The Best Easy Realistic Mom Cleaning Schedule For Messy House
Struggling to create an easy realistic mom cleaning schedule for a messy house?
Are you a stay at home mom or working mom who needs to develop an easy cleaning routine?
Does your messy apartment or house overwhelm you and get you down?
If you answered yes to all the questions above, don’t worry, I’m here to help you with some tips for you to create an easy realistic mom cleaning schedule whether you’re a stay at home mom or working mom.
Use these tips to create easy cleaning schedules and routines for any time of the year:
- Christmas cleaning
- Spring Cleaning
- Summer Cleaning
Download the Daily & Weekly Easy Realistic Mom Cleaning Schedule Routine Checklist PDF Free Printable.
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To make things easier for you, please feel free to jump to any part of this article by clicking on the following table of contents.
- Why Is It Hard To Keep Your House Clean
- What Is The Purpose Of A Realistic Mom Cleaning Schedule
- How To Create An Easy Realistic Mom Cleaning Schedule
- How Often Should You Clean Your House
- Top Things Used To Keep A Clean House
- Top Secrets To Keeping A Clean House
- Get the Entire Family Involved
- How To Make Cleaning Fun
- Create Easy Realistic Family Cleaning Routines
- Chore and Reward Chart
- Frequent Decluttering
- Final Tips For An Easy Realistic Cleaning Schedule For Mom
Why Is It Hard To Keep Your House Clean
The number one reason it’s so hard to keep your house clean is life!
Sometimes even with the best intentions, cleaning schedule, and habits, you’re just too tired.
Sometimes, unforeseen events occur and planned cleaning doesn’t happen.
Cleaning isn’t fun for most of us – it consumes time and energy.
But, it must be done. Of course, if you have the resources available to outsource housework, that would be ideal.
But for many, like myself, that just isn’t possible at the moment.
Don’t despair though, the good news is that for the most part, creating and following the best cleaning schedule for you and your family will help in a big way!
What Is The Purpose Of A Realistic Mom Cleaning Schedule
Creating a cleaning schedule helps reduce and even eliminate uncertainty, overwhelm, and anxiety when it comes to cleaning your home.
With a schedule, you know ahead of time what needs to be cleaned and who is in charge of the cleaning task.
This eliminates wasting time and makes better use of the time you set aside to clean.
Following a cleaning schedule also helps to reduce the number of times you have to do a big, overwhelming cleaning job because, over time, you’re cleaning and maintaining your home.
How To Create An Easy Realistic Mom Cleaning Schedule
Developing an easy and realistic cleaning schedule for you and your family is a game changer!
It might take a few tries to get things running smoothly but eventually, your family will be a well-oiled cleaning machine.
Through trial and error, you may realize that you prefer one big cleaning and then daily maintenance or maybe bigger weekly cleanings that are better for you and your family.
There’s no one size fits all cleaning schedule because every family is so unique. If you try to follow someone else’s schedule with no flexibility, you’re likely to get very discouraged and give up.
So, take all the tips and resources, and create your own easy, realistic cleaning schedule.
It’s also very important to keep in mind that because you’re so busy, not everything that seems logical and simple on paper actually happens in real life.
Instead, I recommend tweaking your cleaning routine as required. This works well with our family.
We already know what needs to be done and in what basic order so each time we need to change something, it really isn’t too difficult.
Simple steps to create your own easy, realistic cleaning schedule:
- Determine your cleaning needs
- Prioritize your cleaning needs
- Assess your current daily, weekly and monthly schedules to find the best times to schedule cleaning chores
- Assign cleaning tasks to everyone in your family
- Figure out your accountability method
- Start creating your schedule
Determine Your Cleaning Needs
This should be fairly straightforward as I’m sure you have problem areas in your home that drive you nuts.
Download the cleaning chore list printable and write down every area in your house that needs to be cleaned.
You can even categorize them to make it easier to create your cleaning schedule.
For instance, you can create easy and difficult or adults and kids categories. This is essentially your brain dump for necessary cleaning activities.
Prioritize Your Cleaning Needs
Next, you want to take some time to prioritize your cleaning activities. Pay close attention to the time needed to complete certain cleaning tasks.
The tasks that are shorter can be done daily, for example. By doing this step, you will be better equipped to schedule the best tasks daily, weekly, and monthly.
If you’re stumped for some cleaning tasks, be sure to read the next section.
Assess Your Current Schedules
Even though cleaning is an important part of life, you don’t want to ignore your current schedule to tackle cleaning. This will only cause chaos as you may be adding tasks to full days.
Instead, sit with your current schedule and see where you have more time to dedicate to cleaning your home.
Assign Cleaning Tasks
As the kids grow, cleaning is less daunting. The days of cleaning up everything after them will soon be over – but only if you share responsibilities when they’re young.
Empower them to clean up after themselves throughout their daily activities. This will also go a long way in creating healthy habits for them into adulthood.
