Use A Cleaning Schedule To Conquer Messes

i used to do cleaning on saturndays, but last month has been hell on the office, forcing me to work part of my saturnday and even on sunday, of course leaving me with no desire to do anything. i do dishes and take my garbage out, but i ended hiring a girl to do the rest once a week.

@M_Hagen: That site helped me an awful lot during a time when I kept falling further and further behind. If anyone is feeling like they're losing ground it's a good place to start.

And yeah, I still keep my shiny kitchen sink shiny and dry.

Jake712

If you can get past the color scheme/cuteness - [flylady.net]

I'm sure she's been mentioned before.

M_Hagen

@wickedcupofjoe: whoa... Fridays are a real bummer!

I tend to go with the 'let it build up until I suddenly get the cleaning bug' type of schedule. Thankfully that bug hits me frequently enough that it rarely gets out of hand. The downside is that sometimes dishes sit in the sink for a couple of days. Oh well, no system is perfect.

JayDeEm

I do something similar only I break it down into days/rooms/chores.

Example:
Mondays may be: kitchen, bathroom, vacuum all rooms.
Tuesdays may be: living room, office, laundry.
Wednesdays: bathroom, bedrooms, vacuum all.
Thursdays: laundry, play room, dining room.
Fridays: dust all, vacuum all, windex all.

Not a bad system - especially for keeping a place clean and maintaining it. Sure everyone says "why don't you just clean up right after you make a mess," but they forget about the regular maintenance and little things you have to do to keep a clean living space when you're not immediately cleaning a mess you've just made.

Things like the occasional vacuum or the laundry or dusting - things you want to put on some kind of schedule so you do them, but don't want to leave up to your whim...because then you'll never do it.

@Stirk: I like this idea. A lot of people clean, but not a lot of people manage to clean and de-clutter - a lot of people just wind up cleaning their clutter and wonder why things don't feel more bright and open.

De-cluttering, while maybe it shouldn't be right on the schedule, should definitely be something to do regularly. Helps you trim down to the things you really need and enjoy, you know?

I miss the days when a mess was my mess.

@TheFu: The Next Arrival: 6/13 - ouch!

TheFu

@SterlingCrispinus: My cleaning schedule involves house guests arrival. I clean as much as I can that morning. Dishes usually get done first, then toilets, followed by non-carpeted floors. Everything gets vacuumed.

We moved so often, that as I child, I never saw this "spring cleaning" thing that people talk about. I've lived in my current home long enough now that dirt like I've never seen before in my life is visible. Moving seems like an easier answer to cleaning at this point.

TheFu

I also find that reserving 15-30 minutes after dinner every weekday to pick *something* to clean, no matter what, translates to a perpetually clean home and nothing to fret over on weekends.:). I also appreciate the activity after spending all day sitting in front of the computer, so it's not even like work! Agree completely that uncluttering is the first major step :)

PrimoOrion

@cmart2112: I have one too. I make a mess then i set it on fire. Really simple and provides great light for reading.

hadees

uhhhhh... I have a GREAT system. I make a mess... then I clean it up. Pretty simple.

Yeah, I got me one of them cleaning schedules! I clean my kitchen once a year, whether it needs it or not. Same with the bathroom. Right on schedule.

SterlingCrispinus

The 15 minute rule works for me. Just spend 15 minutes when you get home on whatever needs the most attention. Usually I'm doing dinner prep or reheating something during this time anyways. Even a messy home will be drastically improved over a week with 15 minutes a day of completely focused cleaning.

SamburgerHandwich

@Stirk:

Great advice, thanks!

I've been going through a cleaning rebirth. I find that getting your residence to the point where you can do the simple 7 point list is one of the greater challenges of mankind.. Clutter is the enemy.

The trick is to face it head on. Barnstorm your way through room after room with a great big garbage bag, and declutter. Throw out the biggest offenders first. It makes you feel like you've done more, subconsiously.

Then, once you're staring at a fully cleaned and organized place.. start making those schedules.

Best of luck to you all!

I clean my house once a week on the same cycle: scrub the bathrooms, vacuum the floors and under the furniture, then dust. Sunday is washday for laundry and stripping the bed. Let the bed air out all day and then put on new sheets. Dishes are done everyday, so are kitchen messes. Garbage goes out when full or malodorous.

SurabhiNymph

Since I don't have a house-sized residence of my own, I tend to divide up my own version of the tasks above across 7 days and can't say that I feel like I'm devoting more time to a given task than I normally would if I were trying to fit all of them in post-work day. What can I say - Judge Joe Brown sits on the DVR all day and the man doesn't want to wait any longer than he has to.

Any clean-up involving my dog (cleaning furniture, rugs, etc.) usually waits until early Sat. or Sun., though I could use a 2nd mid-week time slot, too.

Chadams28

i got married so i won't have to do this stuff again... but i might suggest it to my lady. ;o)

iamellis

@M_Hagen: Beware, use a special email/filter if you sign up to her mailing list - you will be bombarded with emails.

KittyKittyKitty

@M_Hagen: I second the notion: the FlyLady is the best! Her ideas are also vintage: don't know why LifeHacker thought they were so new. She's covered everything mentioned in this article in some form.

