As a working mom I will admit that sometimes cleaning gets put on the back burner. My house isn’t to the point of a hoarding zone (yet), but it could be way way better. Sometimes being a working mom you get very overwhelmed with making sure everything is clean. Then, before you know it it’s been weeks since you’ve made it to clean the upstairs bathroom. You ask yourself How did this get so bad?
Needless to say, I need a schedule. I am one who works well on routines, so I’m going to put myself on a cleaning schedule routine so that I don’t walk into the unknown green gunk in my bathroom sink-gross!.
I started by thinking of what really needs to be regularly cleaned. Here’s my list:
- Bedrooms
- Bathrooms
- Toy room
- Family room
- Kitchen
- Laundry
Now to put that list to a schedule. If I do one of these tasks each day, I am hopeful that I can keep a maintained clean home throughout the year despite the chaos. Of course-I am going into this knowing things happen and sometimes you have to adjust your schedule. I think you always have to go into any new routine with the expectation that at some point you will veer off course. Here’s the schedule I have created that works best with my daily life:
Monday: Toy Room
Our toy room regularly gets “straightened up”, as I’m teaching my littles to clean up after themselves. So this room cleaning will include:
- vacuuming
- dusting
- Lysol spraying on frequently-touched surfaces
- making sure toys are in their correct bins and not spilling out everywhere.
I want to start off the week with something easier, and since we nightly straighten up the toy room, this is a good starting point for the week.
Tuesday: Family Room
Our family room also gets regularly straightened at night, so this cleaning will include:
- dusting
- vacuuming
- spray Lysol on regularly touched surfaces like light switches and TV remotes.
Wednesday: Kitchen/Dining Room
Our kitchen gets a brief cleaning every night since we cook dinner in there every night, but this cleaning will include:
- wiping down the countertops
- wiping down the appliances
- Lysol on doorknobs and regularly touched surfaces
- mop
- wiping down dining table and high chair
- cleaning microwave
Thursday: Bedrooms
This includes:
- changing the sheets
- dusting
- vacuuming.
Friday: Entryway and Dining Room
Since I am chunking the dining room table with the kitchen day, this day will be used for:
dusting
Lysol the entryway table and the hutch in the Dining Room.
I want something lighter for Friday since I know I’ll be exhausted from working all week.
Saturday: Bathrooms
I chose Saturday as a bathroom day because I have more time available on Saturdays since I am not working that day. I need more time for bathrooms because we have three of them (one of them is the kids bathroom which, somehow, gets disgusting in a week). This cleaning includes:
- cleaning toilets
- mopping floors
- Clorox counters
- Windex mirrors
- clean showers/tubs
- cleaning toothbrush holders
- washing bathroom rugs and towels.
Sunday: Catch-Up
Sunday I want to designate for family time. We rarely get family time, so I want to try to prioritize it. I am usually up early to go grocery shopping on Sunday mornings, so I can have the rest of the day with the family. If anything needs cleaned up that I didn’t get to during the week, this is the day for that, too.
Somehow a family of 5 produces *A LOT* of laundry, so I am not going to designate a laundry day seeing as pretty much every day is laundry day in our house.
In addition to the above list, I also have already planned one day a month for carpet cleaning. I typically hit the heavily-trafficked areas (family room, toy room, hallways, etc.). You would be shocked at the amount of dirt that is in your home for one month-it grosses me out every time I do it looking at the brown water that is picked up from the carpets. It’s a good thing for me to do once a month to maintain stains on our carpets, of which we have many (kids and dogs!).
This schedule I have created is for the inside. I must be honest, I let my husband take care of the outside, but things we do each week are things like:
- Weeding
- mowing/ weed eating
My husband also sprays Home Defense on the perimeter of our house and basement once a month to maintain insect protection.
If you are like me and are overwhelmed with the number of tasks that must get done in a week, perhaps sitting down to create your own schedule might help you out, too. You can follow one like mine or create your own. Just start with thinking what rooms/tasks need regularly cleaned and go from there! One mom helping another to keep our homes clean for our kids-as best we can anyway!
Does Home Defense work on ants? We have a friend who is elderly- lives in a trailer and really has a problem with ants – I’ve tried Raid, Zevo even using ammonia in the kitchen. I am afraid she needs an exterminator but neither she or we can afford one
We use Home Defense as an all around bug protector so I can’t speak specifically for ants. We usually hire someone to come spray specifically for ants every two years and that seems to keep them at bay.