. I do pay by direct debit. I meant checking that there is enough money in the accounts to pay all the bills. I do go over the household budget every week to make sure we have money in our accounts and move things around in different bank accounts when necessary to make sure we don't go overdrawn anywhere.

I also do the accounts for DH's business (which I work for in another capacity) on the weekend.

After DH comes home from work - we work in the same office - he usually continues to work on the computer at home till he goes to bed.  

Grocery Shopping - I get my Groceries delivered from Ocado, I pay £10 a month for unlimited deliveries and get one £40 shop delivered a week. It's really simple and takes almost zero time with auto-shop

I've tried grocery shopping online, with several different supermarkets, but it didn't work for me. They kept giving us things that were close to expiring, and we couldn't eat the food that fast. We'd end up throwing things away and I'd have to go shopping in the middle of the week because all the food that we got from the supermarket had gone bad. So I wasted money as well as time.  When I asked if I could get them to pick out food that had a later expiration date, I was told that wasn't how the pickers were trained to do their job.

I also find it frustrating to be trapped in the house waiting for a delivery when I could be doing something else.

As I said earlier, I can't do laundry or vaccum on weeknights because of the noise.

My house isn't that big - three bedrooms.

How do you do it all in such a short time? What about things like cleaning the toilet and tub, mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, cleaning the oven - which I try to do at least every two weeks, once a week if possible, because of my previous experience - dusting all the furniture (I am allergic to dust so I can't let dust build up), etc.

Even if we tidy up everywhere we go, dust and mould build up anyway.

I do exercise for 1/2 hour - 1 hour before work every morning, so that is a priority for me.

My MIL offered to clean the house for us when we moved here. That would not be a good idea.

My real gut feeling is that people who get alot done don't post on forums!!

(This is coming from someone who loves forums...)

How do you do it all in such a short time? What about things like cleaning the toilet and tub, mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, cleaning the oven - which I try to do at least every two weeks, once a week if possible, because of my previous experience - dusting all the furniture (I am allergic to dust so I can't let dust build up), etc.

I can clean the bathroom in 15-20 minutes. That's the sink, tub, toilet and floor. If I do a more thorough cleaning - scrubbing all the wall tiles, etc. - that would take a bit longer. But the regular weekly bathroom clean is 20 minutes max.

I agree that the MIL idea is a bad one!

My real gut feeling is that people who get alot done don't post on forums!!

(This is coming from someone who loves forums...)

LOL! 

My house isn't spotless, but it's pretty clean.  I don't do much cleaning but about 2 hours a week.  You may be able to find a cleaner to work about that and just keep it clean the rest of the time.  I probably spend 10 minutes a day (if that) cleaning the rest of the time outside of washing up and laundry.  We have mostly tile floors, but we do have a cat and a brown carpeted bedroom.  I only hoover about once every 5 days or so.

I know my husband's relative who was a cleaning lady's rates depended on who she was working for. She charged more for people who had more money or had difficult cleaning jobs.  I don't know exactly how she assessed it.  Maybe she came in and spoke to the person to get an idea on where she would start to with her rate bargaining. It would also depend on your area.

I am planning on going back to school or doing an apprenticeship, and Mr A and I have already had a discussion on him taking on more. He's willing, but doesn't like the idea. Ultimately, it's a home part of having a home is sometimes taking care of things that weren't caused by you.  If you tell your husband that he can always come to you if he feels he's being unfairly piled upon, then it might help keep resentment down.

What does he do during the day?  Is he working the same amount of hours as you?  Have you looked into grocery delivery?  It's not that expensive.

SweetPeach I'm sorry for the situation you're in. From your posts in the Drinking thread, it seems like you may not be having a great time when you actually DO get to go out??


I can understand where you're coming from on a couple of fronts.

My boyfriend, when we started dating, was a stock broker. He HATED it. The people he worked with (predominantly men), I don't think they enjoyed it, but they enjoyed the money. Whenever I'd meet them, they'd always tell me how lucky I was to have a job I loved (freelance filmmaker), and were always envious of what I did. Those guys went out ALL THE TIME. Every night of the week, men in their 30's and 40's, staying out til all hours and going to clubs (no hiking though, I think they used weekends as recovery time!).

Flash forward three years, and now my boyfriend works for a charity that focuses on responsible and ethical investing. He makes a stupid amount LESS than he used, but is happy as a clam. He does not see any of those friends anymore. WE go out, and we go to concerts and we go hiking, and drinking with friends. But for him, its no longer a priority to be out all the time. The fact that he's happy with what he does, it leaves no reason for him to stay out all night. Same with the people he works with. They of course go out, sometimes, but nothing like the city workers who seemed unhappy with their lives (including my bf).


As a freelance filmmaker, I'm either at home a LOT, or not at all. I'll spend two weeks at home, then two weeks on somewhere working 14 hour days (which is how I like it). While at home, I'm completely happy to keep up on the chores and do all of the cleaning. It never takes me very long though, as our flat is tiny.

While I am working, my boyfriend takes on the job of chores. He can't get to as many as I do when I'm at home, but he keeps up with it. Often, once or twice a month we'll spend a Saturday having a massive cleanup together, making everything perfect. It does not consume our lives.

For dinner, we have a system. I've only just finished my MA, and Mr. is still working on his, so we're broke. We're also busy a lot. Everything we make lasts for two days. We make a lot of one pot dishes that last two days. We also take turns making dinner, and for some dinners, cook together. We then wash up together and watch TV until its time for bed.

I am wondering, in your situation, how two people generate so many chores to do throughout the week? You say if you go out for the weekend, the house doesn't get cleaned for two days, but how does it get messy over two days? I make more of a mess if I'm at home for two days!

Also, there's this site called Flylady:

http://www.flylady.net/  Beginner Babysteps is probably where you want to head, but the whole site has good information. There's a starting portal with every thing for beginners:

http://www.flylady.net/pages/get_started_1.asp

Some of it is a bit offensive (like her attitude towards husbands  ), but her ideas about slowly developing systems is a good one.  If you do her stuff for a month or so, you can develop your own systems.  I needed to learn skills like these because I was not taught them growing up.  I also, if I feel I am having problems keeping something clean, I look to Kim and Aggie or the internet for advice.  Chances are, there's an easier, more effective way.

I have literally not taken 10-15 minutes to clean my bathroom unless I am doing a deep clean (a couple times a year) for years.  I take about 30 seconds a day to clean it (wipe down sinks, toilet and surrounding area, squirt non-bleach cleaner in toilet, brush it, leave it, wipe the mirrors with a micro-fibre cloth I keep in there) and maybe 5 minutes (not counting sweeping and mopping which I consider one task for the entire flat) once a week as a part of the 2 hour clean.  We also wipe down the shower/tub after use, and this helps.  Not saying I am doing things better, just I like having a clean house but I don't want to take forever doing it.

EDIT: I wouldn't recommend signing up for the emails to your main email account or to one that comes to your phone in push mail.  She sends many emails.  You don't need to sign up for them at all, as it's all on the site, but some people find it helpful.