The Problem with Schedules
Keeping schedules is hard. Life always seems to get in the way. You get your schedule all set (or you find one you think will work well for you), and you stick to it for a week or maybe more. You feel like, “Hey maybe this will finally be the time.” Then you have a day where you’re gone all day and simply couldn’t clean. The next day you can only do half the laundry you meant to because you were busy trying to “catch-up” from the day before. Suddenly your house is a mess and you’ve totally lost the plot of the cleaning schedule. If this sounds familiar, girl, me too. This is why I came up with my cleaning rhythms.
What is a Cleaning Rhythm?
If you’ve read any of my other blog posts you’ve probably heard me talk about my homemaking rhythms. Rhythms are a system I came up with to help me keep up with household tasks while also having flexibility in time and energy levels. You can use rhythms for things like cleaning meal planning or wherever would be helpful for you. This is how I structure my cleaning rhythms.
What do my Weekly Rhythms Look Like
I like to set my rhythms by room and then assign them to days of the week, which sounds like a schedule, but here’s the catch: try to leave one day as a flex day. What does that mean? Well for me, my set flex day is Monday. Usually I’ll do grocery shopping and a bit of laundry but otherwise I don’t have a set task. The other days of the week, in order, are usually: living areas, bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchen. And in a normal week this is how the rhythm goes. However, if there’s a day of the week— say Wednesday— where I won’t be able to clean the bedrooms I’ll move cleaning the bedrooms to Monday or slide all my tasks up (e.g. Monday- living room, Tuesday- bedrooms, Wednesday-flex). This is how I manage the time issue with cleaning rhythms.
Whether you set up your tasks by room or by category, your next step is to divide each day’s responsibilities into high priority and low priority. For example, if im cleaning the kitchen things like sweeping and mopping, cleaning counters, dishes, and clearing old food out of the fridge are high priority, while things like wiping down cupboard doors, detail cleaning appliances, and scrubbing the oven are things that still need to be done regularly, but not necessarily weekly. I always try to get my high priority tasks done, and if I don’t have the energy I don’t worry about the low priority.
Do these cleaning rhythms always work perfectly every week? Not always, but thats why it does work. Little bits at a time is better than nothing.
How to set up your own cleaning rhythms
Now you may be wondering, how do I set up these cleaning rhythms myself?
Step one:
The first step is to take one week that is a typical week for you, and to assess what kinds of things you do on a day to day basis. Do you have any activities that always happen on the same day? Do you have any things that happen weekly but vary on what day? How much time do you have on a daily basis? You can write these things down or just keep them in your mind. This information will be the basis for creating your cleaning rhythms.
Step two:
The next step is to decide how you will categorize your tasks. Do you like going room to room or task by task. For example, do you want to do all your laundry on one day and vacuuming on the other, or do you want to clean all the bathrooms on one day and the bedrooms on another? Do you want a mix of both of these, or some other system that works better for you? Forget what everyone else says is best and decided what is best for you and you alone.
Step three:
Now that you’ve figured out what your weekly schedule is generally like, and you’ve decided how you want to organize your tasks, it’s time to put it into action…
Remember it’s a Process
Whether you start slowly or jump right in, the important thing is to just start and after you start you have to remember that it will not immediately be perfect. I changed around my cleaning rhythm quite a few times before I settled on what I have now. The key is to just keep going. If it doesn’t work out for you the first week then try again with a different schedule. If you’re too busy one week then just start again the next. Eventually certain things will just become a habit, and you will eventually be able to just fall into the rhythm and to keep your home clean and tidy without being overwhelmed and burnt out.