Bet On Dinner

I’m messy. But I don’t want to be messy. I have Pinterest boards devoted to minimalism. I purge things (just…not as much as I hoard things). Our current house has set me up for success with abundant drawers and cabinets.

But I still naturally function with organized-ish piles.

And for some reason I have a lot (more than average? do tell) of half-worn clothes.

Kid-stuff-containment (omg the artwork) is a losing battle, but I can’t blame them…I’ve been an essentially lazy panic-cleaner for a lot longer than they’ve been around.

I even swore that when I started working again, I would hire cleaning help, but apparently I’m also a little bit of a hoarder when it comes to dollars.

This year when I teed up for my yearly swing at being consistently cleaner, I even titled my doc “Unrealistic Cleaning Schedule.” BUT. Six weeks into 2020, it’s kinda working for me. It’s definitely nothing unique, and in the past I’ve rejected this type of “one room a day” plan because I wanted everything to be all clean at once, sometimes. But whenever I succeed at everything being clean at once, I feel like I deserve to relax and Not Clean for a few days, and then everything ends up dirty again at the same time, which is a discouraging cycle.

This is it! Every day has a room or area. The main task is vacuuming (and as I think you can probably guess, that involves some picking up around here). The secondary tasks (in parentheses) rotate weekly. It usually takes me less than 30 minutes to do both, which if I’m honest with myself, I definitely have each day.

The cleaning schedule:

• Mon: clean bathrooms (mirrors/shower/tub/lights)
• Tues: vac bedroom (dust/baseboards/sheets/lights)
• Weds: vac kitchen, entry (sink/mop, sink/stove, sink/mop, sink/stove)
• Thurs: vac living room, steps (dust/baseboards/mop/lights)
• Fri: vac kids rooms (dust/organize/dust/organize)
• Sat: catch-up, extra jobs (clean car/vac couch/clean windows/wipe cabinets)
• Sun: rest!

Some notes:

• I literally couldn’t do this plan without this Dyson cordless vacuum {affiliate link}. I vacuum a million percent more than I did when we had a vacuum with a cord. We got ours on sale at Costco.
• So far, I have rarely accomplished the Saturday “extra jobs”…I think I made them feel too optional. (Clean the windows? They’re so smeary but that doesn’t seem to be enough to motivate me on a Saturday…or any day in the last 8 months.)
• Knowing what area I’m doing on a given day has been really helpful, so I can preemptively pick up or plan to not cook anything messy the day I clean the stove. (I need at least 24 hours of shiny, man.)

A favorite resource:

• I love Kendra at The Lazy Genius – this post about cleaning is great, or if you want to listen (maybe while you clean the bathroom?) I like this episode about shifting your perspective from “cleaning the house” to “keeping your home.”

A question:

• How often do you change your sheets? Am I gross? Why does it feel like such a hard job?