Creating a cleaning schedule changed my life. I was so lost, with a stressful job, a new baby and in a new location and pulling my house together in a cleaning schedule made SUCH a change. I can’t wait to share it with you!
This post is inspired by my post on my Cleaning Schedule Template. You can find it here: https://www.pullingcurls.com/the-benefits-of-weekly-cleaning-schedule/
You can actually get my actual cleaning schedule sent to you via email right here:
Big thanks to our sponsor The Organized Home. If you’re truly looking to clean less — it is the COURSE FOR YOU! Nothing makes cleaning easier, than having all of your items put away. Be sure to use the coupon code mentioned in the episode!
Things I share in this episode:
- Why a cleaning schedule can be beneficial
- How to start about making a cleaning schedule
- The most important part of a cleaning schedule.
Mentioned in this post:
- My Robot Vacuum Wars
- Making a Cleaning Schedule work for YOU
- All of my cleaning & organization posts
- Family Routines Course with the chapter on getting your family to clean on Saturdays
Check out my other household tips podcasts:
Show Transcription:
Hilary Erickson 0:00
Hey guys, welcome back to the pulling crows podcast today on episode 12. We’re talking about cleaning schedules.
I know you’re thinking like why am I going to listen to a podcast about cleaning schedules and I don’t know that I’ve ever heard another podcast about cleaning schedule. But I wanted to tell you why I find cleaning schedules so important and why Hilary with a one year old and a new job just was like, the brains were exploding out of my head and I had no idea how to keep like moving forward and the cleaning schedule totally helped me out.
I’m going to share my exact cleaning schedule. I’m not talking about like some perfect schedule. Like if I really ran perfectly, this is what we would do. No, this is what we do at our house and I’m going to share an app you can use and how I use it and how it really helps me stay on top of things. Let’s untangle it.
Welcome to the pulling curls podcast where we untangle everything from pregnancy, parenting, home routines, even some family travel because heavens knows our lives are tangled. I’m your host Hilary Erickson.
I remember the first time somebody came up to me and was like, I saw your cleaning schedule. And I was like, Oh, that’s cool. Like, kind of awkward. The she was like, you don’t follow that, do you? And I was like, Yeah, I really wrote that. Because that’s what I do every week. And she was like, You seriously clean your house that much. And I was like, it’s not really that much work. And she was just like, wow, that’s just crazy.
So I feel like when you write out a cleaning schedule, it can be overwhelming when you look at it. Because you know, during the week, you do do a lot of jobs. But each day really isn’t that bad. Now, why do I think cleaning schedules are great, I didn’t follow on for probably my kids first year of life. And I didn’t follow one when I was working as a nurse because my days were totally random. And when I had a day off, I was completely off. And I only worked three days a week because that’s how nurses go. But once I had a kid and I had a little bit more of a set schedule, I was feeling like the whole house was kind of closing in on me and I felt like I needed to do everything every day.
And I was thinking back about what my mom did, and she had a pretty strict cleaning schedule. At least we knew what to do. jobs we were doing each day. And I was thinking, let’s give that a try. Because I was just feeling so overwhelmed with the kid and I was working more than I had. And it was just a lot. So if any of you guys are feeling like that and you’re feeling like the cleaning schedules just going to make it worse, it did not it made it so much better.
Some people feel like a cleaning schedule is going to be too restrictive. But for me, it frees me because I know I only need to do those three to five tasks that day. And then I’m moving on to all the other things that I need to do because clearly cleaning is not the only thing a mom does. I think we all can agree that cleaning is a very small segment of what we do during the day. So I think that it frees up my mind from all of the should do’s and it you know, narrows those down to three to five, do do’s – hhah, do-do’s so
and my house is generally always clean. It’s not immaculate. It doesn’t look like a maids come every day and that’s okay for me. I just want it fairly kept cleaned up feet not sticking to the floor counters look fairly wipe down stuff like that. And I feel like the cleaning schedule also makes it so that I don’t invest a ton of time on any particular day because I find that overwhelming. It ends up getting me really tired and little bit depressed. So I would much prefer just cleaning small amounts each day. And then you know, just getting it over with.
