Cleaning Schedule

I thought I was busy before I had a kid.  I really did.  I wasn't.  I didn't even know what busy was until I had Khloe.

I've always strived to be an organized person, sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail.  When I had Khloe and then went back to work, I realized just how hard it was to keep up with simple things that I had taken for granted before.  I would go to work all week, come home, cook dinner, bath Khloe, play with her and then it was time for her to go to bed.  By the time she would go to bed, I was exhausted and ready for bed myself.  Then came the weekend and I would have 10+ loads of laundry to do (how in the world do 2 1/2 people go through that many clothes???? It's one of life's great mysteries), every room of the house to clean and then my weekend would be gone before I even got to relax.

I've seen a million and one cleaning schedules on Pinterest and have tried a few.  Every time I would fail miserably. They were all way too intense for me.  In my mind they were for someone who was home all day with no kids to watch and nothing else to do except clean.  I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to clean my windows/ baseboards/ lights every week!!!   Are you kidding me!  I’m lucky to get the dishes out of the sink!  I can count on 1 hand the number of times my baseboards have been cleaned ever!  After being extremely frustrated with these cleaning schedules, I decided to make my own, more reasonable schedule that fits my life.  I’ve been trying it out for a few weeks now and it’s actually working.  No, my house is not immaculately deep cleaned every week…. (I don’t know too many people  anyone who actually shampoos their carpets once a month…. ) but my house is clean and presentable.  If someone decided to drop by unannounced, I’m not going crazy trying to hide things.  Yes, I would like for people to think that I mop my floors once a week, but I don’t.  I’ve found that the best part of this cleaning schedule is the 10 minute tidy every evening.  I actually set a timer for 10 minutes and challenge myself to see how much I can get done.  Usually this 10 minutes is spent putting things away like toys, books, food back in the pantry, bottles and hair tools back in the cabinets.  This has been the key step to keeping my house presentable.  As Khloe gets older, I’m going to implement this as a part of her chores and she’ll have her own 10 minute tidy.  I’ve also found that if I can do 1 load of laundry a day (put it in the wash at night and move it to the dryer in the morning) it never adds up on me.  Some days I don’t have enough for a full load, so I’ll go 2 days in between.  

Hope it helps you out!

-Brooke