And, believe it or not, she's been feeding people tips and tricks since before the Web was a Big Deal.

Daily list is good; weekly on dusting, vacuuming and cleaning the bathroom. I also have an EOM [end of month] list where I defrost my tiny refrigerator freezer, clean the coffee maker and Hotshot with vinegar which I then pour down drains to clean them out; and mop the bathroom. Other chores fall in the end of season [every 3 to 4 month] lists: clean windows, dust ceiling fans, clean baseboards/woodwork, flip or turn the mattress. Routine and ritual, baby! Get 'er done.

rolltimer

For those of you trying to put something like this into permanent practice, try keeping on it for 21 days or more. Then it will become automatic:
[answers.google.com]

twigg

My mantra is "it's easier to clean something that is clean than something that is dirty."

Therefore I try to take care of dirty dishes immediately (before they are dry and crusted over) and I keep a bottle of spray cleaner and paper towels under every sink in the house. They get cleaned immediately that way.

Our dishwasher gets run every night and emptied every morning. It's a routine I can perform on auto-pilot even if I was up all night on call or something.

Picking up a "clean" room just takes a few minutes and then we're set for our housekeeper who comes in once a week to do the heavy jobs of floors, baseboards and bathrooms.

@M_Hagen: I tried the Flylady's site, and found some of the hints there were very good. I used to keep on the shiny sink thing too, but admittedly I've fallen off that wagon.

I did find the site a bit floofy and ethereal at times, and I had a feeling that it wasn't focused to my "team" as it were (males), but the hints are valid, solid and very useful.

To the rest of the readers, if you haven't checked it out, it is worth a peek, especially if you're like Jake up there who was falling behind. Give it a peek!

@phoenix: It's amazing how much lighter your place feels with a couple hundred pounds of nonsense removed. I'm in the process of moving into my smaller secondary bedroom so the Mrs. and I can use the master as a photo studio for our budding business.

We've had to de-clutter in the most agressive way possible, but it's true what they say around this site about decluttering.. you can live a more productive life without wading through mounds of stuff you really don't need.

I've been doing something like this for a while with RTM. What's neat about RTM is that instead of saying do this every Thursday, you can specify recurring events to happen X days after you last did it that way you're not locked into a 7 day cycle.

Example you could have a task like vacuum the front room happen every 10 days. That way if you don't get around to a task till 2 days after its due, the next time the task is due it'll be 10 days later not 8. That way you don't waste time doing the task too early before it really needs it. There's nothing to say you can't complete a task early either, the next time its due will still be ten days.

1) I know that I always have more energy in the morning hours, especially right after I wake up. Since that is the case I save my cleaning spurts for that time.

2) I read in a magazine once that you should make a playlist on your iPod that lasts for about fifteen minutes. All cleaning that is done in spurts should be done within fifteen minutes. It sounds tight, but it is definitely doable.

3) Do the "Martha Stewart" approach. Martha once said that to keep things tidy she picks up any items that are out of place when she is moving from one room to another, even if it is just to go to the restroom or get a snack. This is also tried and true for our home.

4) Plot a daily schedule for rooms. This room schedule will to be to clean at least one room top to bottom. This means going all out, but as long as it is just one room it generally can be done pretty quickly. As long as each room is done once a week, it stays a pretty short task. Sometimes if I have something to do later in the week I may even pick up another room in the beginning so that I don't have so much pressure when I had made plans,

I'd love to have a housekeeper, but since I don't, I've got a modified flylady.net routine.

Monday is clean the livingroom.
Tuesday is clean the master bedroom.
Wednesday is clean the kitchen.
Thursday is clean the utility room.
Friday is office and shop bathroom and the home office.
Saturday is the main house bathroom.
Sunday is the master bedroom bathroom.
My daughter cleans her room on her own schedule.

There are chores that are daily- empty dishwasher, mop the kitchen floor after lunch, tidy the livingroom at the end of the day, quick go over of the bathrooms every morning. The dishes are done and in the dishwasher after every meal and then run once a day.

Then monthly I have a routine as well:
The first week of the month is entries and porches and the diningroom - 15 minutes a day.
The second week is the kitchen - again 15 minutes a day.
The third week is the office and main bathroom - you guessed it 15 minutes a day.
The fourth week is the master bedroom and bathroom, then the remaining few days of the month is the livingroom.

In this way, I'm cleaning house in littles all the time. Which makes the bulk tasks at the quarters of the year easier.

We own our own business and I'm the bookkeeper/office manager and cleaner.

I'm not always successful at this either. It's a guide and I try to follow it as much as I can. But I keep at it, hoping it will become habit.

FollowMal

My 15 month old daughter has a system of her own.
It goes:

1. Drop crumbs all over the floor while having your dinner.
2. Wander around picking up crumbs off the floor and eating them if your parents take their eyes off you for more than a nanosecond.
3. Freak out if anyone even attempts to switch on the vacuum cleaner.

One solution is to eat outside when the weather's nice. That way the birds usually get to the crumbs first.

PaulOfCongleton