Thursday, September 27, 2012

How Do You...Fit Cleaning Into Your Daily Schedule?


 
How do you fit cleaning into your day?
  Do you do  it before school?  After lunch? 
submitted by Michelle

My goal is to get one large cleaning job in before we begin school at 9 o'clock.  I consider large jobs things like cleaning a bathroom or vacuuming the living areas.  While the older kids are doing their assigned chores, I tackle something of my own. 

In reality this doesn't always happen.  Sometimes I get moving slower in the morning or the little kids need extra attention and I'm not able to do much more than get dressed and clean up from breakfast. On those days, I will  wait until afternoon nap time to clean which gives me incentive not to dawdle so that I can enjoy the peace and quite without a dust cloth in my hand. 

I have a very loose schedule I go by.  I change sheets about every other week, usually on Mondays.  I try to dust the house once a week and this usually falls on Tuesday or Wednesday, after the dust from the sheets has settled.  I  do a thorough vacuuming once a week, too.  This happens on Wednesday or Thursday, after I've dusted.  (Spot-vacuuming occurs almost daily!  My Dirt Devil is my friend, especially since the kids can easily use it, too.)  I give the bathrooms a deep clean once a week, typically on Friday or Saturday.  

Chores like sweeping the crumbs from the kitchen floor, folding the laundry, and wiping fingerprints off of the glass door are done in spurts throughout the day, whenever I get half a second to do them! 

The cleaning is left to me and the kids with a major exception.  Two days before Christmas (or Christmas Eve Eve,  as we like to call it), my husband has declared Cleaning Day.  We spend the entire day cleaning the house together.  We do everything from wiping the walls to cleaning the crevices of the ceiling fan to scrubbing the stove burners.  We find so much to do that it makes me wonder if my house is even clean the rest of the year. 

How do you fit cleaning into your day?  Do you have a routine? Let us know in the comments. 

Also, if you have a question for a future "How Do You...?" post, share that in the comments, too, or send me an e-mail! I'd love to hear from you. 


4 comments:

  1. We have a weekly "cleaning day" when the kids and I clean the entire house. We usually start right after breakfast (or even before) with cleaning our bedrooms and the upstairs bathroom. After we finish the upstairs we squeeze school in by having the kids watch a 30 minute education DVD while I start working on cleaning the kitchen. Then the kids work together to clean the downstairs bathroom. The last thing we do is the dining and living room area because I can always work on that at naptime if we're running behind.

    Of course, we do lots of vacuuming, sweeping, and spot cleaning daily as well.

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  2. We have done many different things depending on the season of life around here. Currently our cleaning looks like this: The kids each have their everyday chores (make bed, pick up room, put PJ's away) and then one daily chore. That can vary from dust bedroom to clean bathroom to organize books on the shelf. The kids have to start their chores after breakfast and have them finished before our family worship time. I have a daily chore for myself too but I don't necessarily get to mine before worship time. Depending on the day it may not get done until after lunch or even later than that or sometimes not at all. My chores are mopping, changing sheets, wiping out the fridge etc. Daily I do things like straighten up, vacuum at least 1x day, laundry, etc. to make sure our house is above water! I actually love to clean so it's something that comes pretty natural for me.

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  3. Hi, did you post instructions for making liquid hand soap for a pump container that foams using Meyers liquid soap? I remember reading the instructions on one of my many emails and I can't seem to find it. Thanks for the help.

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  4. I don't think I've ever posted instructions, but I have made my own foam soap before. If you have a pump that makes foam, you can fill it with 1 part hand soap (any brand hand soap) and about 2-3 parts water.

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