We all take pride in our homes – and that’s why we like to keep them looking clean and fresh. It’s always great for the ego to be judged a domestic god or goddess based on how sparkling our interiors are. We’re here to help you develop a household cleaning schedule to make it easy to keep things neat and tidy. Creating a cleaning checklist is the simple part to getting it done – and here’s 4 steps to follow and create your own:
Place your printed cleaning schedule somewhere everyone can see it – like the front of the fridge. When people forget their tasks, try using sticky notes to prompt them. That way, nobody can get away with saying ‘I forgot!’
1. Make a Realistic Cleaning Schedule
Most of us have lofty ambitions around keeping a tidy household, but sometimes life – and the odd clumsy cleaning disaster – can get in the way.
So, the first thing you need to think about before creating your personalised cleaning schedule is how your paper plan measures up to reality. It’s always best to schedule cleaning time for the spaces in the week when you have a few hours to spare, and the energy to carry it out.
If you’re sharing your home with roommates, or other family members, it’s important to allocate the responsibility on an even, rotating basis; however, you do need to be realistic about how much each individual can contribute.
2. Divide Your Cleaning Checklist into ‘Big’ and ‘Small’ Tasks
You might need to create two or three cleaning checklists for tasks that require varying frequencies. You might need a daily cleaning schedule as well as a weekly or fortnightly one.
‘Big’ cleaning jobs that only pop up once or so per year could go onto one schedule. An example of this might be cleaning behind the oven, or inside the drawers.
Medium-sized tasks could be a weekly occurrence – like vacuuming or disinfecting the fridge.
‘Small’ tasks could end up on a daily cleaning schedule – like wiping kitchen surfaces or sweeping the kitchen floor.
3. Arrange Your Cleaning Schedule by Theme or Area
Consider cleaning on a rotational basis, depending on how big your house is. You might clean the first floor one week and the second floor the following week. Or you could divide it by type of room: one day per week could be for all bathrooms; and on another day, you could vacuum the carpets or dust the tables.
4. Use Technology to Help Schedule Your Cleaning
There’s plenty of great info on the internet to help with your cleaning, but it can also provide you with cleaning schedule templates and printable checklists. You can even download specific apps to your smartphone to help prompt your daily cleaning tasks, so you don’t even have to think about it. Some apps also allow you to share collaborative checklists to help you rotate your workload around friends and family living in your home. Then you’ll always know whose turn it is to empty the bins!
And that’s it! With a bit of team work and forethought, your home will look its best.
Split the cleaning tasks between household members.
Split the schedule into daily, weekly and less frequent tasks.
Download a cleaning schedule app to help you keep on top of things without too much thought.