When I found out what the challenge was going to be I started researching other blogs for ideas on how other people set up their cleaning schedules. I knew the way I had been doing it wasn't working so I needed some fresh ideas. Most of the schedules I found had assigned a different room in the house for each day of the week, (Monday: Kitchen, Tuesday: Bathrooms, etc) and this is what I had done in the past. But then I came across one blog that had it a little different. Instead of one room a day, it focused on one room a week.
As soon as I saw this it was like a light blub went on! This is what I need to be doing. Looking back at my past attempts I think they failed because I was really trying to do too much in one day on top of working full time and spending time with my family. So I started brainstorming!
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| Brainstorming! |
I figure out what rooms to focus on for the four weeks of the month.
- Bathroom
- Kitchen
- Living/Dining Room and Entryway
- Bedrooms
Then I wrote out all the tasks in each room that I want to accomplish that week and also wrote down items that I would do once a week and daily no matter what week. I split the tasks for each room so that all the tasks could be completed Monday thru Friday. This would leave Saturday as a day to finish anything I missed and leave Sunday clear. I wanted to make sure that I left Sunday as a day of rest.
Next I incorporated those into my daily plans. I don't think I have shared my daily lists on here before but they were fairly similar to the picture below, I just modified it slightly to include the cleaning tasks.
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| Sample of my daily plans |
I am excited to see if this cleaning schedule finally works for me. I know this first month I am probably still going to have to take a couple of Saturdays to really get caught up on some stuff, but I think focusing on a few small tasks each day instead of overwhelming myself with an entire room every day will help immensely.
