CLEANING SCHEDULES FOR BUSY LIFESTYLES
Keeping up with housework can seem nearly impossible when you have a lot on your plate. Working full-time, cooking meals, raising children, and driving everyone in the family around to all of their various appointments and activities can be exhausting and eat up any free time that you had. You're not alone in your struggle to keep up with it all. Many families resort to putting up with messes and disorganized homes simply to live their lives.
Using a cleaning schedule will help you to get a little bit done each day. If you don't have time for an overhaul, then a schedule is the next best thing. Instead of just cleaning something every day, use these tips to do things a little bit differently. If you do, you can organize things in a way that will help keep the mess at bay so that you don't have so much to do when it is time to clean. With a little diligence, you can get your home back to clean and organized. You'll enjoy the time and money that you save, as well as the stress that you avoid by having a clean, organized home.
Use the first month of your scheduling to figure out what will work best for your lifestyle. If you know that you won't have time to do anything on Wednesdays, leave it off of your schedule. I try to keep up with all of my littlest chores during the week, saving the bigger things and the organizing for the weekend when I have more time.
Figure out what absolutely has to be done every day. This may be a load of laundry, a load of dishes, and taking out the trash. Now, add a little bit to that on one or two days a week. For example, work on organizing the closet one day or washing your sheets. Instead of just doing dishes, add clearing all tables and countertops to the list for a day. Instead of simply taking out the kitchen trash, add bathroom and bedroom trash cans to the list one day.
Now you can scatter things like vacuuming, sweeping, mopping and dusting around the schedule, spreading it out as needed for your home. When you keep up with the basics, organizing trouble spots as you go, everything becomes more manageable. If you get to a spot on your schedule where there is something that doesn't need to be done, you can use that time to organize something bigger that still needs work. Add a spot check for things that you've organized before into the schedule as time goes on.
About the Author: Jo Granville is on the staff of Only Hangers, a leading online resource for wholesale clothing hangers.