How To Set A Cleaning Schedule You’ll Stick To

Housework is a seemingly never-ending task. Add kids into the mix and you can feel like your constantly living in chaos, with chores (and dishes) piling up around you. Unless you’re one of those people who just love to clean, it’s going to take some work to get on top of your housework and keep on top of it consistently.

Add kids to this equation and you’re adding so much more work to your life every day. It’s no wonder that housework and chores are the cause of many arguments between couples. It can feel like every spare minute you have is spent doing chores, eating into important family time.

There are websites and social media channels devoted to cleaning schedules and hacks, why not steal a few of these ideas to get your own home in order?

Decide what tidy means to you

People have different standards when it comes to their home. Some people can’t rest unless their home is spotlessly clean and tidy, others prefer to keep it to a pretty good standard but accept that a home is there to be lived in and a certain level of untidiness is fine.

Before you set up any cleaning schedule, decide what clean and tidy means to you. Don’t hold yourself to anyone else’s standards.

Make a list of what needs to be achieved every day in order to keep on top of things.

• Making the beds
• Emptying trash
• Washing dishes
• Clearing away toys
• Cleaning surfaces in the kitchen
• Hoovering high traffic areas
• Laundry - with kids it can be easier to do a load a day rather than let everything pile up for the weekend

Choose a time of the day that you can devote to tidying. Get it down to fine art and see how quickly you can complete your tasks. Some people have what’s known as a ‘power hour’ where they complete all the day’s housework in one fast session.

Next, list the jobs that need to be done a few times a week.

• Clean toilets
• Mop floors
• Sort fridge
• Clean the bathroom tiles and floor

Weekly tasks can include:

• Change bedding
• Ironing
• Dust furniture
• Shopping
• Batch cooking
• Change towels

And then there are monthly tasks:

• Checking smoke and carbon monoxide alarms
• Deep clean of certain rooms
• Wash the car
• Clean windows
• Tidy garden
• Main food shop

Start building habits slowly

If you’re the type of person that easily falls back into bad habits, then an all or nothing approach isn’t going to work for you. Instead, concentrate on your daily tasks for a few weeks. The idea is to make them become a habit and experience the benefits of having a clean and tidy home. From there, begin to fold in the less frequent tasks. Eventually, cleaning and tidying up after yourself will become a force of habit.

Write it down

Some people work well when they have a set list of tasks to accomplish. If this is you, then write down the tasks you need to do every day and tick them off as you go. The sense of achievement will spur you on.

Accept there’s going to be slip-ups

You’re not going to undo years of bad habits overnight. Accept that at times life, family and work will get in the way and take you by surprise. Rather than just give up, just start again the next day.