So how do you make a cleaning schedule, there are many ways to making cleaning schedule. And I would encourage you to make a way that makes sense to you. Now I have a post on making a cleaning schedule that works for you. And it gives a few different ways on how to do it. For us we go room by room. So on Mondays we clean the kitchen and the floor on Tuesdays we do the bathroom Wednesdays we do bedrooms, and that includes vacuuming the whole house Thursdays, which is usually the day that I work, I try and clean the office in the playroom if I’m off on those days, and that’s better because those rooms tend to take large amounts of time to like organize and really get through. But if we ignore it for a few weeks, that’s okay. Because you know, it’s generally well kept because of the organization systems that we have in there. And then on Friday, we work on the living room just in case we have guests over on the weekend. That just makes it nice and tidy and I’m not worried about feeling like the house is a mess. We also do a family clean on Saturdays just because I really wanted to get my kids involved in helping clean the house and I talk more about that in my family routines course so I will link that in the show notes.
Sponsor 4:06
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Hilary Erickson 4:35
I actually use a system in my phone called tick tick and it lays out each of the tasks each day so I have it programmed in there clean the bathrooms on Tuesdays and then I also have it programmed in there for like every three weeks we need to clean the shower because I don’t feel like the shower needs to be cleaned every week and clean the tub clean the floors. I don’t feel like those things have to be done every week and some houses they may have because we have enough bathrooms. It just doesn’t feel like It needs to get done every week. So it’s easy and tick tick to be able to differentiate jobs that need to be done weekly, and jobs that need to be done less than weekly.
So what I would do if I was you is I would sit down with a pen and paper and I would make a list of all the main jobs, you could also do it in a spreadsheet, love me some spreadsheets, but I also really like writing things down because that’s me. And then I would also make note of how frequently the jobs need to be done. So sweeping and mopping the floor, that may be an everyday task for you. For me, it’s just once a week because we have a robot vacuum that sweeps the floor a few times a week also. And so the actual sweeping and full mopping of the floor only needs to happen once a week. But every family is going to be totally different. When we were in California, I vacuumed every day under our table because I had small children and life just different when you have tiny people. As you’re making the list. Make note of how often you think that needs to be done.
The most important part of the cleaning schedule is to adjust and refresh it as you go through. If you’re really overwhelmed by one day adjusted, maybe things didn’t need to be done as frequent as you thought they needed to be done. And maybe you give yourself a little leeway. I mean, they areas of our house that get a little bit grungy, like showers and tubs and things like that before they’re on the list to get clean. And that’s okay, like life goes on. We just make it work for us for us. And like the bathroom area, I just have one of those clean the shower, clean the tub, clean the guest room clean the kids bathroom, like each of those is set for once every week, so that they kind of rotate through. So we always clean the main bathroom area, the toilets and stuff like that. And then we have like an extra job of the shower and tub and they rotate through and I have that all set up and tick tick. It just reminds me what needs to be done. I do it and then we move on. So it’s pretty awesome like that,
like in the kitchen. I don’t feel like the microwave has to be cleaned every week. So microwave, sink, stove, all those kind of rotate dishwasher, we rotate through those extra jobs. So each week when we clean the kitchen, we have kind of an extra job while we do it.
So that’s how we do a cleaning schedule. I honestly feel like it just made my life so much easier. I was definitely at a point in my life where I was super overwhelmed could not handle what was going on in my life. And by getting a cleaning schedule. I really felt like I took the reins of it. So if you’re thinking that it’s going to be too much, give it a try. It really helped me out and if you guys have any comments about how a cleaning schedule work for you please leave a comment either in the show notes or on whatever platform you’re listening in. I would love to read them. I’m always interested to hear how people like do cleaning at their house. I’m always interested in other people’s systems. So hopefully this has given you just a glance into our system.
Thanks so much for joining me on today’s episode. I know cleaning schedules doesn’t sound very exciting but honestly it is exciting because it really frees up your brain to tolerate the rest of your life. If you’d like to know more about cleaning schedules, I actually have a few posts that I’m going to link to in the show notes you can check out our show notes at pulling curls .com backslash podcasts or you can search out this episode if you just type in 012 into my search bar it will bring up the cleaning schedule episode with you’re listening to right now
Big thanks to our sponsor the organized home for making this episode possible. You can find out more about it in the show notes or you can just google the organized home it pops right up or you can find it anywhere on my site also under courses if you like today’s episode, I’d love it if you’d Share, Subscribe and review. It really helps out and I really appreciate it when I see those It just warms my heart and I love bringing this kind of episodes to you guys and giving you some ideas to help you out in your home and I hope we’ll have you with us next time we drop episodes every Monday and until then I hope you have a tangle free day.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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