I wanted to do a separate post on this particular blitz (read about my other blitz ideas here) because it has a lot of other points to consider than just the actual blitz, including how ready you want or need to be for Dad’s arrival home, what types of activities you and your husband want/need for Dad to do in the evenings, and the idea of “getting it all done.”

If you have been a parent for long, you’re probably already learned that you never truly “get it all done.” If you haven’t learned that yet, I hope you will learn that soon. It is extremely frustrating to go through your parenting years thinking that you can get it all done. Since nobody really can.

One of the blitzes that we used as our kids were growing up in order to be a little bit more ready for when Dad got home was that of the “Dad’s in the driveway” blitz. At the time we started this blitz, we lived down a long way – probably about an eighth of a mile long. Ray worked long hours – always eleven to thirteen hours a day at that time. While I never truly got it all done, I tried to stress to the children the importance of having things picked up when Dad got home. Ray was the kind of husband and father who never minded if it wasn’t all done – and he always rolled up his sleeves and got started helping us as soon as he walked in the door. However, I wanted to free up as much of his time in the evenings as I could since it was so short.

Thus, we developed the “dad’s in the driveway” blitz. That one eighth of a mile long driveway trip became another way that my children learned how quickly they could get things done. While we didn’t set the timer for the blitz, it was a blitz nonetheless. Someone would shout out, “Dad is in the driveway!” And everybody would jump into action. In the three to five minutes it took him to drive down the lane, get out of the car, gather his things, and come in the door, the four, five, or six of us could have a lot picked up. And we were ready for our evening with dad.

Maybe your children are too young for this kind of blitz. Maybe you need for your husband to come in, roll up his sleeves, and help get things in order. If that is the case, no guilt here. You need to do what you need to do. For our family, since we usually only had from seven to nine or so together in the evenings, this blitz helped shape our evenings and gave us more time for a nice family dinner, family worship, and family playtime.

Of course, another spin on this blitz is the “company’s in the driveway” blitz. Isn’t it amazing how fast you can get things done when you are expecting company? If only we could work that fast all the time!  🙂

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We have a saying in our family that goes something like this: Don’t clean anything. Don’t scrub anything. Don’t mop anything. Just focus on horizontal surfaces.

My husband is not a stickler when it comes to cleaning. As a matter of fact, he would seldom notice if something is dusted, vacuumed, or scrubbed. However, he is very sensitive to clutter (which was very unfortunate for him when we had nine people living in fourteen hundred square feet for twelve years!).

It is for this reason that during any cleaning blitz or cleaning time at all, he is often found shouting out the command to focus on horizontal surfaces.

As women, we have a tendency to want to “clean” everything! We want things to sparkle. We want things to shine. However, what really sticks out to most people if they come to our home is stuff lying around – clutter.

It is for this reason that my second tip to help your family get things done fast is to focus on horizontal surfaces. That is, what is out on the floor, the desk, the dining room table, the bar, end tables, coffee tables, dresser tops, and yes, even treadmills.

While this tip is not necessarily one just for speed, it does make things look better fast, which will in turn make us more efficient.

Here are some ways we use the focus on horizontal services method:

1) When calling a blitz, call out a five-minute surface blitz. That is, tell everybody to not do anything except pick up and put away objects that are lying around. This keeps people from vacuuming or trying to wipe something down when things are still lying around.

2)  Call for a horizontal surface session for a cleaning time. This can either be for everybody to get their own things up around the house before somebody cleans or just to pick up in general. When our older kids were little, before each chore session, we had what we called our “room-to-room time.” This was a version of horizontal surface time. We called for this two, three, or five-minute room-to-room blitz in order to give everybody a chance to pick up all of their clutter before chore time. That way, during chore time, the cleaner didn’t have to clean around everybody’s things. It was also a break in the day in which things got picked up rather than left out for the whole day. Since we had chore time three times a day, before each meal for twenty minutes, this room to room/horizontal surface time helped keep things picked up.

3) If you feel like your house is in great disarray, tell everybody that you are not going to clean as far as shining and scrubbing (except for daily kitchen work, etc.) until you have some horizontal surface times in which junk is taken care of. This can work for the whole house or just for individual rooms. Sometimes this is a good idea for children’s rooms. They have a tendency to get overwhelmed when there is too much junk lying around and if you tell them to clean the room, they might go in with a vacuum and a dust rag when they really just need to focus on the horizontal surfaces. (And going in with them and telling them that you are going to help them for a five minute blitz—or that the whole family is going to help them for five minutes really fast can go a long way in helping them dig in to big messes.)

As I mentioned earlier, focusing on horizontal surfaces won’t necessarily make you faster, but it will make you feel better about your house. Implementing it on an ongoing basis will help keep clutter at bay. It will help your children learn to prioritize household tasks. And it might even make your husband happy.

