create a cleaning schedule

And I have a good incentive – My sons 21st is soon and we’re having the party at home.

Tonight I made index cards about what the tasks are for each room, so I don’t forget something. That also gave me the opportunity to toss in a few things I might otherwise forget, like rinsing garbage cans or washing the windows.

Now I have a calendar up at my desk, too, so I’m writing on Sunday what the room is for that week. I’m hoping to then be able to do a task or two on the nights I’m home. It worked really well the first month I did this, but then I skipped a few weekends, so I’m trying to incorporate more into the week and make it a weeklong project, not just a weekend thing.

I have been vacuuming twice a week, which has been helping, coupled with furminating the cats.

This is by far the best system I’ve had so far. The only thing is that I’m still skipping some jobs sometimes that I don’t want to do, which sort of defeats the purpose…

I think I’m going to start trying to vacuum twice a week instead of just once a week, which will make it easier on my little vacuum and maybe keep the dust down.

there are so many projects that are only once a month, anyway, like vacuuming upholstery, giving floors a good scrub, dusting the soffets and wiping down cabinet fronts. Instead of tackling those at random times throughout the month, I can just do those when I’m scheduled to do that room.

I’ve done this two weeks now, with the kitchen and the living room. The kitchen worked out great…the living room was harder and I was shorter on time. This is a long weekend so many I’ll try to focus on both the bedroom and the bathrooms since we’re going to be out of town next weekend.

I may have finally found a system that works for me! I’ll have to keep working at it to see if it continues…

I know if you schedule things into your life they happen, like a gym routine or writing letters or doing puzzles or whatever. But with the ongoing nature of cleaning, I just can’t get a handle on the best way to tackle this. Either I put something down to be done every week, and it doesn’t happen (or else it doesn’t need to happen, or I feel guilty, and it seems to stack up) or I just ignore the fact that I want a more in place schedule, and it doesn’t happen.

We have a small place. This should be easy. Really there are four places. Kitchen/Dining, Living, Bedroom, and Bathrooms. Maybe I focus on doing one room a week as far as the bigger wipe down, dusting, tidying, small projects, coupled with some of the more regular tasks that I do across the whole house (like vacuuming).

I think today we’ll do a whole house clean, but maybe that is where I should direct my efforts…each week having a particular room in mind, and working on projects in that room throughout the week that I otherwise never get to.

Couldn’t hurt, I suppose.

and I find plenty of excuses not to start. When I do start a housekeeping task I can not finish it. What’s worse is that we have a kitten that is still learning to use the kitty litter tray and it still has plenty of accidents.

This is one area of my life that I just don’t seem to find any positivity to motivate me in. Blaugh!

so a schedule of what I should do (and how often) hasn’t really helped. I still remain most motivated when people are coming over, good or bad.

Unclutterer.com advises doing one half hour of cleaning every night, rotating rooms. I don’t know that I can do that every night, so I think right now I’m going to try just doing SOMETHING nearly every night, maybe 5 of 7 days.

Today I’m good…people were coming over so we vacuumed and dusted.

I get a lot of cleaning done before I went on vacation, and then we did a big project this weekend before people came over (amazing what kind of motivation that is). I’m still behind on a few tasks (scrubbing floors, for instance)...

I asked her tonight how much time she spends cleaning…it was encouraging that it is about the same amount of time as me. I think I still have an inferiority complex from the days I wasn’t as conscious about it.

though I “fall behind” a lot more than I would like to. But if I switch some of them away from weekly goals, and made them twice a month, they might only happen every three weeks, whereas being “behind” makes me catch up at least every two weeks.

Certain things are just tough to get through, though, like scrubbing the kitchen floor. It takes a certain amount of time and a certain amount of effort….

I’ve definitely changed to a tidier person in the last year, but I still don’t like to clean…I’m not sure how to make that change.