Housecleaning Schedule

Someone has asked me about my housecleaning schedule.

Up until a couple of years ago, we always took off a week from school a couple of times a year to have a big housecleaning. The kids hated it. They hated being off from school and being forced to spend that time doing heavy cleaning.

So I changed the way we do it. I made a list of all the jobs we would normally do during spring cleaning. My list includes things like dusting the baseboards, vacuuming the blinds, washing curtains, cleaning the oven, etc. I do not include the things we do on a weekly basis. I divided it into rooms and listed the jobs for that room with a place beside each job to write a date.

I don't have drawer or closet cleaning on my list. When those need to be done, I try to fit it in on a day that's not our cleaning day. I just make a note on my to-do list and work it into my week.

Every week when we do our usual cleaning, I look at the list and choose one extra thing to do. I assign someone (or myself) to do that extra job. I write the date beside the job on my paper so I can keep up with when the job was last done.

The house stays cleaner because the different tasks get done more often. And because each task gets done more often, there's less energy that has to be expended to get it done (it's easier to clean something that's not terribly dirty, in other words).

Vacation from school can be relaxing now!