Creating a housekeeping routine that actually works for busy lives

I used to spend 2-4 hours a week on Sundays cleaning my house. And that was when I was single and had a 700 square foot cottage. Ha! Can you imagine what it would look like now with a husband and a much larger home with a yard?! I’ve finally figured out a way to keep a clean house without spending hours cleaning on the weekends. In fact, I purposely created this schedule so I DON’T clean on the weekends. 

My cleaning schedule is centered around my husband’s work schedule, since his is more routine than mine, but still gets everything done without stress or more than an hour a day. Sound appealing? It does take some initial setup but I’ll walk you through it.

I start with a brain dump of all the chores. Every. Little. Thing. And even the chores you hardly ever do but should do and usually forget about (*cough* changing furnace filters *cough*). 

Next, start labeling. Color code if that’s your thing or just label each chore based on how often you think it needs to be done based on your household. Here’s how I categorized my chores: once a week (W), once a day (D), once a month (M) and every other week (EOW). While you do this, I highly encourage you to give yourself grace. It would be awesome to be superwoman and be able to do every chore every day and still manage everything else but is that realistic? Also consider items that are just “as needed” like laundry or taking out the trash. I put those items on the daily list. 

With your list labeled, use the template provided, to create your schedule. Focusing only on the items labeled “weekly”, separate them into the days boxes. I suggest assigning the chores you hate the most to the first day or two. I have a five day schedule but honestly, with my husband’s four day workweek, I’ll often put days together because let’s be honest, I don’t get much done with my husband around. You may be wondering what to do with the monthly items. Repeat what you just did but this time separating the items into four weeks. Some chores only need to be done every other week or once every three months. For those chores, make a note on the weekly or monthly list. For example, on my weekly list, I have “baseboards/cabinets” because I found I can get away with only doing them twice a month. I found I can also get away with changing my furnace filter every three months so it’s on my monthly list but I only do it if it’s month 3, 6, 9 or 12. These are things you may already know about your house or you may need to test out your cleaning schedule first. 

Now that you have your cleaning schedule, it’s time to test it out. Understand this is, and allow it to be, a living document. It isn’t set in stone but I would encourage you to live with your list for at least three months before making any changes. On my first schedule, I had “clean bathrooms” on my fourth day and “wash sheets” on my first day. I found that doesn’t work since by day four, I’m wiped and definitely don’t want to wipe any toilets. Making the simple switch not only gets the bathrooms done every week but I also go into my week feeling accomplished because I already got my worst chore out of the way. I also realized changing the days from the days of the week to just numbered days gave me more flexibility to arrange my days as I needed to based on my schedule that week. 

Using a flexible and personalized cleaning schedule will help you be intentional about your time – this way you can prioritize monthly chores over more frequent ones – and give yourself grace. No one can be perfect 100% of the time. Some weeks, it might be hard enough just to get out of bed or your dog needs two vet appointments in one week or maybe you have less time because of all the family bonding you were having, and that’s okay. Give yourself grace to not be perfect and allow life to happen. The point of this is to create a way to stay on top of your chores without feeling stressed, scheduling a “cleaning/chore day” or feeling like you need to apologize when visitors show up unannounced.