Daily Cleaning Checklist

Daily cleaning shouldn’t mean you are making your house perfect. That is a set up for burnout, frustration, and a stressful living situation. I firmly believe your daily cleaning checklist shouldn’t take any more than 15 minutes to complete.

The goal with daily cleaning should be tidy, not perfect. Additionally, your house should look clean but lived in. If your house absolutely always has to look like a model home you and your family will suffer. You are a busy person, your family is busy, and making the house perfect just sets you up for additional stress on top of your busy life.

In this post I’m sharing the small cleaning tasks that can be done in less than 15 minutes a day that will give you a tidy home.

Daily Cleaning

For those of us who would rather push off cleaning as the absolute last thing that needs to be done, daily cleaning will often get pushed off for days at a time. Leaving you stuck with a huge cleaning job that needs to get done.

It took me awhile to learn that small daily habits and daily cleaning could actually make my house look clean all the time. Is it realistic though? Yes, it is.

Mom teaching daughter how to hand wash dishes

You see I used to work a full time job, while raising a kid, and starting a business. My schedule was packed. So I would push off cleaning until my day off and then spend an hour or more cleaning my house, on my only day off. Nobody wants to do that.

So I started daily habits that would help keep my house clean. That’s when I figured out I could actually spend my days off enjoying my family instead of stressing out over the house.

Daily cleaning doesn’t mean your house should look perfect. This is especially true if you have children. No matter how much you encourage them to play in their room or pick up their toys after use, their toys will be in your living room.

No matter what there will be dishes in the sink, dirty clothes in the hamper, and a crumb or two on the floor. A house doesn’t need to be perfect, it needs to be good enough.

Daily Cleaning Schedule

A daily cleaning schedule is not and should not be a set time when you do your cleaning but rather an ever running list of things to tidy up after use.

It should be running your dishwasher daily, if needed. Maybe starting a load of laundry, as needed. Running the vacuum when you notice pet hair or crumbs. Putting the toys away and throw pillows back on the couch. Finally, wiping counters after use so that they stay cleaner longer.

Daily cleaning doesn’t mean your house is perfect, it means it is tidy. And if there is a stray block that is missed or your kids bookshelf explodes all over the floor it’s ok.

Your daily cleaning is important to keeping your home tidy but it’s not an hour or two of scrubbing every day. Nobody has time for all of that.

Daily Cleaning List

A daily cleaning list will vary from home to home. It’s based on how many pets you have, kids you have, what their ages are, and what you can commit to.

Your daily cleaning should be easy – 5 minute or less – tasks that get done at different times of the day.

In the morning, you would empty the clean dishes from your dishwasher and clean up any breakfast mess. You would also make sure your pajamas end up in the hamper instead of the floor of the bathroom. You may also quickly wipe out the sink after you use it to fix your hair and brush your teeth.

In the afternoon, you would clean up lunch by loading dishes into the dishwasher and wiping down counters. You may also pick up a few toys and tidy up your living room.

By evening, you could load dinner dishes into your dishwasher and start it. Wipe down the kitchen counters and tidy up any leftover toys in your living room.

Happy mother and children placing glasses in dishwasher

These small tasks take less than 5 minutes but mean all the difference in keeping your house looking clean.

Then as needed you would dust, clean windows, vacuum, and wash floors. Cleaning in this way takes off the pressure and expectations you hold on how clean your house really needs to be.

When it comes down to it the cleanliness of your home is really based on the expectations you set upon yourself. When you change those expectations from perfect to good enough you decrease the amount of tasks that need to get done and stop the stress.

My recommendation is to keep a daily cleaning checklist to get you into the habit of starting your daily cleaning routine. I created a cleaning schedule in my bullet journal but you could use a spreadsheet, checklist app on your phone, or simple pen and paper.

Include the tasks that are most important to making your house look clean:

Check off your daily cleaning every day as you complete it until it becomes second nature to you.

Remember, if you take a day off, that’s ok. Just don’t let your daily cleaning go too long. If you skip the afternoon tasks or morning tasks that’s fine. If you decide to cuddle your spouse instead of cleaning up after dinner, that’s a good thing.

Your daily cleaning checklist should be a guideline not a necessary must do list.

Daily Cleaning Routine

Having an easy daily cleaning routine makes all the difference between your house looking messy all the time to having a house that’s lived in but clean.

Good enough is what you should be going for. Perfect is not going to happen all the time and it shouldn’t. Perfect causes stress on you and you are too busy and enjoying your life too much to be worried about making your house look perfect.

What things will you include in your daily cleaning routine? Let me know in the comments below. Follow me on Pinterest for more like this and pin this to your favorite cleaning boards.

Related Posts:

Facebook

Twitter

Daily Cleaning Checklist – What Should Be On It?