A Cleaning Routine that Works for Me, Mondays

This entry is part 38 of 40 in the series Hope for Homemakers

tips for creating and organizing a cleaning routine that works for you

I am kind of a neat freak with lazy tendencies.  I LOVE, love, LOVE the look of a clean space, but I have my places where the cleanliness of a space is just not what I want it to be.  I think this is referred to as “living with kids.”  And I honestly struggled to create a cleaning routine for a long time.  But I found something that really works for me and helps me to stay on track.  This cleaning routine may not work for you, but it definitely is working for me and I thought you might want to hear how I am implementing it. This week, I will be sharing a little bit each day about how my cleaning routine works for me and what I do each day in my house to keep the monsters at bay. 

My cleaning routine is inspired by Clean Mama’s weekly cleaning schedule.  I love that it is easy to follow and remember!  Once I got started doing it (mind you, while I am pregnant!), I found that if I stay on top of it, it really doesn’t take long to clean the house each day.  And I get the benefit of seeing those clean spaces that make me so, so happy! My cleaning routine has helped me to turn my chores into cleaning in just a few minutes a day.

You can check out more details on her website, but this is the basic rundown of Clean Mama’s cleaning routine:

Monday – bathrooms

Tuesday – dusting

Wednesday – vacuuming all floors

Thursday – mopping hard surfaces

Friday – catch up

Saturday – sheets and towels

Sunday – day off

I have to modify this because I really struggle to “clean” all my bathrooms each week on Monday.  We have four bathrooms and I have a very specific idea of clean for a bathroom.  As much as I have tried, I simply am too tired to clean all my bathrooms my way on Mondays (maybe it is the pregnancy, maybe it is the young kids at my feet).

What I do is a bathroom a day for four days and take the rest of the days off.  Sometimes, I can do two per day and take the rest of the week off.  And hopefully someday I will be able to get all four done in one quick pass on Mondays.  But what I do that makes my cleaning routine different in my bathroom is I add a tip I got from our 28 Days to Hope challenge: I surface clear the bathrooms of clutter every day.  This helps to make sure that when I do get in each bathroom to clean it, I am focused on cleaning, not de-cluttering.

My quick clean/de-cluttering daily can be done in each bathroom within a couple of minutes.  I typically do each bathroom as I have a few minutes. Our master bathroom gets attention while  I am brushing my teeth at the end of the day.  The girls’ shared bathroom gets a quick de-clutter when the girls are getting dressed for the day.  Our downstairs bath gets attention when it is time for my oldest to visit the restroom or after some diaper change with my youngest.  And our guest bathroom gets a quick tidy after my oldest takes a “nap” in that room.  The things I focus on picking up in each room are toiletries, towels, and dirty laundry.

When I do get around to cleaning each bathroom, I have tried to follow the routine set up by Clean Mama as much as possible.  It is very difficult for me not to try to sweep and mop each bathroom as I clean it.  I, instead focus on getting the counters and fixtures clean, the toilets scrubbed, and the mirrors sparkling.  I wipe down the showers that have been used in the last few days (this is typically only two of the showers in our house each week) and scrub out the bathtub (which sees lots of use each week).

To keep everything organized, I have a system for my Monday through Thursday cleaning that has really started to work for me.  It is broken down into three bins and looks like this.

creating and organizing a cleaning routine that works for you

 

I will be sharing more this week about how I keep my cleaning supplies organized, my favorite cleaning supplies and my daily routines.  I hope you will stay tuned!

 

 


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