I love our house, but it is a fairly large house. A family room, sitting room, office, four bedrooms, kitchen, dining room, and 2 1/2 bathrooms. (Check out this post for a video house tour - never mind the bad tour guide...). There is a lot to clean.
All that is leading to this:
What is that you ask?
So nice of you to ask.
That is my monthly cleaning checklist. Think me a little OCD or overly organized or just doing too much extra, unnecessary work. It honestly doesn't much matter to me since this works great for me.
I used to try and tackle the whole house in one day. Then I would get overwhelmed and I wouldn't get it all done - usually the bathrooms - because I have a small child who wasn't down for all that cleaning in one day and it just took me too long. It just wasn't reasonable. Trying to put it all in one day would burn me out of cleaning then it wouldn't get done for another couple of weeks. It's not that we live in filth, but things were not getting cleaned as often as they should/I would have liked.
That's when I decided things to change. There had to be something. A way that would work for us. And after some thinking I think I finally found it. Instead of doing it all in one day, I spread it out over three days, meaning I just spend Addie's morning nap cleaning and then I'm done for the day.
It's not exactly a complicated system. Tuesdays I clean the basement and the family room. Why? Simple: Stella's litter is in the laundry room (on the bottom-most floor) and trash day is Wednesday, and I didn't want cat littler sitting around the house for days. So clean it on Tuesday, take it out and that be that. So it only made sense to finish cleaning that room and then of course I might as well do laundry - it has to be done at some point. So then I might as well do the family room while I'm at it. So then I just go up from there. Wednesdays is the middle floor with the kitchen, sitting room, and dining room. Then Thursdays is the bedrooms floor.
See nothing complicated.
The best part is that since I started this system I have cleaned every week. I have been able to keep up with all the rooms and all that need to be done. I just check off what I have already done and can see what I still need to do. Who doesn't like to see things check off their list?! You might wonder why I even need a list if I'm doing the same things every week. Sometimes I wonder too, but there are things I don't do every week, there are even things I don't do but once a month. And I don't want to forget any of those things, like dusting the fans. I always always forget to dust the fans.
I'll be honest with you, I do sometimes get frustrated. Every single week I'm doing the same thing that I felt like I had just done. But that's cleaning. And things have to get done. Stella's litter has to be cleaned, the fridge has to be wiped out, toilets have to be cleaned, floors need to vacuumed, and so on and so forth. But no matter how I'm feeling about cleaning, I still do it. It's just become part of my normal Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday routine. This also keeps me from having to clean Friday-Monday other than the usual everyday dishes and [toy] pickup. It just takes me Addie's morning nap, leaving me her afternoon nap for me to do whatever I want - crafts, watch a movie, read a book, take a nap.
My way of cleaning may take me three days to complete the house, but the house stays clean weekly and I keep my sanity not having to do it all day long! Plus a choice of a guilt-free [I don't have anything else I have to be doing] afternoon nap!
No comments:
Post a Comment