Home tasks are a big cause of stress for me. You know what I’m talking about. You have dishes, laundry, sweeping, vacuuming, mopping, dusting, cooking, meal clean up, and a lot more. The list just goes on and on, it always seems never ending. How am I supposed to get it all done? One of the biggest helps for me is that I have come to the realization that I don’t have to get it all done; at least not all at once. I don’t have to do the sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, laundry, dusting, and everything else done on the same day, just as long as it does get done, we’re all good.
Start by making a list of all the areas in and around your home that you need to take care of. Include everything inside your home, everything outside your home, the garage. Inside your home break it down by room. For my home that would include my room, my son’s room, dining room, kitchen, pantry, living room, bathroom, basement. If you have different areas within a room, then include those. For mine that would include family area of living room, and computer area of living room, storage room of basement and exercise room of basement. Outside the house, break it down as well. For my house that would include porch, garage, front yard, back yard, vegetable garden, flower garden, play area, dog areas. Now get a notebook or three ring binder and give each area it’s own page. Three ring binders with page protectors work best, so you can use a dry erase marker to mark off or put dates next to completed items. Leave enough pages at the end in case you forgot something, or you want to divide up an area even more. For example, I may end up wanting to divide my dining room into the dining area and the homeschool area.
Now on each of those pages make a list of everything that you need to do in the area for that page. I find it easier if I actually go into the area that I’m working on. For Bathroom, go in your bathroom, start at the floor and work your way up then turn to your right and do it again, turn to your right again and do it again. So starting at the floor, for me would be sweep and mop floor, clean tub/shower, clean faucet, handles, and shower head, clean shower curtains, turn to my right is the long wall which would include cleaning the toilet, cleaning/organizing my towel/linen/make up drawers, cleaning the vanity, organizing inside vanity, cleaning mirror, organizing inside medicine cabinet, cleaning and organizing my corner shelf. Continue rotating till you have all four sides done. Once you do this for every room, you could go back through and put any updating/improvement that you want to do in each room. For my bathroom for example, I might add an over the toilet shelf, a hand towel rack, etc.
Now go through your list and figure out how often each item needs to be done. Cleaning the doors and walls don’t need to be done on a daily or weekly basis. Floors aren’t daily for me, but definitely weekly. Switching out the towels is done every two or three days. Figure out how often you want to do your items, and list it next to each item. Figure out if you can break up any of the large tasks into smaller ones to save you time. For example, every time you are in the shower/tub, you can take a few minutes, and clean a small portion of it. By doing this, you take a big job and divide it up into several small parts to do while you’re already there, and you clean it before it becomes visibly dirty, so it’s not so hard to clean. In the kitchen, wipe down your stove after every meal you cook, then it doesn’t get as dirty in between deep cleans, and makes deep cleaning easier.
Now take your lists and put all your daily items on one sheet, all your items that are a couple times a week on one sheet, your weekly items on another, bi-weekly on another, monthly on another, semi yearly on another. Pick one or two dailies from each room and add them to one day, then one or two to the next day. If you do it like this, it doesn’t seem like you are spending a long time cleaning one room every day. Then, take your couple times a week tasks, and add them in, doing only one or two a day. If you have three or less every couple of days tasks, then add it in so you are only doing one of those tasks every day. For example, cleaning my cat box gets done every 3 days, switching out the towels in my bathroom gets done every two to three days, and cleaning the dog areas gets done every two to three days, so on the first day it’s clean cat box, second day is switch out towels in bathroom, third day is clean dog areas, then start all over, so it’s only adding one task per day. Leave all the rest of the lists just the way they are, and do one task off of each every day, or every week depending on the schedule you want it done, then write the date that it is done next to it. This gives you a basic schedule of everything that needs to get done.