One thing that has really helped in our quest to enjoy our weekday evenings a bit more is to be organized about how we keep the house clean. Mr. Garland couldn’t care less if the house is messy, but if I don’t wake up to a clean and organized house, I start to feel a bit crazy. Mr. Garland seems to have selective blindness when it comes to messes around the house, so I found that it seemed I was barely keeping up with cleaning during the week and then spending a good chunk of my weekend catching up. Not fun!
We finally sat down one evening and talked about how we could fix things. We landed on the idea of a cleaning schedule, where we each have set tasks to take care of each weeknight and (hopefully) nothing left to do but enjoy ourselves and maintain things on the weekend
(Since everyone who comes to our house asks…the “t-shirts” task is for Mr. Garland to wash his t-shirts – he prefers to have them hang-dried and I got tired of doing it for him, so now he’s in charge of it!)
We posted the schedule on the fridge and so far it’s been working great. It only takes us about 20 minutes each night to get through our tasks, and the entire house feels so much cleaner! Here’s a quick rundown of how we put it together:
We started by making a list of all of the major cleaning tasks that need to be taken care of throughout the week. This isn’t about deep cleaning, just basic maintenance. Once we had our list, it was time to start divvying things up. I tried to give Mr. Garland the tasks that aren’t quite as noticeable if they don’t get done, and I gave myself the tasks that would drive me crazy if they aren’t done each and every week. Mr. Garland’s job often has a wacky schedule during the weeks, so there will be nights that he doesn’t get home until after Jackson is in bed – it’s hard for him to get motivated to take care of cleaning when he’s been working that long, so sometimes his stuff doesn’t get done. For that reason, I also built in a “catch up” day on Friday for those weeks where we just can’t squeeze everything in.
We were awesome about using this when we first got it set up, but have slacked off a bit over the last few weeks. I’m determined to get back on track now, though, because it was amazing for my stress level to have all of these things taken care of during the week and not saved up for the weekend!
Do you have a cleaning schedule for your home? How do you and your partner ensure a fair split of household responsibilities?
wonderful pea / 17279 posts
I am cleaning-adverse, but your nightly chore list isn’t so bad. Clean up at our house is more so my husband begins and I help him. He tackles the major bomb our bedroom & bathroom. I tackle the family room & kitchen. The family room is really like lost & found and things just need to go back to their correct homes.
apricot / 317 posts
It took a long time to get into a good routine. We love FlyLady in our house! Although I’m not always true to her schedules, we always do the basics nightly : dishes/countertops, vacuuming, and laundry. And now that we have a young boy in foster care (in addition to our son), I’m having to clean their bathroom nightly, too (yuk!). I find that if those things are at least done, the house is pretty livable until I can get to the weekend!
coffee bean / 42 posts
I’ve considered using a schedule, especially since I’ve seen so many great ideas on pinterest. I’ve also found that getting into a routine has been very helpful. Since my daughter was around 18 mo, I realized that I had to vacuum/mop everyday just to keep up with the crumbs that were getting everywhere! I found it easiest to just do so after she had dinner, while my husband was washing her hands. I also found something that vacuums and mops at the same time (bissell symphony), which has made things SO much easier.
pear / 1696 posts
We need to do this! Here is one I found on little green notebook that I have been meaning to start doing for years!
http://littlegreennotebook.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-cleaning-process-and-500-give-away.html
grapefruit / 4187 posts
Our cleaning lady comes every other Thursday and we do almost nothing in between her visits. Of couse we spot-clean as needed and always wipe down kitchen counters. With laundry we dont have a schedule, but i throw it in once the hampers are looking full and always during the week.
cherry / 110 posts
We do dishes every night, does that count?
grape / 98 posts
We are moving in the next few months and I plan on implementing this when we get settled in: thanks for the inspiration!