Cleaning schedule? Need help!

[FuckyDuzz]

I’m trying to come up with a schedule/system for cleaning and I’m not doing very well

It’s just it’s me & 4 DC including 2 under 2, we live in a 3 storey 5 bedroom house plus an office & utility room and I just can not find enough time to clean it all

I know lots of you use the organised mum method but looking at it I think I have too many rooms for it to work

So I’ve got as far as knowing I need to separate into daily/twice weekly/weekly/monthly tasks but that’s as far as I’ve got

Would it be best to do a room or 2 a day, or a job or 2 a day do you think? So Monday is floors, Tuesday is dusting, that kind of thing?
Also do you write it all down somewhere and tick it off? And when do you actually clean? I’m not sure how I’d do the babies bedrooms for example because the only time I could really do it is while they’re in bed

How do you all do it?

PS I can’t beli how difficult I’m finding figuring this out

[mommybear1]

Hi I use the TOMM method but had to adapt it as my house sounds about a similar size to yours and I couldn't get every room done in a week. I bypassed the boot camp stage as we are just coming to the end of a renovation and had decluttered a lot anyway.

I also think if you prevaricate too much you just feel overwhelmed so I just got stuck in and went from there.

So what I do is couple "like for like" rooms together so Monday is supposed to be Living Room, I set a 10 min time and zap through (have a 9 month old so not quite in your shoes children wise but I generally take him with me and talk to him and have a couple of toys to keep him occupied. Sometimes he "helps" with the feather duster or a microfibre cloth I usually finish the room in under 10 so I then go to the dining room have the 10 mins plus anything gained from the living room time eg 3 extra mins, then go to the playroom next and again add on any extra time. I've been doing this about 4 weeks now and my extra time means I can also squeeze in a mop of the bathrooms / Wet Room/ en Suite each day and keep my housework time to 45 mins or less BUT the first time I did this I was very through and although it's easier to keep on top off I suspect I will need to do another deep clean which did take me far longer than the 30 min slot. Tuesdays I do the bathroom/Wet Room/ en Suite. Wednesdays is the bedrooms and landing and hallway. Thursdays Kitchen and Utility/ office. Friday is for anything extra I need to do eg wipe down the bifolds etc or if I have missed a room.

It's a great system but I think the 10 mins a day is not workable for a big house. I also don't include laundry in this process as that's just a constant same with dishwasher loading etc or mopping the kitchen/Utility and hall which I do twice daily (crawling 9 month old ). If you focus and set a timer it works really well there are days when LO has a meltdown and housework has to stop to play but generally I have kept on top of it and I love the fact my weekends which used to be dedicated to housework are now free. I also feel much better in terms of knowing I am on top of it.

Re the weekly/monthly tasks I try just to keep on top each time I "do" the room iyswim eg living room settee is always pulled out and vacuumed.

I hope that's helps feel free to PM me - good luck 😉

[mrsoutnumbered]

I'm in a townhouse, although probably smaller than yours, and use TOMM. I've adapted it as follows:

Monday - living room, halls, stairs
Tuesday - bedrooms
Wednesday - bathrooms
Thursday - kitchen and utility room
Friday - Friday focus as per plan

Don't know how that would work for you? 5 bedrooms is a lot in one day. Unless you split it by floor - eg top floor one day, middle floor the next? x

[IStillDrinkCava]

You need this: www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to-clean-your-house-in-20-minutes-a-day-for-30-days-131142

It's more flexible than a weekly method. You can easily tweak it to include more areas, keeping the principle of doing the higher traffic area more often.

Alternatively do some jobs, eg bedrooms, upstairs vacuuming fortnightly. I have a very lax approach compared with mommybear. Nothing would ever convince me to mop twice a day!

[chloechloe]

I’ve been pondering the whole room daily vs task daily thing too (tragic I know!)

We have a 4 storey townhouse including the basement and I’ve come to the conclusion that doing a room or two a day doesn’t make sense as you end up lugging too much equipment / product around the house which just wastes time.

There’s a routine by How Jen Does It where you do a task a day. Eg. Day 1 Dusting, Day 2 Hoovering, Day 3 Mopping. It seems to make much more sense as you race from one room to the next with just a couple of items. It might be difficult if your children can’t be left unattended though, as getting them to move from room to room and floor to floor would slow things down? But you could always do it in the course of the day if needed rather than in one go.

I guess you need to try out a few methods and see what works the best.

[DerfelCadarn]

I live in a typical three bedroom terrace and have a toddler DD, so nap time (2 hours on a lucky day) is my housework time. I am SAHM and DP works full time. I don't follow any method but this is my schedule:

Daily after lunch (ie at start of naptime): wipe kitchen surfaces, clean high chair, quick tidy up, put load of laundry on, chop veg/marinate meat etc for dinner. Have dishwasher so luckily minimal washing up.

Then spend rest of naptime like this:
Monday - deep clean kitchen
Tuesday - dusting/tidying bedrooms and living room
Wednesday - menu planning and online grocery shop
Thursday - deep clean bathroom
Friday - any left over jobs, clear out fridge for grocery order

Daily in evening: wipe down kitchen surfaces, tidy toys, get laundry in and do any ironing. DP is v good and we share this 50:50

God help me when naptime stops (which I suspect could be this winter )

The gardening is what gets left undone here - DP does a little at weekends but it's a bit of a mess

[DerfelCadarn]

Forgot hoovering: tends to get done at weekends/early evening because DD doesn't like the noise, so one of us will do it while the other is distracting DD