Real Organized Cleaning

Who dislikes cleaning? I’m raising my hand REALLY high and yelling, “I do, I do!” I would pretty much rather do just about anything but clean, yet I have a house, I have a family and I like it when things are clean and tidy. Cleaning is a part of life and it needs to happen or the house gets disgusting really quickly…trust me, I know.Today, in our effort to get Real Organized, I’m going to show you how to take what feels like a huge task, cleaning the house and doing the laundry, and break it down into bite-sized chunks that you can fit into your busy week. That way it makes it easy to keep up with the cleaning and laundry and it doesn’t feel like it eats up your whole weekend or a whole day.

This post is part of my #RealOrganized series. If you want the whole series, just click the graphic above or you can click here to sign up to have each week of this series and all the freebies directly emailed to you. The goal of this series is for you to be able to organize some of the things that as moms, we have to deal with on a yearly, monthly, weekly, or daily basis. By getting these things organized we can free up time in our week as well as space in our homes and minds. The main goal is to feel more organized and less clouded as moms so we can find time and space to spend with our family as well as do things we love and find fulfilling.

So, let’s talk about cleaning, much as I don’t want to. If you have been following this series, you now have your calendar organized. Yay! I had you start with your calendar because so much of what we need to organize is going to need to be based around your schedule and your time. If you haven’t already tackled that task, go back and take care of that one first.

Today, we are going to map out when you do what in terms of cleaning and laundry.

You need to first write up a list of what cleaning you need to accomplish as well as how often you want to complete that cleaning. Add the laundry in there as well because that takes up time as well.

Now that you have a list of what cleaning you need to accomplish, you need to decide which parts you are responsible for, what your kids will do and what your spouse/partner will be completing.I’m only going to show you using this chart for yourself, but you can easily use it to keep track of the whole family.

Once you have your list of what cleaning you want to accomplish set and you have given tasks to the rest of your family (because you know you don’t have to do it all…they contribute to the mess and should help clean as well), take your tasks and get your newly organized calendar. Looking at your calendar, add in the cleaning to the days it will fit.

As you can see above, our sheets get changed and washed on Sundays. I do that because I have the most time for that laundry on Sunday and it takes more time than other loads of laundry. I don’t usually do laundry on Tuesday and Wednesday because those are busy days for us. Thursday I do an easy load of laundry that doesn’t have much to put away because it is another busy day. I do our bigger loads of clothes laundry on Friday and Saturday because I have more time to deal with them and get them put away those days. Do you see how I’m meshing my calendar with what has to get done? It makes it so much easier to keep up with the things that have to get done.

So, if you have a super busy after school/work schedule and your job is to clean the bathrooms each week, you may need to have cleaning the toilets on Monday, the sinks and counters on Tuesday, nothing on Wednesday, the mirrors on Thursday, the floors on Friday, and the tubs/showers on Saturday. See how you can break that big task down into smaller tasks? That makes them take a lot less time and means you can get something done during the week.

It is all your preference, but I like getting as much done during the week as I can because I love having some free time on the weekend. By being organized, I can create that free time and at the same time, because I broke the task down into smaller chunks, I didn’t have to kill myself during the week to get it done.
After meshing your schedule with your tasks, you will want to create a visual reminder for yourself of what needs to be done when. I’ve got the perfect printable for you. I love the editable version of my cleaning schedule because I can type in what needs to get done, save it and print it. Anytime things change, it is easy peasy to change the cleaning schedule. I usually print mine on cardstock and laminate (affilaite link) it so that I can use the same one every week. Having an editable version makes it super easy to change things up every few months.

Speaking of changing things, the final thing you will need to do is to come back to this every few months and re-evaluate. If your life is like mine, the kids’ schedules will change and what worked in September will no longer work in January. It doesn’t take that much time to change things up, but it is totally worth it in the long run.

There are two versions of the cleaning schedule. You can get my favorite editable version in my shop.

You can also just grab the organizing big bundle that has this editable printable and all of the other printables for this series all together at a great discount.

Or you can use my non-editable free version by signing in below and clicking to get your freebie!

How do you break your cleaning into bite-sized chunks? Do tell! I’d love to hear and I bet your method will help me and others with new ideas to make things fit into the busy weeks.

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