We all love a clean home, but with a busy schedule, it can be hard to find an efficient way to keep it all under control. A clean home isn’t just a sanitary matter. Clutter can contribute to anxiety and depression, which can affect all aspects of your personal and professional life. Routines create habits, and habits can make cleaning second nature. Plus, they make sure everyone gets involved.
- Create a List
Before you can jump in, you’ll need a comprehensive list of everything that needs to be done. Start at your front door and work your way through each room of the house. Depending on the size of your family, your home, and your personality, the list might be pretty long. But that’s okay. Not everything will be a daily or even a weekly task. For example, you’ll need to wipe the blades of your ceiling fan–but you get to decide how often you do that.
2. Decide on a Method
There’s more than one way to get your cleaning done. Does a cluttered house make you anxious? Or are you more of a wait until the job has to be done kind of person? What kind of maintenance are you willing to put in? For example, some people would rather have an air purifier than houseplants that leave a mess and need to be watered or a Roomba instead of an upright. Where do you fall on the cleaning spectrum?
Here are a few methods to choose from, but feel free to mix and match until you find something that works for you.
- All at Once: With this method, you have one or two designated days each week to do your major cleaning from vacuuming and dusting to cleaning the bathroom and sweeping your entryway.
- Little by Little: This is cleaning in small chunks throughout the day. For example, every time you leave a room, you make sure to take something from the room you’re in and put it away. Wiping down the kitchen and cleaning the bathroom should happen after each use to reduce the number of times you have to do a deep cleaning.
- Daily Maintenance with a Daily Project: This one takes the Little by Little idea and adds a larger daily project like organizing a closet or cleaning out the fridge to stay on top of problem areas.
- Time It: A time limit can help you stay focused through to the end and avoid burnout. With this method, you set a specific time for everyone to do some cleaning. It may be general clutter control or assign everyone a larger task.
- Daily Room: This method can be combined with Little by Little. Here you focus on one room each day for deep cleaning and organization. It’s easier to keep a large house in order with this method, especially if you have help.
Are there other methods? Of course, there are but we wanted to get your creative cleaning juices flowing so you can find something that works for your family’s schedule and lifestyle.
3. Chart It Out and Make Adjustments
Once you’ve decided on a method, create a weekly or monthly chart (depending on the method) that includes every task from your master list. You may want to break daily cleaning into who is in charge of what to make sure jobs are divided out evenly amongst family members. That also gives you a chance to rotate everyone through each task.
Conclusion
A clean home gives you peace of mind and creates a refuge for your family. A solid routine can let your family know-how and where to help as well as taking some of the guesswork out of deciding when everything should be done. With time, it’ll become second nature, and your home will stay cleaner and more organized.