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Over twenty-five years ago,  with four children eight and under, we learned the value of a timer. We began using them to teach our children time management. We would have them do various tasks and set the timer so that they could see how long things take when they really applied themselves. For example, in setting up their morning routine charts,  we would have them run and do each task that was going to be on their chart as we timed them, then when we made the charts, we would put the time that it should take (based on our timing session) in parentheses following each line item on the chart. (This also helped us to know what was reasonable to expect in a certain time period.)

We did the same things with chore sessions. We had chore sessions before each meal, and we wanted for each person’s chores to take roughly the same amount of time since we all worked at the same time on chore sessions.

We would also use the timer to show them how fast  Mom and Dad could get something done. I can remember one evening when the children were all dreading cleaning the kitchen after a meal. We had asked them what they wanted to do that evening after cleanup and family worship, and one of them said, “We won’t have time to do anything else. The kitchen cleanup will take forever tonight.”

The challenge was on! We told the children that even Mom and Dad, by ourselves, could cleanup the evening meal within ten minutes. They were sure that could be done, we rolled their chairs into a line, set the timer, and began the show.

They watched in amazement as the two of us left overs away, clear the table, rinsed dishes, loaded the dishwasher, wiped everything down, and swept the floor in under ten minutes. If I had been persuaded of the value of the timer before that night, our kitchen production sealed it for me.

Of course, we used timers for many daily activities in other areas too. They had math drill that had to be timed. They had various activities that were also based on time, such as entertaining younger siblings, silent reading, and more.

Fast forward several years later and you will find one of the greatest uses for the timer in our home: the blitz. By our definition, a blitz is a set period of time in which everybody runs around like maniacs and get a lot done. We have done them long enough to realize that when we all work our very hardest for a short burst of time we can get a lot done.

Usually in our blitzes we do not focus on cleaning but rather on decluttering, putting things away, and organizing. (When our kids were younger, it felt like we never got to the cleaning anyway with all of the picking up that always needed done!)

If you stop and think about what you are really doing when you have a blitz, it is kind of amazing. For us now, with two teenagers and two adults at home, a ten minute blitz means forty minutes of intense housework. Most of us nowadays seldom have forty minutes to just go through the house pick up, organize, put away, and  declutter. And yet, when the four of us have a ten minute blitz, that is exactly what we are doing. It is truly amazing what we can get done now in a ten minute blitz for adults.

To use blitzes with your family, you might start out with a five minute blitz. Make a game of it. Tell the children that you’re going to set the timer for five minutes and see how much of the toy room you can get picked up together. If you need to use rewards in the beginning, you could do so. I wouldn’t let rewards continue on, however, because picking up the house is something we should all be about all the time without any rewards or payment. But if you want to use rewards, be sure you only use a reward for intense, speedy work. In other words, do not reward them just for having gone through the motions of a blitz.

Here are some other blitzes that we have had through the years that your family might find helpful:

1. Five-minute before company blitzes

2. Fifteen minute kitchen blitzes (it is amazing how much you can get done in the kitchen with several people for fifteen minutes!)

3. Veggie cleaning blitzes… Sometimes it is easier to get kitchen help if they know that it will end at a certain time…

4. Dusting and sweeping blitzes – each person takes dusting rag, a vacuum, or broom go to different portions of the house and do those tasks

5. Five-minute “before chore” blitzes – this might seem a little bit unnecessary, but we often had quick blitzes before our chore sessions just to be sure that everything was picked up and put away so that each person could do their chores properly (i.e. the laundry person had all the laundry in the hamper; the sweeper didn’t have toys on the floor to work around, etc.)

6. Serving blitzes – a time in which everybody goes into somebody’s room or into a person’s job room for the day and cleans up for that person

7. Refrigerator blitzes – ten minutes with five people in a refrigerator can yield amazing results! One person throws away food and scrapes out leftover food, another washes the dishes, another wipes out the refrigerator, and another organizes the door!

8. Sunday night blitzes – we always liked to have blitzes before everybody went to bed on Sunday night to be sure that everything was ready for the next morning… This could be a cleaning blitz, an organizing blitz, a packing for the next day blitz, a laundry blitz, or whatever needed done.

9. Unpacking blitzes – we always set a timer when we first got home from a trip and set a goal to get unpacked in the laundry going in a certain amount of time. We always met our goal, and we were watching a movie or playing a game before we knew it.

10. Cooking blitzes – when I felt like I was getting behind in freezer cooking, we would often call a cooking blitz. For example, at the dinner table, we would announce that two people were cleaning the kitchen and the rest of us were going to be putting casseroles in the freezer. One person with start Friday ground be, and other chopping vegetables, we knew it would have four casseroles ready to go in the freezer and the kitchen with the clean for that evening’s meal.

I’m sure after reading through this list, you can see the many benefits of blitzes. They teach children how to work fast. They demonstrate good time management skills as the children realize how quickly things can be done. They teach family unity as we work together for a common goal. They help us get ahead when we are feeling behind. They give us a chance to teach children multiple skills in different areas of the household. They are pain-free ways to get things done – the blitz is over before you know it. And they give us more opportunities to be together both while we are working and with the time we saved by blitzing.

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