I never wanted to do one - but I fear it has finally come to it ;)
i figured it out - I have 9.5 rooms in my house. If I spent an hour a day cleaning a room that is 9.5 hours; 30 minutes per room - 4.5 hours. You get the jist - I cannot keep spending all this time on this...it sucks.
help me get a schedule or something...lol
here is the breakdown of the rooms we use:
Kitchen - smallish, but we use it ALOT. needs to be cleaned everyday several times a day. we have a dishwasher and the floor has to be swiffered every day as well. any ideas on how to cut down the cleaning time in here?
front room/don's office - we don't use it for entertaining, but since don uses it, it is often a mess (:bag) luckily, most of his stuff is in an armoire, so i can close it. i do need to dust in there and pick up cups, plates, etc. and clean up the paper clutter that tends to collect there.
dining room: this room sits in the middle and seems to collect everything under the sun - mail, ivy's schoolwork, misc. crap and shopping stuff. this is also where we eat dinner every night so it is always a nightly clean up (sometimes twice)
master bedroom: daily bed making, picking up clothes, etc. i usually do a semi-weekly deep clean. i change the sheets and dust.
ivy's bedroom: this room can get out of hand fast :sigh all of her toys are in here so it can be overwhelming. right now, it actually is a huge mess. i am going to probably spend a couple hours up there cleaning. last time i cleaned really well, i tried to show her how to put the things away (everything is organized - it is just that she doesn't put the toys away)
guest bedroom: this room stays pretty clean. we only sleep in there is one of us is sick or something.
family room: this is where we watch tv and i have my desk. we also have some of ivy's toys so it can get messy quick as well. the floor also needs a cleaning every day. it gets so dirty.
ivy's bathroom: it gets very cluttered but usually a daily wipe down and a once a week clean.
our bathroom: this room is always a mess :bag our laundry room is in the basement and that is the biggest hurdle to keeping it cleaner. so, we always have a overflowing laundry basket. then, we often have shampoo, soap, razors, etc. on the tub. i hate that. the smaller powder room needs a cleaning every day.
powder room: needs a cleaning every day.
basically, i always clean each room daily and mop. i spend from 15 to 2 hours per room each day. how can i cut this down??
idk if this would help you, but i do corporate cleaning 4 nights/week and some easy things we do that can totally help cut down time at home is:
1. make a cleaning bucket (get a shower tote or whatever and put a duster, windex, a general cleaner like simple green, paper towels etc in it). bring it into the room you are cleaning so you aren't going back and forth to a cabinet or wherever you store those things.
2. okay this one is going to sound ridiculous, but it is how cleaning companies do it and it works. when you walk into the room clean in a circular motion along the perimeter. like walk in the door and step to your left. say on that wall you have a mirror, then knick knacks on a shelf, then a tv...you would windex the mirror, feather dust the shelf, then dust the tv. it sounds so stupid and simple, but walking to the bed and folding clothes, then going to every room to dust, then going back around the house to pick up toys, etc wastes a ton of time.
3. something i do at home--keep a basket at the top of the stairs and the bottom. if you are going upstairs bring the items that have collected in the basket up and vice versa.
4. have a schedule for doing deep cleaning. like the first week of every month you clean the baseboards, every time the time changes you wash your windows, 2 days per week you clean the toilets, whatever works for you.
5. what does don mess up when he eats in the kitchen? if he leaves his dishes in the sink instead of putting them in the dishwasher, i'd be a b*tch and lay plastic wrap across the sink one day. lmao. but i am crazy like that;)
for mail--have you tried buying a letter file? like we have a metal stand up thing with slots? kwim? the minute i get home, junk mail gets put in the recycling and the bills go in the file.
for school work--as soon as the kids get home from school they each have a 3 ring binder. i toss or file any school correspondence, then school work gets hole punched and put in their binder for that year.
for mail--have you tried buying a letter file? like we have a metal stand up thing with slots? kwim? the minute i get home, junk mail gets put in the recycling and the bills go in the file.
for school work--as soon as the kids get home from school they each have a 3 ring binder. i toss or file any school correspondence, then school work gets hole punched and put in their binder for that year.
