Create A Cleaning Schedule That Actually Works

Learning how to create an effective and efficient cleaning schedule takes more than just creating a daily, weekly, or monthly to do list. It means really looking at your home and schedule. It means figuring out your cleaning priorities. Once this is done you can create a cleaning schedule that works well for you and your family.

A cleaning schedule shouldn’t be complicated and sticking to a cleaning schedule should never mean that your life revolves around it. Instead your cleaning schedule should work with your life.

To take it a step further, your cleaning schedule should make it possible that if you skip cleaning for a day your house should still look clean. Today I am going to teach you exactly how to get to that point.

Why You Need A Cleaning Schedule
Not Just Any Cleaning Schedule Will Work
How To Set Up A Cleaning Schedule For Home
Printable Cleaning Schedule

Why You Need A Cleaning Schedule

Cleaning schedules are important for more than just your everyday cleaning. All too often life keeps us busy and we forget to clean certain items in your home. A cleaning schedule helps to make sure that you get all the nooks and crannies of your home clean.

How often have you forgotten to change a furnace filter, clean your light fixtures and ceiling fans, or pull out your appliances and clean behind them. Dust gathers in all of these places really easily. Not only can it become a fire hazard but it can cause severe allergies.

Other places that don’t often get cleaned are banisters, door knobs, kitchen cabinets and drawers, and trim in your house. All of these places can hold and spread germs in your home. Keeping them on a cleaning schedule helps to stop the spread of germs while making your home look a lot cleaner.

A Cleaning Schedule Keeps You On Track

Outside of some of these deep cleaning projects sometimes we just need that extra bit of help to make sure that we stay on track. While I fully believe a quick tidy is a great way to make your home look cleaner having a regular cleaning schedule means the most used areas of your home stay clean too.

For instance, our floors get used so much and even if you don’t have animals it’s important to vacuum your home regularly to help keep your air clean of dust.

Everyday we lose hair, shed skin cells, track dirt into our home, and drop crumbs of food on our floors. While a quick tidy helps to make your home look cleaner we need to sweep, dust, mop, and vacuum often to keep the air quality in our homes good.

A cleaning schedule keeps you on track to make sure that your home is actually clean. Even if there are toys strewn around your living room.

A Cleaning Schedule Can Get Your Family Involved

A cleaning schedule also helps you to get your family involved in cleaning up your home. There is nothing more stressful for a parent to come home and be the only one keeping the house clean. It leads to resentment and arguments which are all avoidable with a good cleaning schedule.

Introducing a cleaning schedule into your home and family allows your family to be aware of what tasks need to get done each day. A husband can see that dusting the ceiling and walls needs to be done or light fixtures need to be cleaned and he can help.

A child will see her chore list includes dusting end tables, dining room chairs, coffee tables, and cleaning their room and without you needing to tell them they get it done.

The cleaning schedule can also be decided on by the whole family because the whole family lives in the house. Everyone should pull their own weight.

A Cleaning Schedule Helps Start Better Habits

Speaking of family, a cleaning schedule can help you teach your kids good cleaning habits. This way when they grow up and are living on their own they can keep their house, apartment, or dorm room clean.

It can also help you with your own cleaning habits. If you are like me and suffer from epic laziness – small simple habits like loading and running the dishwasher, tidying up, and wiping down counters daily can go a long way to shortening cleaning time.

How Not Just Any Cleaning Schedule Will Work

Not just any old cleaning schedule will work for every family. Let’s face it we all live very different lives and have different motivating factors.

I’m a work at home mom, with a work at home husband, and one almost 4 year old son. I used to be a full time working mom, with a work at home husband, and a toddler. As my schedule changed so did my cleaning schedule. So did the things that I felt were important to do on a daily basis.

Your Schedule Is Different

Your day to day schedule is different from mine. This means my personal cleaning schedule may not work for you.

A working mom does not have the time to devote daily to cleaning up the home that I do. It’s just a fact of life. To be honest a working mom should have a bit more down time because dealing with people everyday is exhausting.

