DESIDERATA

So you’re doing all of this wonderful clean-out and organization and absolutely crushing it. But now how do you get it to stay that way? And more importantly, without taking up SO MUCH time. Because the steps are a lot and no human can possibly keep up with that if you do the whole thing every time. Especially not a human that has a real life, a busy schedule, or would like to do something with their day that is not cleaning.

Enter: the cyclical routine. On each topic, I’ve added a maintenance section as a starting point. But as a general guideline, here’s the way it mostly sort of kind of works. There are three levels of keeping up with things and you’ll take them in stages and cycle through the chores.

Immediate cleaning: clean up after yourself. Sounds simple but it is all too easy to leave that spilled spaghetti sauce thinking you’ll come back to it when the rest of supper isn’t burning. (Ah…yes, that’s probably just me.) Do your best to follow the steps to put the house to bed and clean up any messes, spills, who-knows-what-because-I-live-in-the-thunderdome right away. That’s it.

Quick cleaning: actually clean the thing but the 5 minute version. For most chores, this is usually about once a week and timed so all of your maintenance cleaning isn’t all on the same day (unless you like that). For example, the night before trash pick-up (Monday for me), I take out all of the trash and give the bins a good wipe-down but don’t get into all the little crevices. Sundays are grocery shopping days so when I get home from the store, I make sure and throw out anything expired and wipe down shelves before putting the new groceries away.

Deep cleaning: like really, really clean it (aka the steps). Depending on the task, this is maybe every month or two (or 6!). Just pull up the guide for that task or use your own method and really make sure it’s sparkling and organized. The important thing is you’re not trying to deep clean your house all in one day – it’s just rotating through one thing at a time.

So how do you get on the rotation? How it looks for your home will truly depend on what works for your life but here’s what I’ve found works and I recommend starting with that and then adjusting as you need to.

When you finish a step in the cleaning plan, set your schedule then. You just finished the pantry on Tuesday the 30th? Cool – then every Tuesday do you quick clean and on the 30th of the month, do a deep clean.

I am definitely a paper over digital person but as time goes on, digital is just getting so much more efficient and easier for the whole family to keep up with that I’ve switched to that. I love an app called Structured (no, they do not pay me. Sadly.) that helps manage my daily tasks and times but any digital planner works (Google or Apple calendars, too!) I have my housekeeping block of time scheduled and then in the notes write what my focus is for that time (Sundays are fridge/pantry quick clean, Saturdays are linens, the first of the month is air vents, etc). Then click the button to schedule that task for every week, month, year, whatever. Simple! And your schedule is set and you don’t have to use any brain cells thinking about what you should focus on that day or when the last time you cleaned under the fridge was.