My Weekly Cleaning
In my scheme to keep things clean, I work daily on my rotation (Getting Started: The Basic Housework Rotation), but there are things that need to be kept up with more often.
How disgusting would it be if the bathrooms were left completely alone and only cleaned once a month? I don’t know about your home, but in mine that would mean things would grow that would need a lion tamer to subdue.
Heavily Used = More Attention
The heavily used areas of the home need more attention. There is also some built in trickiness here: by hitting the “obvious” stuff weekly, people will automatically assume your home is much cleaner than it may be.
Designing Your Weekly Swoop
It is easy to decide what needs to be done weekly.
List Your Rooms
Sit down and list your rooms. (If you have done the rotation, use the same rooms). Cross off any room that isn’t used daily. Cross off any room that isn’t on the “company tour”. Leave on rooms that require sanitation upkeep.
Figure Out What Makes It Look Cleanest
Look at your list of rooms. What makes these rooms look clean? For example, walking into someone’s house, I would notice piles of shoes or clutter around the door, dirty floors or obvious levels of dust (my nose would recognize the last, rather than my eyes). In a bathroom, I would notice a dirty sink, toilet or floor. In the kitchen I would notice trash, dirty sinks, a dirty dining room table and a messy stove.
Figure Out “Sanitary” Measures
These things, outside of the true sanitary items, are things like clean towels and sheets. We generally each use the same bath towel for a week, and change the sheets on the beds every week. This is our personal decision, and is what we are comfortable with as a family. (My mother would disagree about these levels, but then she didn’t work outside the home)
Make Your Task List
From the list above, I am able to figure out what to do weekly. I have a large house, so I break it up into two sessions, neither of which take more than 20 minutes. Here are my lists:
Upstairs
- Change towels and sheets (2 bedrooms)
- Clean toilets, sinks, mirrors and floors in both bathrooms
- Dust
Downstairs
- Change out placemats and scrub down table
- Sweep and quick mop all non-carpeted floors
- Clean powder room toilet, sink and mirror, and change out hand towels
- Clean kitchen counters, scrub out sink and clean off stovetop
- Dust
The carpets I leave to the robot vacuum, which gives a double benefit: the floor stays uncluttered, and is pretty clean. The garbage I leave to my husband, who dutifully empties it every Thursday.
Setting up a weekly cleaning schedule is easy, and keeps my house in a state that can receive visitors almost at any time.
Photo by jake_moomaw
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