A stay at home mom to several children is not going to have the same schedule as I do either. She has more children to feed, get snacks for, play with, clean up, and entertain than I do. Additionally the stay at home mom works damn hard and deserves some down time too.

Even other work at home moms are not going to have the same schedule that I have. Even though we are both work at home moms, I work from 9am to 5 pm Monday through Friday with the ability to take a few days off or breaks when needed. I know not every work at home mom keeps that schedule.

Every household needs to come up with a schedule that works around their work, personal time, family time, and school time. No cleaning schedule will ever be identical to another.

Your Home Layout Is Different

I live in a 3 bedroom townhome with an open floor plan between the kitchen and the living room. We have 3 bathrooms and a mixture of wood floors, tile, and a thick shag carpet. Unless you are the townhome right next to me you probably don’t have the same layout I do.

Believe it or not the layout of your home can completely change the way you clean your home. If your laundry is upstairs you may clean your entire upstairs once a week when you do laundry.

You might tidy and clean up the downstairs daily but you sweep, vacuum, and mop your entire downstairs all in one day because of an open floor plan. If you don’t have this same floor plan you don’t need to and it might be beneficial for your schedule to split it up.

Different home layouts means we must have a cleaning schedule that caters to our own needs. What works for your neighbor down the street, me or another blogger doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you.

Your Priorities Are Different

As long as my floors are clear of clutter regularly I count my floors as clean. Sure I sweep and vacuum weekly – and I wash my floor every couple of weeks or monthly – the floors themselves are just not a huge priority for me.

My priority is making sure the toys are picked up and my kitchen counters are clear of clutter and crumbs. That is what matters the most to me.

Obviously you may feel that your bathrooms need to be spotless. Maybe you want vacuum lines in your carpet. Or perhaps it’s a made bed every single day.

That’s great! However, it does mean that our two cleaning schedules are not going to look the same. They are going to look very different because our priorities for a clean house are going to reflect in that schedule.

So my cleaning schedule won’t work for you and your cleaning schedule won’t work for me. This means we need to create unique and personal cleaning schedules.

How To Set Up a Cleaning Schedule For Home

I’m going to go through how to set up a cleaning schedule for your home that works best for you and your family. I’ve got helpful tips to help you along your way.

Declutter Your Home

First things first, you must try to declutter your home first. I have a couple of helpful posts on decluttering your home, you can check those out below.

Decluttering your home will help you to get it actually organized in a smart way. Part of why our homes end up looking messy is because we have too much stuff and not enough places to put it.

Decluttering is the first step to making sure your home can get clean and stay cleaner longer. It’s the first step to creating a cleaning schedule that will last you for as long as your day to day schedule, home layout, and priorities remain the same.

Even if there are changes to your schedule, layout, and priorities it will only take a couple of tweaks to get your schedule set right back up to work with it.

Organize Your Home

After you declutter your home and get rid of items you don’t need, don’t use, or don’t want anymore it’s time to organize your space. I have helpful posts for organizing your home – check them out below.

There are two things that I always recommend when organizing your home. Just by doing these two things you can not only maximize your space but keep your house cleaner too.

First, put items where they are most used. For example, I keep a set of scissors in a kitchen drawer where they are easily accessible and so you don’t have to go hunting for them. Also this prevents a pair of scissors just sitting on your counter.

This goes for everything. If you prefer to do your makeup and hair in the bedroom setup a makeup and hair station in your room so you aren’t moving products from the bathroom to the bedroom and back again.

My next tip is utilize creative storage options. This means add shelving up walls, use foot stools that allow storage, and any other creative storage options you can. This will help you to keep your items where they are most used while keeping your home free from clutter.

In planning of my living room I have found several options that will help to make storing toys in the living room and out of sight a lot easier. Using creative storage options I can keep toy clutter off my floors while not having to fight with him about playing in his room.

Set Your Priorities

Once you have your home decluttered and organized you can now sit down and set your list of priorities. What absolutely needs to be cleaned daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. What is important to you to be cleaned or look clean every day.