GREAT ideas, Corey!! thanks so much. I especially love the 3 ring binder idea for school work. that just gets so out of hand fast.
like I dust on on tuesday, so i do the basement, main level and upstairs all that day but dusting is my only chore for that day.
well of course besides the obvious of laundry and dishwasher.
thanks sara! i guess my problem is that i tend to do a full clean in each room each day vs. particular chores, like dust - ie. i dust every day. i should just do that every other day or something, right?
Liz, I know you asked about the cleaning bit but for me I would need to get my family on board to pick up after themselves first. What would be the point cleaning if they are just going to follow you around messing it back up again? With the kids toys I give them a 5 minute warning before meal times/bedtime/leaving the house that they need to pick up everything they left out then after the 5 mins I come round with a big rubbermaid box and stick everything in it and it goes in time out. Then they have to earn them back one by one for good behaviour etc.
Cleaning wise I tend to do one room or type of room a day so one day is bedrooms, the next the living room, the next bathrooms, the next I vaccum and mop the whole house (we don't allow shoes in the house so I only need to do that once or maybe twice a week). I find it easier to do types of rooms together cause they use the same types of cleaning tools.
like I dust on on tuesday, so i do the basement, main level and upstairs all that day but dusting is my only chore for that day.
well of course besides the obvious of laundry and dishwasher.
thanks sara! i guess my problem is that i tend to do a full clean in each room each day vs. particular chores, like dust - ie. i dust every day. i should just do that every other day or something, right?
dust every day? you are working yourself to death girl
stuff like that can be done once a week.
growing up, it was always on saturdays at mom's house because she worked
just pick one day to do major things like dusting, etc..
for mail--have you tried buying a letter file? like we have a metal stand up thing with slots? kwim? the minute i get home, junk mail gets put in the recycling and the bills go in the file.
for school work--as soon as the kids get home from school they each have a 3 ring binder. i toss or file any school correspondence, then school work gets hole punched and put in their binder for that year.
GREAT ideas, Corey!! thanks so much. I especially love the 3 ring binder idea for school work. that just gets so out of hand fast.
oh and love the idea about the sink...lol
What I did/do with school work.
Kid no. 1 - - 3 ring binder everything went in it. By the end of 1st grade it was busting at the seems and I realized that was not going to work - I could not keep every stinking paper for every grade of his life.
Kids no 2 and 3 I throw 90% away. Keep cute creations especially those with hand prints or pictures of them. If you really love something you can always take a picture of it and throw the real artwork away.
another thing I do with artwork - give to grandparents to hang on their fridge.
Right now I have turned my dining room table into my desk - its ridiculous but at this point in my life necessary. Each child has a filing tray with a cute tag with their name on it. Any important paperwork RE: school, fieldtrips, extra school pictures - anything to do with them goes in their file tray. Has made it soooo much easier to quickly put my hands on a needed document.
I also have a small tote for each child in my closet where I store those cute creations mentioned above.
get a binder for ivy's schoolwork (I am going to get an accordian file folder similar to the one I store my coupons in); get a letter tray for the incoming mail and try to throw the junk mail in recycle bin right away; get a basket for the bottom of the stairs and one for the top of the stairs; get a cleaning bucket with handles for each floor, get a swiffer and mop for each floor, get extra towles, trash bags, and trash cans for each floor; get extra laundry totes to keep so i can put the laundry in there and leave the hampers in the bathrooms; and i am really going to do what corey said and put saran wrap on the kitchen sink...lol (it might just work)
We give schoolwork to grandparents too. We leave 4 large manilla envelopes on the bookshelf. Everytime I empty their backpack, I divide up all the drawings, etc into the envelopes. I keep 1-2 a month, maybe. Everything else gets sent. They love it, and it is out my door. Of course we don't have real schoolwork right now since we are still doing preK.
I don't know if it is too late to chime in, but in our house every day stuff is picked up and tidyd up.
Monday, weds, and friday are clean days ... Vaccuum, mopped, kitchen and baths cleaned etc. Tuesday and Thursday are ironing, and misc cleaning chores are scheduled in at various frequencies like dusting, windows, oven fridge clean etc.
