You can't manage a
home without a plan and I definitely have a plan. Every day I have certain chores that I have
scheduled and take care of. I do as much
as I can in 15 minutes and then I am done.
If I have extra time left I'll do some extra cleaning until my 15 minutes is
up. It amazes me how much I can get
accomplished in only 15 minutes!
The girls have their
set of chores as well. Mainly they take
care of our animals each day. Feeding
kitties and getting them fresh water, changing the litter box, feeding our
chickens, getting them fresh water, collecting the eggs. They also have to clean one of the bathrooms,
their bedrooms, dust & vacuum the upstairs hallway and help with laundry. 15 minutes at a time.
Each day we get up
and make our beds first thing. Laundry
goes into hampers. Each of us is
responsible to leave the bathroom clean and tidy when we finish using it. I keep a toilet brush in cleaning solution
handy for a quick swish each day. We
wipe the counters off each day with spray cleaner and a rag. We wipe down the toilet mid week between
scrubbings. It takes less than two
minutes to do this and makes all the difference in the world.
When we get home
each day we hang up coats, purses and backpacks. Shoes get put away. Lunchboxes get emptied and containers go
straight into a sink of soapy water and get washed immediately. Then we do our chores, whichever happens to
be on the list for that day. 15 minutes
later we get to work on dinner (which is profoundly easier these days as I've
already shared).
We take turns on
"dish night". Each of us has a
dish night. The girls have two apiece
and I have three nights. I take the
extra day as I have more time during the school year than they do. In the summer I let them trade off and take
an extra day each week. We hand wash our
dishes even though we have a dishwasher.
Counters are wiped down, stove top is wiped down and table is cleared
and cleaned. Once dry the dishes are put
away and the sink is cleaned out and rinsed.
Monday - downstairs
bathroom/laundry room
Tuesday - dining
room
Wednesday - laundry,
trash & recycling to curb
Thursday -
kitchen/entry
Friday - bedrooms
Saturday - laundry,
upstairs bathroom
Sunday - laundry, dust
& vacuum
I recently added an
extra laundry day. We used to only do
laundry on Wednesday and Sunday. I added
Saturday so we are only doing one load a day instead of two on Sunday. Another idea I picked up from the
FlyLady. It makes a big difference for
us to only do one load per day.
We have morning and
evening routines too and I'll go into that in more detail in another post, but
the one evening routine we do every
night, I think, is truly what makes it all work. We do a 15 minute "walk through" at
the end of the day to make sure everything is neat, tidy and put away. Sometimes I'll run the vacuum real quick or
clean something that got dirty, but for the most part we find we walk around
and chit chat.
Once our walk
through is done we each head off to complete our final evening routine and call
it a day. Like I said, I'll be sharing
more about that part later as I think this post is lengthy enough.
15 minutes at a time! That is it.
I don't feel overwhelmed and I get my stuff done! Even better, our home stays clean!
I've always known it's easier to keep up than to catch up...recently I've gotten caught up and intend to keep it this way...agree with one load of laundry per day making it so much easier...
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to have weekends of dedicated cleaning and organizing far behind me.
DeleteI think the cleanest my house used to be was when I worked second shift. I had just enough time before work, after sleeping in most mornings, to do a little housework before work. I didn't get a lot of outside errands done, but the house looked nice. lol
ReplyDeleteI think that was the same thing for me too. I worked second shift 3 to 11 many, many years ago. Before kids! I loved that shift.
DeleteThanks for sharing!! What a great, efficient routine. Looking forward to your next "cleaning" post.
ReplyDeleteLess cleaning, better results, doesn't get much better than that!
Delete