Having a cleaning schedule changed everything for me as a working mom. No more was I overwhelmed by everything in my house — I knew each room would have their “day” and I’ll get to all of it, leaving me an ability to relax on the couch when the time came. Maybe it can be a game changer for you too.
Grab my printable of it right here — and then we’ll chat about how I made it, and how to make it work for you!
Daily Tasks
I can think of a couple ways to separate jobs that need to get done at your house (although I’m sure there’s lots of ways — one of these might resonate with you to get started though):
Divide by Room: Every day, a room is assigned to it. That way you’re able to concentrate on cleaning that room, organizing it and really digging deep into that ONE room (and mostly ignoring the rest — although we’ll talk about it).
One TYPE of cleaning: Maybe you’re doing floors, or dusting, or cleaning counters and you from room to room just doing this one task. This allows you to basically have the same cleaning products for each of the rooms, which is nice.
For me, I sort of combined these…. and I’ll show you how.
Prior to do this I was trying to do FlyLady (is that even still a thing?) — but I found it REALLY overwhelming. I had small kids, a job and a husband that was gone a LOT… I needed it simple to where I could either do the bare minimum or more depending on how the day was going. If you’re overwhelmed by a system you have right now, this might be helpful!
Looking for more household management tips — be sure to check out these posts:
- 5 Reasons You HAVEN’T Started Organizing & How to Fix Them!
- Family-Tested Organizing Tips
- Baby Proofing 101: Dani Morin’s Mission for Baby Safety Awareness
- Clever Kitchen Storage: Smart solutions for smaller kitchens
- House Cleaning List {Printable}
Weekly Cleaning Schedule Example:
I did a bit of a combination of those two, and I’ll show you how it works for us:
Mondays: Kitchen/Floors
- Clean the counters
- Deep Clean Something
- Organize something
- Clean-out the fridge
- Sweep & mop our tile floors (which includes our main floor — I do all of the tile on that day)
You’ll see that I front-load our week a lot. I’m freshest, and at my best on Mondays, much less so on Fridays — so make it work for you! (I realize this isn’t true for a lot of people)
Tuesdays: Bathrooms
I should say that I don’t feel an urge to clean my ENTIRE bathroom every week — we get to the tubs/showers and hands and knees for the floor on the weekends. I tend to just do what bothers me, and anything that is gross. You do what works for you.
- Counters
- Mirrors
- Toilet
- Floor around toilet
- Organize anything that’s not working in the bathroom
My kids clean their own bathroom — and I start this early as possible. I start with them cleaning the counter, or some of the floor (kids are close to the floor — so that works well) and slowly add things as they get bigger.
Wednesdays: Bedrooms & Vacuuming
- Vacuum all the carpeted areas in the house
- Organize in the bedroom
You can see that my energy for the week has already started to peter out…. this day is lighter, and it will continue to get lighter through the end of the week.
Thursdays: Downstairs Rooms
We have a home office, a guest room/YouTube filming room, and a playroom downstairs.
Because we’re not down here a whole lot I tend to just pick an organizing project down there. I’m slowly going through our old toys to either donate or keep the items.
Fridays: Living Room/Dining Room (which is also my office)
I like to do this on Fridays in case we’re having company over the weekend.
- Dust the room (we have dark furniture)
- Vacuum out the couch/flip cushions every now and then
- Organize anything in that area
Saturday: Family Clean
I detail this in Family Routines, but it is just about 20 minutes where we go through the house and pick stuff up — mostly just tidy it, and then we deep clean an area — all together (because I desperately needed my kids to learn how to clean and I slowly realized I was going to be the example in that process).
Every week of the month is assigned an area to deep clean:
- Week One: Kitchen
- Week Two: Bathrooms (this is when we do showers/floors)
- Week Three: Bedrooms (including window sills, baseboards, etc)
- Week Four: Living Room (this is usually when the couch gets a more thorough look at, and we also dust our ceiling fans)
- If there’s a 5th week we often deep clean the freezer that week.
Does this always go according to the “plan”? No. Not at all. Often we skip the bedroom week if we’re gone or lazy one week, but I try to do the other weeks on Saturday as the main goal is to teach the kids how to do it.
We’re really just aiming for 20 minutes of deep cleaning amongst all of us — and it’s surprising how much can be done in those 20 minutes.
I also like to have some upbeat music on during that time too.
FYI, I also have my kids doing their own areas on this same routine. They have jobs in the kitchen on Monday, bathrooms Tuesdays, etc…. It’s all routine at our house!
I see a lot of hate online for giving kids jobs around the house, but I couldn’t disagree more and having had kids who moved out — I know these skills that I have helped to build will be worthwhile!
Looking for more cleaning tips? — be sure to check out these posts:
- Smelly Fridge – Here’s the Easy Ways to Clean It
- How to Clean Tile Floors
- I love cleaning {I know, I’m Crazy}: Six things to like about cleaning
- Splitting Household Chores in Marriage
- Why I Don’t Have a Cleaning Lady
Do I do nothing else?
I do a 10 minute tidy each morning. Many people call that a “reset” — it’s normally me emptying the drainer, putting dishes in the dishwasher people left out, cleaning off anything that got dumped somewhere. It’s just a quick run-through.
Think that sounds helpful — I have a little challenge right here for you:
When I had little kids I also did 5 minutes in the evening that was often me pushing a battery vacuum around to get what the toddler spilled, but we now have a robot vacuum that does most of that.
If you feel like you want to clean your bathroom counters daily, or sweet up everywhere daily — do that — I just don’t, and that’s OK too.
You Do You
Whenever I type out this list I worry that people will be grossed out that I don’t clean our shower or bathroom floors weekly.
But, we have tile that is basically the color of dirt, and I have tried to schedule it at a timeframe that I think it’s just starting to get gross when we clean it.
It is a level of dirt that I’m OK with.
You might want to go longer, or shorter, and that’s OK. We’re all doing what works for us.
What did the cleaning schedule do for me?
When I started working as a labor nurse I quickly realized my house was getting out of control, and it just made it hard for me to feel “safe” to sit down because ALL of these things felt like they should get done RIGHT NOW.
Instead, I know that the bathroom will get cleaned on Tuesdays, and as long as it’s not grossing me out too much, it can wait.
Also, no area got lost.
I have also edited this through the years, moving houses and kids getting older, what needed to be cleaned changed. BUT, the basic framework has stayed the same and it still works.
Also, when I started to work full time on my content creation/podcasting/courses business and my husband stayed home, we knew what needed to be done, and it made it easier to share chores.
I have all the tasks in a to do list and it really makes it easy!
So, do you think a cleaning schedule will work for you? How do you think you’ll organize it? Tell me in the comments!
And, grab the printable version right here:
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