I’m sure this has happened to most of us. We walk into our house, have a look around, and notice what a complete mess it is. We ask ourselves “How did it get like this?” Then we all give the excuse “I just do not have time!” Well, I’m here to give you some simple ideas and outlines to help you keep your home clean no matter how little time you have. I’ll try my best to keep this outline as brief as possible, your already short on time as it is right?
I’m going to ask you to take a few minutes to sit down and evaluate your house. Get yourself a notepad and a good ink pen. This shouldn’t take long and will be well worth it! You’re only going to need to do this once. If it’s easier for you to walk around the house to evaluate each room then grab a clipboard and get moving. Start at one end of the house and then work your way to the other. For each room make a list of all the tasks that need to get done. Example, in your bathroom your list may include: clean showers and tubs, clean toilets, clean countertops and sinks, clean mirrors, clean area rugs, ect.
Once you have this list we will now make a weekly outline that you can follow to get these tasks done. Now what you will need to do is get 7 index cards. You will use these to write your to-do lists on. Index cards will keep the list short and to the point and you can easily bring it to the room that you are working on. Put your room lists in order of priority and make an index card for each room that includes all the tasks that need to be done in that room. This is my the order that my index cards are in: Kitchen, Living room, Dining Room, Nursery and Guest Room, Master Bedroom, Bathrooms and Laundry Room, and then Office. Then list a day for each room. I start with the Kitchen on Monday and end with the Office on Sunday. If you notice in my list I saved the bathrooms for the weekend. This is because it usually takes me a bit longer to get them done than the other rooms. My office is usually clean so I saved that for Sunday so that I could have an “easy” day.As you progress through your week try to keep up the cleaned rooms as much as possible. If you do a really good job cleaning your rooms then this shouldn’t be hard. Remember this simple rule: You take it out, you put it up. This will prove to be a VERY big time saver. By the time Sunday comes around you will have a nice clean house. Then when you start over the next week it will be much easier to clean each room than it was the first time around. You may also want to tack on two extra tasks to your lists. These tasks are laundry and dishes. I alternate these two tasks every other day. This helps me to keep up with these tasks and not forget to do them. When you use this method of room-by-room day-by-day cleaning, you are able to really notice a difference in your house right away and your family will to (even your husband will notice!). I truly hope that you will give this method a try for at lest two weeks. Remember week two will be easier than week one and before you know it you will have memorized your cards and you’ll know what to expect each day. Good luck and have fun with it!
