House Cleaning: The Never-Ending Chore

Weekly Checklist for House Cleaning

The first step to cleaning up is knowing what needs to be done and deciding who will do it. If you have members of the family who share in the cleaning duties, consider generating a weekly checklist of the house cleaning chores. You can make your own list or work with your calendar program to generate repeating “tasks” to help with this. A neat little program you can download and use quickly and easily is Lets-Clean-Up. In addition to routine cleaning, the program's household chore list helps you keep track of chores that you need to do less often, like cleaning the eavestroughs, washing the outsides of the windows, duct cleaning and various gardening chores like pruning and fertilizing. Look at the sample database that comes with the software for ideas on how you can make the best use of the program. Click on the link to learn more and order your copy.

The Deep Clean

If you can accomplish the “clean house” once every two weeks and don’t worry too much about it the rest of the time, you’ll be way ahead of many. We already know it’s impossible to be perfect, so we have to just let our standards relax a bit. See if you can become satisfied with a house that has had a deep clean only once every two weeks.

Delegate the Task to a Nanny, Maid or Cleaning Service

Getting the perfectly clean house every two weeks can be very easy, depending on your finances. If you are strapped for cash and are able to devote 5-6 hours for these deep cleans every 2 weeks, then you can slot this window into your schedule for the task. If your budget allows, I would suggest delegating it. Many commercial household cleaning companies, or better yet, a self–employed maid or cleaning lady can be hired for reasonable rates to accomplish this task for you. If finances really aren’t an issue, you might opt to hire someone to come in every week and possibly even hire them to do extra jobs like laundry and ironing. If you already hire a nanny for childcare, you may be able to pay her an extra fee for doing the housework for you.

House Cleaning Between the Deep Cleans

Only very surface “tidying”, possibly a basic bathroom clean and a light vacuum if you have pets, really needs to be done until the deep clean is done again 2 weeks later. For any of this cleaning you do between deep cleans, you should still remember the Delegate Principle. I think it is very important to teach children that they need to clean up after their own messes. It most definitely shouldn’t always be mom or dad, chasing around tidying up after the kids in my opinion. They should help and eventually will learn to do so on their own.

Don’t Procrastinate.

If you notice something needs to be tidied, just do it. Try the exercise of never leaving a room with a mess in it and see the results. Don’t let messes pile up. If you do, the tiny simple task that can be accomplished in 10 seconds will quickly end up being 10 tasks that take that much longer. As well, if you tidy as you go, you will end up with a house that actually does look and feel tidy most of the time. Amazing!