Today I’m going to explain my cleaning system. Most people really don’t enjoy cleaning. I don’t either. But I LOVE the results! A clean house feels great! So, we might as well get a plan together and get it done.
To stay on top of everything, you need a cleaning schedule. Some of the deep cleaning only needs to be done about twice a year. I try to do those in April and October. April is the perfect time for Spring cleaning and I’ll have some upcoming posts specifically for your Spring cleaning.
There are other cleaning jobs that don’t need to be weekly, but still need to be done more than twice a year, so I try to do those monthly. To remember to do them, I do those extra cleaning jobs the first week of every month when I do my regular weekly cleaning.
The weekly cleaning is probably the most important part of the cleaning system. If you don’t keep up with your weekly cleaning, it really shows. And, by the way, if you really don’t have time for seasonal and monthly cleaning jobs, then just add one or two of them to your weekly cleaning time and you’ll eventually get it done.
Sometimes it’s really difficult to fit cleaning into our schedule, especially if you’re working full time. Cleaning is usually the thing that gets put off. There’s a few different options for fitting it into your regular schedule. If you don’t want to spend a full day cleaning, you could do a little each day. For example, if you have 12 rooms in your house, you would clean two rooms each day from Monday to Saturday. Or maybe 2-3 rooms each weeknite after dinner. Another option is to clean it all in one day. You could do it all on a weekday, if not working, or on a Saturday morning. Depending on the size of your house, you could probably get your weekly cleaning done in about 3-5 hours.
So, now that you’ve decided WHEN to clean, you might be wondering where to begin. You could do living areas and bedrooms first, which mostly involves dusting and vacuuming. Then you would do kitchen and bathrooms because they take more time. Another way to clean would be to do one level of the house first and then the next.
For an example, here is how I clean my house. I do it all one day a week. I start with the main level because it’s where we are most of the time and, therefore, a bigger priority. I do the living room, family room, and bedroom. Then I clean the kitchen and bathrooms. Then I clean the upstairs bedrooms, and then the upstairs bathrooms. I usually can get all this done in about four hours, unless I’m also doing some monthly cleaning jobs. For each room, I like to go top to bottom and left to right to make sure I get everything. So, I do light fixture dusting, if necessary, then left to right around the room, and then the floor.
Besides the weekly cleaning, there’s a few daily things to do to maintain your cleaning. You can spend a lot of time on this each day if you want, but I try to keep it to about 30 minutes every morning. If you work during the day, you might want to do this in the evening after dinner.
To simplify your cleaning schedule, download and print out these checklists:
Lifetime Cleaning System Family Room and Bedrooms
Lifetime Cleaning System Kitchen
Lifetime Cleaning System Bathrooms
So now you’ve got a cleaning plan for each room. Put on some music to make it fun and get CLEANING!