Here are some ideas of cleaning tasks that you can assign to your kids:
- tidying their toys
- packing away their school books
- putting anything they use back in its place
- cleaning their wares after meals
- off loading the dishwasher
- wipe up messes they make
Accountability Methods
In my experience, this step is as important as creating the tasks on your cleaning schedule.
When there’s no accountability, things just don’t feel as important or urgent as it is.
Try any of these acountability methods or use for inspiration:
- dry erase cleaning schedule chart
- velcro cleaning chart
- Magnetic cleaning chart
- Popsicle stick cleaning jars
- Mobile phone app
Start Creating Your Own Easy, Realistic Cleaning Schedule
After completing the steps above, creating your own easy cleaning schedule should be easy.
Keep in mind that it may take some tweaking to figure out the best schedule to keep your house clean.
How Often Should You Clean Your House
I thrive with schedules and systems.
They make my life easy as I don’t have to wonder what needs to be done, and more importantly, everyone in my family knows what needs to be done and when.
It’s a good idea to break up cleaning into times – so, we use daily, weekly, monthly. This makes cleaning much easier to handle.
Here are some cleaning routines that can help you to create your own easy cleaning schedule.
Download the Easy Realistic Mom Cleaning Schedule Routine Checklist PDF Free Printable
Clean Up Immediately
These are some cleaning tasks that require immediate and sometimes urgent attention.
To clean immediately In Your House:
- Spills and messes
- Groceries
- Clear and clean the table after eating
- Clothes in the laundry before showering
- Put away clothes after folding
- Put back toys and books before moving on to another activity
- Make the bed when you get up
Daily Cleaning Tasks Ideas
In our house, these are what we do and clean daily. As much as possible, we try to pick up after ourselves throughout the day so that cleaning doesn’t get too overwhelming.
Over the years, this has been the best solution for our family as it makes the big clean days so much more manageable.
These tasks are small and won’t take a lot of your time, so whether you are a working mom or stay at home mom, you and your family can try to tackle these cleaning activities daily.
Daily Household Cleaning Tasks:
- Neaten beds
- Load dishwasher and clean the sink after each meal
- Kitchen sink
- Clear & wipe Kitchen counters
- Clean stovetop & microwave
- Clear & wipe Bathroom counters
- Clean toilets
- Sweep or vacuum
- Keep problem areas clear of clutter
- Take out the garbage
Weekly Cleaning Tasks Ideas
Cleaning activities that can be done weekly would be the ones that require more time and effort on your part. So, it’s wise to schedule these on days where you have some extra time.
Some weekly cleaning Tasks for your schedule:
- launder clothes, sheets & towels
- tidy closets
- clean showers
- mop
- clean stove tops
- Wipe kitchen appliances
- clear the fridge
Weekly Cleaning Schedule Ideas
- Monday – Vacuum all rooms
- Tuesday – Clean bathrooms
- Wednesday – Clean Kitchen
- Thursday – Clean High Traffic Areas
- Friday – Cleaning Living Room
- Saturday – Declutter
- Sunday – Wash sheets & towels,
Fortnightly Cleaning Tasks Ideas
Some cleaning tasks can be pushed to completing them every 2 weeks. Some ideas for fortnightly cleaning:
- clean washing machine
- dust and clean dryer
- mop
- vaccum
Monthly Cleaning Tasks Ideas
Monthly cleaning tasks are the ones that typically require more time and energy. However, this is where you will see the benefits of scheduling daily, weekly, and fortnightly tasks. By managing your cleaning tasks more often, the overwhelming cleaning jobs, won’t end up as bad as before.
Some cleaning tasks that need attention every month:
- decluttering problem areas
- baseboards
- blinds
- walls
- ceiling fans
- light fixtures
- tidy pantry
Top Things Used To Keep A Clean House
Cleaning supplies are important for your realistic cleaning schedule to saving time and energy.
Using the right cleaning tools will also ensure that you end up with satisfying results.
A great tip is to keeping cleaning supplies close in every space in your home. This is key to getting the job done quickly and effortlessly.
Before I started doing this, I would put off wiping down the sink, for instance, because I would have to go to another room to get cleaning supplies.
By keeping supplies close to each sink in my home, it’s so much easier to just grab my spray bottle and clean it daily.
Here are some ideas for cleaning tools you can keep in the laundry room, kitchen, and all bathrooms:
- Spray bottle with all purpose cleaner – I love to use a simple mixture of vinegar and water
- Baking Soda – this works wonders for tough surface stains
- Microfiber towel – this cleans with little to no streaks
- Disposable Paper Towel – to clean up super messes easily. We love Bounty Paper Towels
- Bissell Featherweight Stick Vaccum – I HATE sweeping and when we moved, my friend recommended this vacuum. It quickly became my best cleaning tool. It is so lightweight and powerful enough to clean up everyday dust. I can easily vaccum my entire house in a fraction of the time I used to spend sweeping
- Swiffer Wet Mop – I hate mopping even more than I hate sweeping. I usually grab a swiffer wet pad to get the job done but I still hate it.
- Robot Vaccum – I have not invested in this but it’s a really nice to have, if you can afford it.
- Robot mop – I haven’t purchased one yet but this will be a game changer for me.
