What is your housekeeping routine?

[pecka]

Come on..... love to read about peoples domestic habits.

What do you do to make sure how is tidy and clean throughout the week (or not as the case may be)

After birth of ds discovered that usual cleaning adhoc system just didn't happen anymore (and spending more time at home looking at it all and getting cross). I must confess to creating a very obsessive spreadsheet! I have a column for the jobs (split into weekly, fortnightly and monthly) and then a column for each week. I fill in the day that I have done the job and I find its really helping to motivate me. Nothing more satisfying than filling in a box! I stick it inside a cupboard and hope none of my friends spot it as they would have an hysterical fit!

Do what I can every day after work, dishes sweep up etc

washing clothes twice a week, more if needed

big clean up on a sunday

I watch Desperate Housewives or Anthea Turner or How Clean is your House and that inspires me for an hour.

Must design strict childcareguruwhomustnotbementioned-like regimental household timetable. Along the lines of polish wooden furniture at 10am, at 1015 have cup of tea with just one biscuit, at 1022 clean sofas etc.

Clean bathroom once a week

Clean floors in kitchen and living room every 2-3 days plus wipe area around table after every meal, clean bedroom floor once a week

Do washing as and when necessary

Wash up twice a day (no dishwasher :()

Tidy toys away every evening before ds' bedtime

Change beds every couple of weeks

Plus every three weeks it's our turn to clean the floor on our landing and the steps going down to the next floor (we live in a 4-storey house with 3 flats on each floor)

Bits as and when. Washing most evenings. Cleaners once every 2 weeks, which makes us tidy up properly. But when guests come (as they have this weekend) we, like charliecat, end up with strange things in our bedroom that have had to come out of the spare room. This weekend it's been a big pile of spare duvets, 2 wetsuits and a Christmas tree made of twigs that for some reason hasn't yet been put back in the loft.

Endless daily washing up/ washing clothes ( don't iron a thing)...clear floor space in Tv room at the end of each day, with help from Dd 3...all other serious cleaning stuff just gets done when it's bad enough to make me feel guilty ( not often)...or if there's people coming over....no cleaner, just get Dp to clean the toilet as I hate it...and I gave birth twice, so he owes me.

I have no organisation, house a dump, getting very depressed about it all, but never seem to be able to stick to a routine for more than about 2 days.

I seem to recall something about if you do something every day for 30 days it becomes habit and you are less likely to slip out of it, but I gotta get to 30 first!!!!

Today I do have washing going round... but it is sunny outside, DD is asking me to play, and it all seems unimportant

Clean kitchen very well every evening as well as cleaning the living room, porch, hall and stairs (pretty much all of downstairs) on alot of the days. I hoover and sweep all the floors.

Clean the bathroom 3 times a week, change bedding every thursday and wash other stuff every day.

Mop the floors most days and clean the fridge once a week too.

I tend to clean alot and like having cleaness around me but i dont polish enough as i should.

Clean bathroom/shower room and toilets once a week - no set day just when i can fit it in. If the skidmarks become too unbearable then I might consider doing it more often.

Kids have a chore each every day so little things get done regularly. I go round after them when they're not looking if need be to do it properly!

Laundry every day as and when - this can sometimes be 3-4 times a day depending on how many football matches my boys have had.

Hide things that need ironing under the stairs for a month until no-one has any clothes left in their wardrobe so it MUST be done.

Mop floors once a week. Don';t do it more often as I like to make out funny faces in the dirt.

Change beds about every 10 days.

Polish when seeing the kids graffiti scrawled in it gets too obvious.

Hoover the stairs when I can't stand the bits sticking to the bottom of my feet.

Inviting people round definitely motivates me more to keep on top of things. So I don't invite anyone round very often, slattern that I am.

Laundry runs every night on cheap rate and put out or tumbled following morning.

Dishwasher runs once/twice day

Downstairs blitzed once a week, ditto upstairs. Big kids do their own rooms, little kids do with help, I do baby and ours.

Bathrooms once a week

Stairs are wooden and I use one of those parquet floor wipes three times a week

Only the baby has toys downstairs. All other toys are in bedrooms.

Living room and kitchen tidied and washed down every evening before I go to bed.

Kitchen floor either daily or every second day, gets filthy fast, despite no shoes in house and hairy labrador banned from kitchen.

My biggest things are the washing and putting away - do it straight away or it mounts up.

I bin/recycle ruthlessly

If everything has 'a home' teaching kids to tidy up is easier.

I am a little obsessive.........

Am slowly transforming tip to a house by concentrating on one room at a time. When I first strated everytime I turned round it looked 10 time worse. Now I flit round in the morning whilst the kids are having breakfast and straighten the room I have done. We do our morning activity (preferably out of the house) Come in have lunch and stack dishwasher. DD goes to Nursery and ds has a nap in the afternoon so I get two hrs straight to get on with target room otherwise I get on with it when I come in from work at midnight as I have a clear run of the hse with no distractions. Hopefully by the end of June I will no longer feel embaressed (sp is getting worse) by my home.

I work pt. I have 1-2 hours from the time I get home at around 4 pm to when I collect dd from nursery at 5:30 pm to get my housework sorted - this is because once dd is home, I have to be her active playmate and chaperone, with little chance of sneaking off or working around her.

Top of my list during that time is getting dinner ready, do washing up, laundry, folding, sorting out bills/admin, dealing with tradesmen, grocery shop etc. Some tidying, perhaps wiping surfaces if I am feeling virtuous. Only clean toilet and kitchen if very grubby (at most once a week) or when guests come. Cleaner comes once a fortnight to do a deep clean. No routine, just firefighting.

