Cleaning Schedule

A few weeks ago, to my horror, I realized that our house is just gross. I'd been slacking so much on the cleaning from feeling so tired all the time. So while having a proactive sort of moment I decided to take a look online and get some cleaning ideas, and finally stumbled upon a blog that described their 'cleaning schedule'. The theory was that if I tackle one large chore a day I could keep my house in relatively good order- I thought I could handle one large chore a day, no problem. That blog, however, claimed that their cleaning took only 25 minutes a day at most and I'm here to verify that they either have a very small house or are lying. 25 minutes is definitely not enough time to do most of the chores each day. But still, having a schedule helps to keep me on track, and I don't mind that it takes longer. 

Their schedule, I realized, wouldn't work for us. With Kayla, It's not always feasible for me to run up and downstairs nonstop all day, so some of the days covered a broad topic like 'surfaces' which just didn't work for us. The first week I tried and it was impossible. 1.) Our house has an exorbitant amount of surface area. Thanks to both my and Brian's obsessions with collecting DVDs, CDs, collectibles, figurines, and books, we have shelving covering the entire house- often filled with very small, very tedious-to-clean objects. 2.) Running upstairs and downstairs all day isn't really a great idea with a 3 year old who follows underfoot half the time and wanders crazily the other half. So I had to adjust the cleaning schedule a bit, but after several weeks, I'm pretty proud to announce that I've worked out most of the kinks and it's been going well. 

Here's a quick look at our household cleaning schedule. I decided to make it so that most days there is one large chore, as well as one or two smaller chores included. I probably wouldn't need to write down the smaller chores, but I'm a visual sort of person. Having it written down makes me more likely to finish it. 

Monday- 

Laundry Day- This is our main laundry day. I do bedsheets, throw blankets, clothing, towels.

Vacuum downstairs- Downstairs is where we spend most of our time and definitely needs the most vacuuming.     

Garbage to the Curb

Tuesday-

Bathrooms- dust, disinfect, toilets, sinks, showers, walls, chrome, sweep, mop, change towels, refill TP... everything. Spray something pretty-smelling when done. We have three bathrooms so this takes a while. 

Laundry- anything left over from Monday, or diapers if needed.

Collect trash cans from curb.

Wednesday- (the dreaded day)

Surfaces- I schedule ALL the surfaces, but aim to get at downstairs done. This means counters, tables, shelving, windows, cabinets, walls, floors. It also can mean the desk, top of the fridge, picture frames, inside the cabinets, etc. You can see why it takes forever, even without seeing the hundreds of shelves in our house. 

Thursday-

One large task- pick something specific to clean or organize. It can be a closet, the fridge, a messy cabinet, toy boxes, etc. Anything at all that just needs to be straightened up and organized works. 

Surfaces- Upstairs, since that's almost always leftover from Wednesday. 

Friday-

Vacuum whole house- Upstairs and downstairs. 

Clean goldfish bowl.- Believe it or not, I will forget to do this if I don't see it written!

Laundry- At least one small load- There is always enough for another load! 

And those are the main things! I also keep a dry erase board on the fridge now and each day I write the date and everything that needs to be done. I will add everything else for the day I want to accomplish, too, that varies each day. Food shopping, appointments, a craft I'm working on, a project I want to get done with Kayla, going to the post office, etc. Since like I said, I'm a very visual person, seeing everything written out really helps keep me on track. I love lists and checking things off. Having little miniature goals each day has made me more focused and I've actually kept up with everything for the first time in a long time. 

It feels so amazing to accomplish things!