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For a year, I shared a home with a co-worker and she used that wicker furniture in her living room. It looked good and it sure brightened up the room! She'd change out the cushions every so often too. She had dust allergies but I don't seem to remember her having to dust the wicker furniture.
Nice idea. I'm looking to replace my couch and don't need one to lie down on. This would probably be "patio furniture"?
No, my frame does not meet the floor on the sides, just the head and foot of the bed.
There are storage drawers you can buy that go on the sides which does seal the bed on all 4 sides.
My cats like to sleep under the bed FYI so I won't close it up.
And the way the platform beds work is that there are slats all along the bed frame so you can't lift the mattress and get a vacuum down there.
They do have platform beds that are closed on all 4 sides. Then that is one less worry in your life.
Here's what I have (pic below is same with storage)
I do 30 minutes of yoga 4x a week. That's not much but so far it keeps me strong and flexible enough to handle most chores and tasks involving bending, stooping, and twisting.
It's not a quick or universal fix but it works for me. I was 60+ before I ever attempted yoga, I'm 65 now.
I do yoga as well, but my mobility problem is beyond a "fix." But it helps with other parts of my body.
I just emerged from vacuuming under our wide bed, on my hands and knees struggling to get the extended vacuum handle for the brush to go in the right directions on the wood floor and seriously straining my shoulder, not to mention the fact that I’m not supposed to ever spend time in that position. I cursed every minute of it, rather than "submitting to the moment."
This is one of several household chores that is becoming heinous to me now (the two others being cleaning out the fridge and scrubbing the bathroom floors).
I have the dust ruffle on the bed and that helps a little but it still needs to be vacuumed under there once a week. I’m thinking about getting rid of the bed frame altogether (it's heavy Canadian oak, the last of the heavy pieces here) and finding a platform-type bed with sides that meet the floor. Then I wonder if the dust will still find its way under there and we’ll have to move the entire shebang in order to vacuum the floor.
Before anyone rolls their eyes, I’m aware this isn’t an earthshaking problem and there’s many more serious ones in life, but this does have to do with a mobility problem that’s not going to get any better so….I would appreciate suggestions on this one thing and also invite talk about other household challenges in regard to aging bones, and how you solved them (or didn’t). I know many of you have housekeepers.
You've gotten a lot of responses - and I'll read all of them. But my first reaction to reading your message is - who cares if there's dust under the bed? Note that we never open the windows in our bedrooms - the A/C is on about 80% of the year - the heat about 10% - and the rest of the time we just keep the fan on the HVAC running (so perhaps we get less dust than other people).
FWIW - I've had a housekeeper since I started to work (in my 20's). And don't plan on giving up a housekeeper anytime soon. OTOH - my current housekeeper is almost a senior too (late 50's) - and I've had others older than my current one. And I'm not going to ask them to do anything that I wouldn't do myself because it might wreck my back or my knees or my whatever. Especially my current one. Her husband is undergoing cancer treatment now - and she can't afford to be "out of commission". When it comes to more vigorous (usually outside) stuff - we hire younger people for that (our landscape service - our pressure washer - our home handyman - etc.).
BTW - we have a tailored box spring cover - and I do wash it once or twice or a year. So 2 or 3 of us (me/husband/housekeeper) wrestle the mattress off the bed. Then I wash the cover. And then we wrestle the mattress back in place. That's when the area under the bed gets vacuumed. Robyn
Good for you that you continue to do physically challenging chores. The quickest way to no longer be able to do them would be to stop doing them! Our bodies adapt to what they are challenged to do. To acquiesce is to accept death in life - not being able to climb a flight of stairs, not being able to do this, that, and the other.
There's a difference between stuff that's exercise - and stuff that merely makes you hurt/sore - without delivering any of the benefits of exercise.
And Hemlock140 - I have one of those garden carts on wheels that you can sit on. I don't do anything in the yard that I can't do standing up - or sitting on the garden cart. Robyn
...What I absolutely cannot do without days of pain anymore is kneel,( torn meniscuses that act up at times) so getting down on my hands and knees to do anything is an excedingly rare event these days...
I don't do much of anything on my hands/knees these days - but keep things like this around for when I do:
Folks you are welcome to laugh - leaf blower! With two cats that turned into my solution. Small handheld with a cartridge. Out come the dust bunnies and cat toys - under the bed, behind the fridge, under sofas, ... Then I can deal with things with the normal vacuum.
I tried Roomba but had one escape from the garage into the drive way and onto the street. A pricey casualty.
Platform bed flush with the floor - we had carpeting in Seattle and somewhat of a penicillin farm in no time:>(
We use our leaf blower to clear pollen off our porch/porch furniture during pollen season (we get it all washed off at the end of pollen season - but it's a good interim solution). A leaf blower is indeed a multi-purpose tool .
Ani -- my sister who is a germaphobe clean freak -- has the furriest fan blades I've ever seen. Just disgusting.
With our ten cats, and a house that isn't "Queen clean" -- my fan blades are clean.
I should vacuum daily, and if I vacuum daily, I can use my little Ergorapido cordless vac. It's essentially a powerful dustbuster with a handle and a beater brush roll. Literally -- you can take the dustbuster part out and use it separately -- and stick a little brush attachment on it to clean your keyboard and other things.
The Ergorapido does require a little more maintenance than a regular vac. I rinse the dustcup and the interior filter thing practically daily, and once a week or so I clean off the brush roll and the little wheels seem to collect a lot of fur, so I pop those out and clean them off. But the ease of not having a cord to deal with in my small house makes the minute or two I use to maintain that vac worth it.
Back when I was using a regular vac, the cord thing became such an issue I'd vacuum (if we were lucky) monthly.
So between that and the microfiber dustmop my house is getting cleaner all the time. I consider it a work in progress.
Love that idea about the used dryer sheet! I started saving mine and using them to dust with in between actually polishing my furniture. They work great! Hadn't tried them on the floor but now I will.
One year, the windows were filthy after a nasty winter and I just couldn't tackle them. I kept thinking, I will get this done a few windows at the time during the summer. Well, it didn't happen. By Thanksgiving, I was having dozens of folks in for dinner and the windows looked horrible. That is when it hit me - wonder how much it would cost to get someone to wash these windows? I was lucky - I thought about the nasty windows a few weeks before Turkey Day and was able to get a man in to do them. On Thanksgiving, the sun was shining and I felt good about being a hostess. That was the end of my trying to clean the windows.
For some reason - where I live (not the highest priced spread part of the US) - people charge an arm and a leg to wash windows. Like about $1k for our single story house. And we want them washed twice a year. So this is a chore my husband and I still do. In May when pollen season is over - and November when hurricane/storm season is over. It really isn't hard (we bought a lot of professional window washing stuff years back). Used to be a 1 day 8 hour job - now it's a 3 day job working about 3-4 hours a day (in and out). I think that equipment can make a big difference. Also the nature of one's house (don't know what I'd do with a 2 story house). Robyn
My biggest problem about housekeeping as I age is motivation.
As the sands of time trickle away, I question whether wasting precious time vacuuming under the bed makes any sense.
Life is becoming increasingly finite. Why would I waste it dusting, scrubbing toilets, wiping water spots off the faucets...?
About the only way I can work up the steam to clean now is when company is coming.
I probably should hire a housekeeper.
And one thing I've also noticed is there are almost no guys posting in this thread.
FWIW - different parts of our house are different in terms of organization and cleaning. Our kitchen is almost always 100% organized and spotless. But my home office is often a disaster area. My husband remarks on the differences at times - but I don't care. Robyn
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