Corona Cleaning - Or Not

Despite our several incidences of "Corona Cleaning" deep cleaning, we have had a hard time keeping up with everyday cleaning. Part of it was living in 2 places all summer, but most of it is the weird issues of everyday life during a pandemic — all 3 of us trying to keep up with work and school that is sometimes from home and sometimes elsewhere. Add in pets and scarcity of things (why on earth has Target been out of Comet cleaner for the last 6 weeks?) and sanitizing protocol and such, and it's been a lot.

Today Patrick spent some time running around to various home improvement stores looking for things he needs for Hague (see earlier comment about shortages), while I got a start on some catch-up cleaning here. When he got home, we were able to do some things together that we had put off, like glueing loose chair joints, laying down rugs and rug pads for the fall, and generally cleaning up. It's not perfect, but it's nicer; the main rooms are at least moderately clean. I'm pretty sure the dogs are now contemplating maximum shedding techniques so they can get the house back to their version of normal.

Though each thing brings more things I *should* do, like clean through the house plants or organize my closet. It's hard to differentiate the everyday from the larger projects.

This week has been hard, because it seems that we have reliably settled into pre-pandemic workloads, while still dealing with pandemic crap (extra sanitizing, masks, shortages, etc.). It's a lot, and it feels like something is going to give. And we're trying to enjoy fall, while dreading the winter to come.

Hoe are you handling it all? What techniques have you developed? What plans do you have to make it through winter?