Home Management - Housekeeping

This is hands down the "department" I take the most pride in.  Keeping a neat and tidy home with the ultimate goal of always being company ready is very satisfying for me.  Knowing we have the right amount of stuff and that all of our items are properly stored and organized makes them easy to find and use.  It is a constant work in progress and it didn't happen overnight.  There has been a lot of trial and error and ultimately a lot of purging to lead me to where I am right now.  Finally I have a solid system in place and it works.  Really, really well.

I employ a 15 Minute Chores method to keep our home clean and as a result I am no longer a weekend slave to our house.  I no longer need to have marathon spring cleaning sessions.  And I am no longer overwhelmed by the task of housework.  I am much less stressed about my home in general or how I go about getting housework completed.  I've been doing this for a few years now and it works.

Before I ever heard about the Fly Lady I had set up a schedule of general tasks that needed to be completed on a daily basis and a weekly basis.  Daily chores such as making a bed, cleaning up the bathrooms, starting or folding a load of laundry take various amounts of time, mostly just a couple of minutes.  Weekly chores take about 15 minutes or less, sometime a little more, but not very often.  Then there are projects, such as purging a closet, reorganizing a space like the garage, or rearranging furniture that I plan for and schedule a certain amount of time to work on separately.

I love that our bathrooms are always clean

For my daily chores it has become a habit now of what I do and how I do it.  I'm in auto pilot and I pretty much do it without much thought and over time I've become quite quick at it.  My weekly chores are habitual as well, however I tend to rotate a lot of what I do each week to cover all my bases.  For instance, one week I may mop the dining room floor tile, the next I'll clean the chandelier, the following week I wash the window.  Every day I wiped down the table and any spills on the floor.  It's a process.

Not everything needs to be done every day or every week.  But by the end of the month there usually isn't much I haven't cleaned or tidied within my home.  By focusing my energy and time on a 15 minute block I can accomplish a lot.  And the nicest part about this process is if I miss a day due to illness or an over packed schedule I can get caught back up the next day or if I miss several days I just start over the next week and I'm caught back up.  I'm not even a slave to the process.

Welcome to our home

While my particular process may not work for everyone ,if you struggle with housekeeping it is a good place to start.  Check it out here if you are interested in giving it a try.