Part of your responsibilities as a stay-at-home dad usually includes housework.
Housework is unfortunately a necessary evil. It’s definitely not my favorite part of the day!

However, here are 6 top insider shortcuts for busy stay-at-home dads:

• Pre-sort your laundry. In my experience as a stay-at-home dad, I’ve found that the easiest way to do this is by having different baskets for lights and darks right next to each other. That way, when you’re ready to wash, you can save time by simply picking up the basket and dropping its contents into the washing machine. This is a lot faster than trying to sort clothes while at the same time keeping an eye on your kids.
• By pre-sorting, you also prevent color disasters, such as a red sock being washed with your whites. While you may have some stay-at-home dad laundry mishaps at the beginning, sorting baskets can help you a lot.
• Fabric softener also makes a great duster. One sheet of fabric
• softener is great for dusting things like your TV, computer screen, and sound system. Through using this out-of-the box thinking as a stay-at-home dad, you can dust less often.
• Keep all your cleaning supplies in one basket. As a stay-at-home dad, the one thing that you usually don’t have that much of is time. Instead of walking back and forth to keep returning for items that you forgot but need to clean a given room, keep all the items in a large basket and carry the basket around as you move from room to room.
• Clean up microwave messes easily. One of my stay-at-home bad habits is telling myself that “I’ll get back to the microwave mess later.” Or my excuse is that something happened that distracted me, and I forget about the splatter mess in the microwave. As a stay-at-home dad, I admit that the microwave can sometimes can get a bit dicey looking over the course of the week.
• However, a great trick that I’ve learned is to microwave a dishtowel that’s been sprayed lightly with lemon for about 40 seconds. The steam that comes off the dishtowel mixed in with the lemon will make cleaning up stuff like dried food on the walls of your microwave much easier.
• The space under beds is very useful. If you purchase those plastic flat storage containers that can slide under a bed, you can keep things like toys handy but also can put them away rather quickly. Stay-at-home dads are looking for the least amount of muss and fuss. Something like throwing toys into a plastic storage container and sliding it under the bed is an easy stay-at-home trick.
• Have a household chore list. It’s never too soon to assign your kids chores in your home (as long as they’re age-appropriate.) Keep a chart in a visible place in your home, where your kids can see what their chores are as well as if they completed it or not. Ideally, as the kids grow older, they can take on more chores. Each chore that the kids do means one fewer for you, the stay-at-home dad!

Each stay-at-home dad creates his own set of shortcuts for navigating the world of housework. Use the ones here to get rolling and teach your kids some valuable lessons on responsibility in the process!

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