Setting your priorities will help you to figure out exactly where you need to spend your time cleaning. So if you want all the beds in your home made every morning you can start setting chores and make sure they are done.

Your priorities are going to be the biggest deciding factor in how you set up your cleaning schedule.

Daily Cleaning Schedule

Once you know what your priorities are you can better decide which chores are going to be done daily. Below are some posts that help you decide and plan your daily cleaning list.

Your daily chores should be simple things that help to make your home look completely spotless while not taking loads of times. Your daily tidying should make your weekly chores go faster so you can stop spending all weekend cleaning and actually live your life.

Weekly Cleaning Schedule

Weekly chores are all those bigger cleaning jobs like vacuuming, dusting, washing windows, and doing laundry. These chores don’t have to all be done in one day. If you have a busy schedule or just feel like splitting them up you can.

Do your floors one day, laundry the next, dusting and windows on the third day, and deep cleaning your kitchen on the fourth. Spreading out your cleaning to a chore a day could help you to make sure that it all gets done during the week and completely frees up your weekend to enjoy family and fun.

If you work a full time job and your just too tired to clean after work everyday consider splitting the chores up over your weekend but do it first thing in the morning so the late morning, afternoon, and evenings can be enjoyed.

Cleaning should never completely run your life. You need to make sure that you allow yourself time to enjoy your life. If cleaning starts taking over your life you need to make sure you sit down and review your schedule to remove any unnecessary chores. Also divvy up those chores to your family too.

Set Up A Monthly Cleaning Schedule

You should only have a few monthly chores. These could be cleaning banisters, railings, door knobs, and trim around doors. You might even add cleaning your fridge and dishwasher to this list.

These chores are meant to stop the spread of germs and dirt in your house so you can keep your family healthier. Spread out your monthly chores over the course of the entire month so you’re only adding one monthly chore to each week.

Quarterly Cleaning Checklist

Quarterly chores are things like cleaning behind appliances and cleaning light fixtures. These things don’t take a load of time but they are often forgotten about and can lead to fire hazards or allergy issues.

Every three months you should move your furniture and appliances to behind and under them clean. You can also clean your baseboards at this time just to get that extra clean look with it.

Bi-Yearly Chores and Spring Cleaning Lists

This is what I call seasonal cleaning. I do Spring and Fall cleaning. In the Spring I clean up the winter mess and pull out all our spring and summer toys and furniture. In the fall we prepare equipment for winter and pull in all our summer stuff.

9 Spring Cleaning Chores For Your Home

During both of these seasons I pull down curtains to wash and take my blinds down to soak them in the bathtub. You can also clean your carpets and the outsides of your windows. This is also a good time to go through a do a decluttering if you need it.

The bi-yearly chores are a great time to do an inventory on your home. It also gives you some time to make sure that you are staying organized and decluttered. You can switch out toys, donate toys and clothing, and donate other items you don’t need.

Keep Your Schedule And Home Layout In Mind

While you are setting up your cleaning schedule make sure that you keep your schedule and the layout of your house in mind. It makes it easier to stick to your cleaning schedule.

If your schedule changes or if you move make sure you take a good look at your cleaning schedule and adjust as necessary. While the adjustments might be tiny compared to your entire schedule little changes can help you to save time and be more efficient in your cleaning.

Cleaning Schedule For Moms

Listen mama, you are not the only one living in that house it’s important that you make sure that other people who live there do their chores too. Your life should not revolve around cleaning. Instead cleaning should revolve around your life.

If you just don’t feel like cleaning take a day off. It doesn’t make sense to burn yourself out trying to keep your house Pinterest perfect. Get a cleaning planner that keeps you on track and your house clean, even when your kids spread all their toys all over your living room.

Have you tried a cleaning schedule before? What were some of the struggles you had with sticking to it? Let me know in the comments below. Follow me on Pinterest for more like this and pin this to your cleaning, organizing, and decluttering boards.

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