The easiest and most sustainable way to keep your home clean is by using a cleaning schedule. It sounds easy, and once you have one you like, it’s super easy! That being said, building or finding the right schedule is a lot less easy. Never fear, I have done the leg work, tested out the two major cleaning schedules on the internet, read through a ton of resources, and cleaned my own messy home to build the perfect cleaning routine.
My cleaning routine is designed for someone at a full-time job that isn’t homemaker or SAHM. So many programs out there are designed for cleaning over a full day or cleaning with and around children. Which is great, and I’m sure they’re helpful. But I found them quite overwhelming to manage while spending a full day working, managing Levi, keeping up with my running schedule, and attempting to have a social life. It was just too many tasks to manage in one day. I was skipping breakfast and cleaning while I brushed my teeth before bed to check off tasks. I didn’t want keeping my house clean to become a source of stress.
I thrive on routines, systems that are reliably and consistently the same, so that was the focus when developing my cleaning schedule. The idea of knowing that a tidy home isn’t far out of reach helps with stress over realistic messes in your home. Seeing a pile of papers on the table on Wednesday if you know you’ll be dealing with it on Saturday, instead of some vague “eventually.”
The trick to building my cleaning schedule was focusing on two main things, how much time I really have during the day and how often certain tasks need to be done. I broke cleaning tasks down into daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks. It’s also important to note that I split these tasks pretty evenly between myself and Cody. A lot of times I see women taking the lead on these household management tasks and being the only one taking care of the home. Let’s remember that our partners live in the house just as much as we do, and it’s just as much their responsibility to clean the home too!
Daily Cleaning Schedule
Daily tasks on my cleaning schedule are ones that are for frequently used surfaces, places that would be seen by any guests, and things that need to be done for our home to function. I split these tasks with Cody based on our schedules. Daily tasks include:
- Making the bed
- Laundry
- Remove one clutter pile
- Load and run the dishwasher
- Shine the sink
- Quick wipe the bathroom
Any of the multi-step tasks on the daily lists should be all the way done. That means the laundry is washed, dried, and put away.
Weekly Cleaning Schedule
Weekly tasks don’t play a major role in the cleaning system right about now. We do a weekly tidy across the house. Putting things at right angles, clearing any major messes, and making sure the space is functional. Our house is pretty small, so we split the rooms up and take ownership of the tidiness of “our” rooms. Cody takes the living room and our bedroom. I’m on the kitchen and bathroom. And of course our respective offices. These tasks include wiping up any doggy footprints, making sure guest blankets are fresh or removing any hidden dog toys.
Monthly Cleaning Schedule
I borrowed the formatting of the weekly tasks from the Fly Lady system. She breaks it down by chunks of days, whereas I just stick to weeks. Each week of the month, there is one room that gets totally cleaned, top to bottom. I broke the house down into 5 sections:
- Kitchen/Dining (we have no separate dining room, so it’s all in one for us)
- Bathroom/Outside
- Living Room/Hall/Front Porch
- Bedroom
- Offices
This breakdown is what works for us, you may want to split it up into different groups based on your home and family. You might be asking, why do you have five sections when there are only 4 weeks in most months? The last section is the two rooms that gather the least amount of mess. While we’re in our offices frequently, we don’t entertain guests in there and we don’t actually do much in there beyond work. So the deep cleans can wait a bit longer than something like our bathroom can.
Each deep clean has a specific set of tasks too. These include
- Sweep/Vaccuum/Steam Mop
- Dust (including heaters, baseboards, and stubborn corners!)
- Spray down and declutter surfaces
- Empty Trash
- Additional Laundry
- Clean walls
These are all pretty self-explanatory tasks. Additional laundry is for things that don’t need to be frequently washed like quilts or shower curtains. Cleaning the walls might sound like a crazy person’s task, one of those things you do only before Thanksgiving dinner, but if you have dogs, kids, or a messy cook, it’s probably more necessary than you think. I typically use soapy warm water and a fresh sponge to go over any spots of discoloration or stains.
Quarterly Cleaning Schedule
Quarterly cleaning tasks are primarily a list of random things around the house that need to be done much less frequently but are still important for upkeep. This includes things like
- Cleaning washing machine & dryer
- Scrubbing the dishwasher
- Clean the oven
- Deep clean rugs and carpets
- Scrub grout
- Scrub trash bins
- Clear drains
These are the PITA cleaning tasks that no one likes, but needs to do. Trust me, scrubbing my dishwasher is hands down the WORST task in the house. Yes, even worse than clearing the drains.
I’ve been running this cleaning schedule for about a month now and really enjoying it. What does your cleaning schedule look like? What did I forget on mine? Sound off below!
