Ever have those days where all of a sudden your house feels disgusting? It’s like yesterday felt normal and today feels like you are living in a dump with dust bunnies and stains everywhere? Okay, maybe not that bad, but since buying a house I’m facing what all people face at my age – the next level of adulting – I need a cleaning routine.
To be totally honest, I’m still learning what all needs to be done to keep up with a house. I need a tidy house to function so I keep things picked up, but I keep having moments where all of a sudden I notice just how dirty my mirror/windowsill/microwave is and wonder the last time I cleaned it. I tend to let the deep cleaning get so far behind that it takes a full day or two of “power-cleaning” to get back on track and I dread it so much I put it off as long as possible.
Enter: CLEAN MAMA
I followed Clean Mama on Instagram a while back and for a person as system-obsessed as me, it’s shocking it took me so long to hop on board. I’m 2 weeks into her cleaning routine and I can tell you, I might not ever go back.
Becky from Clean Mama has divided up all housekeeping tasks into daily, weekly, and monthly rotating tasks. She has turned this into a weekly and monthly calendar that is truly easy to manage and keeps you on top of things in just a few minutes a day. I have her printable calendar taped to the side of my refrigerator so I can check in and check off items every day. Goodness knows I love a checklist.
“it’s far easier to keep up than to catch up”
Gretchen Ruben
This is one of my favorite quotes (that Dan is probably sick of hearing me say) and Clean Mama’s schedule is like the cleaning version of it! There are 5 daily tasks that take just a couple minutes, one bigger task a day that takes probably 15 minutes, and then a few monthly rotating task thrown in here and there. The biggest change for me has been her laundry strategy. Putting laundry away is my least favorite task so naturally I wait until I have to do 5 loads at once and it takes 45 mins to fold and put away. Her routine has you do one small load a day from start to finish (including putting it away). Doing one small load a day seems like just doing my least favorite thing 7x more frequently, but turns out when it only takes 5 minutes to fold and put a load away, it’s much less daunting.
This months he also has a Spring Cleaning challenge happening and it is a weekly checklist (just for March) of deeper cleaning tasks that don’t need to happen as frequently. Today’s task was to dust the top of your walls where it meets the ceiling…not gonna lie it never would have occurred to me to do that…maybe ever.
Working from home is such a gift, but it does leave me feeling torn between house work and “work-work” a lot. Lately though, I’ve been trying to not separate things, but see my work and home tasks as part of one complete whole picture role. I love having a schedule now because it is clear what should be done each day, but also has a limit. It is easy for me to fit in with my work checklist, and when it’s done it’s done. I no longer feel the need to do the next step, because I know I’ll do it Tuesday, etc.
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