Top Secrets To Keeping A Clean House
These 5 secrets are the best ways to keep your house clean, especially with young kids.
- Get the entire family involved
- Make cleaning fun!
- Create easy, realistic cleaning schedules, routines & habits
- Chore and reward chart
- Frequent decluttering
Get the Entire Family Involved
Of course, sharing the cleaning responsibilities definitely eases the burden of cleaning from one person.
Getting every family member involved in cleaning also frees up time for you and for others.
Another benefit is that it helps to improve your mood because now you’re not as stressed AND you have more time for yourself.
Finally, getting everyone involved allows cleaning to eventually be more efficient.
Sometimes even the kids come up with smarter ways of tackling a task.
Together, you will eventually find faster and more efficient ways of doing the cleaning jobs you hate the most.
How To Make Cleaning Fun
If you know me, I’m sure you guessed that my suggestion here is to crank up some music.
Music just gets people in a better mood and motivated to do stuff – even clean.
For the monthly cleaning activities, if the kids can’t do a cleaning task on their own, involve them and clean together.
That eases you up and you’re also teaching them how to do the task so that they can take over in the future.
You could also make a family game out of the cleaning task. Earlier this week, I enlisted my two boys to help me clean out the garage.
They were hesitant at first, but I made a game out of it and they were almost sad when we were finished!
So, do whatever you need to do to turn a funk into a productive, fun cleaning time.
Create Easy Realistic Family Cleaning Routines
This hack is, of course, the purpose of this post. By creating an easy, realistic cleaning schedule, cleaning becomes a part of your routine, and habits are formed.
This makes it so much easier to get cleaning tasks done.
With young kids, routines and developing habits are gold to keep a clean house.
Often, just by seeing you do things routinely, kids follow your lead. Even my one year old knows to wipe up her messes and clear her table.
She knows when things are out of place and when it’s time to tidy up, she happily sings the “tidy up song” while packing away her toys.
Kids also love to feel like they’re in charge of something – they love to feel responsible.
I put each kid in charge of various cleaning tasks every day and they love ensuring that it’s done by everyone.
There are incredible benefits of teaching and encouraging your family to develop routines and habits.
Also, check out this easy daily routine checklist for your kids.
Teaching your kids to set and clear the table before and after meals, tidy up after playing, and putting back books when academic time is over are simple tasks that kids can do to help out.
To get them into the routine at first, it may take a lot out of you – there will be lots of reminding!
But, as time goes by, once you stay consistent, they will get into the hang of it and create habits.
When you and your kids get into routines, habits are developed. Basically, things are done on auto pilot which makes keeping your house clean so much easier!
Chore and Reward Chart
I also mentioned this above but one of the best ways I’ve found to get everyone involved in cleaning and chores is of course, with a chore and reward chart.
It has worked so well for my family and so many others that I thought it was worth highlighting again.
Especially when you have kids, creating a fun way to chart chores, track accountability, and of course, provide rewards and incentives will help kids really get into cleaning.
And hey, rewards aren’t a bad idea for the adults either 🙂
Frequent Decluttering
Clutter has a sneaky way of accumulating and then becoming an overwhelming and very daunting task.
I try to declutter often and still, sometimes, I wonder where stuff comes from and more importantly, what were we thinking to hold on to it (for example, some mail).
If you need some help decluttering, you might find this article very helpful.
Frequent decluttering helps to get rid of things you no longer use and need. Having a clutter free home means that cleaning is a lot less stressful.
Additionally, when everything is organized and has a home and everyone in your family knows where things go, tidying up takes much less time.
Another great tip is to keep counter tops and surfaces clutter free. This helps reduces the time needed to dust and clean surfaces.
If you have kids, this cleaning hack is extremely important to ensure that you keep a clean house.
Kids find treasure in everything! It’s very cool to see how awesome their minds are and I’m not saying to stunt their creativity at all, and throw away things that they just “must-have”.
Just ensure that when they’re finished playing with their 34910750058th “favorite” box, that they help you throw it in the trash.
A great way to keep clutter at a minimum is an end of day tidy up. This has worked wonders for our family and once you do it often, it doesn’t take a lot of time. We love music and it seems that the kids are a little competitive right now.
So, we make a game out of it – sometimes they race against the timer and sometimes we let the kids race against one another.
Even though they’re racing, we still ensure that they’re completing their chores right.
Final Tips For An Easy Realistic Cleaning Schedule For Mom
The number one thing to remember when creating your easy cleaning schedule is to make it realistic for your lifestyle.
You can use ideas from this post or any other resource and tweak them to make it your own and more importantly, to make it work for you.
Before you go, don’t forget to download the free cleaning schedule and routine printable to help you to create your realistic cleaning schedule.
Remember to try the tips from this post, like doing a little each day, to make cleaning less daunting. Also, try to get everyone involved and make it as fun as possible.
I feel confident that you will come up with the best cleaning routine to keep your house clean.
I’d love to hear from you! What cleaning tips & hacks can you share with us? Let us know in the comments below.