Once dd is home at 6pm, the only thing I might get away with is tidying when she is playing (perhaps 5 mins at a go, if I am lucky).

Once dd is in bed at 8:30pm, dh and I have dinner, wash up dishes, more tidying, shower/personal hygiene. Then time for bed ... and the cycle begins again!

DH is ruthless when it comes to tidyness and it has rubbed off on me now. Our DTS, who are 27 months, have already been trained in the way of tidiness and they will pack away their toys and books before their evening bath. They only take out the toys that they want to play with and put them away when they have finished [smug emoticon]

DH is responsible for cleaning bathroom and downstairs cloakroom (once a week), empties bins when necessary and is fastidious about removing clutter every day. I vacuum the whole house once a week, wash clothes twice a week, clean kitchen thoroughly once a week but wipe surfaces as I go everyday. I also do the ironing about twice a week but as I like ironing and folding clothes , it always gets done. Dusting is done as and when it is required.

We prefer to live in a tidy house because you then have more time to do other things, can always find what you are looking for and it is less stressful. I have even started baking biscuits and growing vegetables because I have so much time (and I work 3 days a week, am studying for a diploma in computing plus I am endeavouring to become more fluent in German)

Every morning: superficially bathroom, toilet and kitchen (but not inside cupboards, wall tiles), vacuum and mop all the floors. Load dishwasher, load washing machine.
Then I do one room a day more intensively: Monday - living room,etc
Friday - major clean everywhere so it's clean for the weekend.

Try to avoid cleaning windows on the basis that it may well rain sometime soon, so why bother? Ironing I leave to pile up until it starts falling off the chair or reaches the ceiling. SAHM with 1 kid in daycare

Ohhh this is so depressing....I have no routine whatsoever apart from washing dd2's nappies every other day. Everything else gets done as and when, really shoud get into routine!!
dh does the dishes/kitchen every night and helps out with ironing now and again.

Oh where does the time go?????
2 children,new puppy and v.upset cat! oh yes I spend the odd minute or two on here

I don't have a specific schedule but generally I fit the following into a week

• Mop kitchen/hall downstairs loo floors every other day (stupid glossy finish, shows up EVERYTHING).

• Hoover kitchen/hall/downstairs loo floors twice a day (again, that dastardly finish)

• Hoover lounge daily

• Hoover & mop bathrooms and ensuite twice a week

• Clean bathroom suites thoroughly twice a week

• I tidy as I go along (hate clutter so there's not much to get in the way)

• 1 load of laundry a day (at least, depending on the weather)

• Change my bedding weekly and the kids' fortnightly.

• Clean inside of windows once a month (window cleaner does the outside)

We are also a no shoe household, cream carpet and high gloss creamy floors means it's a total no-brainer

Oh yes, dishwasher is filled/run/emptied as and when

Just remembered other stuff too...

• Clean out fridges properly once a fortnight (obv I wipe up spills etc as they happen)

• Defrost freezers once every 6 months and clean them out properly.

• Clean inside of kitchen cupboards thoroughly once every 6 months (again clearing up spills etc as and when)

dishwasher once a day
2 loads of washing every day
ds tidies all his toys away before he goes to bed
hoover every day due to amount of food dropped by ds and dd.
wipe kitchen surfaces after loading dishwasher
bleach toilets every day
blitz downstairs once a week
blitz upstairs once a week
clean bathroon and showerroom once a week
change beds once a fortnight
never iron
window cleaner comes once a month
grocery shopping once a week

i'm at home 5 days and at work the other 2

Oooh loving this!
This is going to be my fave topic I can tell....
My laundry routine (much sneered at by my colleagues, but I’m never drying my hands at their houses ) is towels Monday, our bedlinen Weds, kids bedlinen Fri, wash all these as soon as changed (so that’s 4 loads).
Other washing as and when through week, prefer not to wash on Sundays (but have had trouble getting it dry lately with all the bad weather).
Ironing - secret is to keep on top of it, do about an hour every evening tho it has got strangely out of hand over last few days.
Hoover downstairs every day, usually after the kids have gone to bed. Big dust/clean downstairs about once a week. Hoover stairs a couple of times a week, upstairs twice a week, once is cursory (so OK after lights out (nothing wakes my lot)), once a big clean up, hoover picture rails etc, so needs to be done in day (usually Sunday, tho did it yesterday morning this week).
Clean bathroom once a week if it’s lucky (hate that job).
Cook every evening, DH washes up.
Tidy up every day but there are far too many toys. Need to have a clearout esp as birthdays are approaching for ds1 and dd....
Whew that sounds very organised. I always say my house is very untidy but quite clean, and everyone has clean clothes and nice food to eat.

still expecting my first so general tidy everyday 1 wash a day wash bedclothes every sat gut from top to bottom every two weeks or when mood strikes me dishwasher goes on everyday iron about twice a month its going to be fun when baba comes along as havent got a clue what im gonna do

NdP, what you need is a frost-free freezer, a wonderful invention!
Quite at some of you - cleaning bathroom 3x a week, very impressive. Speedymama, I thought I was busy!
(I should add that I WOTH 30hrs/week so most of my cleaning is done in the pm. )

I seem to spend my life cleaning and tidying and hoovering etc but my house always seems such a mess! i dont know how! maybe im just really crap at the whole housekeeping thing!

Although my friend who like me also has small children around has the most immaculate house and i cant for the life of me figure out how she manages it! [sob sob sob] lol

is nayoen relal yinterested aor ar ehtey juist ussing htis as cataharsis?