Creating A Cleaning Schedule

I spent some time today working on a cleaning schedule. The one I had before was half done and I never had it written down. I'm a write-it-down kinda gal. I like to do lists and check boxes. I don't like wasting paper, but I like lists. And if there's no list, I either do it once or just never do it.

Why do you need a cleaning schedule?

When we lived in a one bedroom apartment with no kids and no cats, it was easy to keep things tidy during the week after work and to do a deeper clean on Saturdays. Now that we live in a much larger home with a kid and two cats, it is important to make sure that we keep it clean for our health and sanity. The best way to do this is to do a little bit each day of the week so that you don't get overwhelmed on one day or think that you just did all this work so you don't have to do it again for another couple weeks. Or a month. Something like that.

What goes on your cleaning schedule?

I started by mentally walking through each room in the house and writing down the different cleaning tasks in each room. I stayed fairly general and didn't put down the more difficult less-frequently done tasks like vacuuming the coils behind your fridge or checking air filters. I wrote down tasks I want done frequently like daily or weekly.

How do you organized your cleaning schedule?

I took this list and decided which tasks should happen every day. The good news for me is that I was already doing most of those things. The remaining tasks I divided into six groups. "Suki, who said you were smart? There are seven days in a week." True. Sundays are my days off. I think it is important to have one day where you can have a break from the normal routine. I divided up the tasks according to rooms. Some rooms are together. There will be days that I do more work than others because those rooms are larger. This doesn't bother me. Saturdays looks like a really light load but it is only because I plan to do some of the tasks that only need to be done monthly.

What does your cleaning schedule look like now?

I am not prepared to post it yet. I want to live with it for a bit so I can make any changes as necessary. Plus, I know there's a way you can put them in but I don't want to figure it out tonight. But I created it in Microsoft Word. Typed it up with borders. It was pretty easy to do. Nothing super fancy. If I had laminating pouches, I would laminate these eventually. It probably won't ever get to that point though...

What about monthly tasks?

I haven't typed up my monthly tasks page yet. I have most of them written down but I'm also going to include tasks that only get done twice yearly or quarterly. Then I'll have check boxes for each month so I know if I already did a task that month or what not.

Now the trick is going to be actually doing this every day. Some days Kaelyn is super helpful and some days she's just trouble. And I can't always clean when she's asleep.

How do you clean? Is it sporadic? Do you get distracted? Do you think it's a lost cause?