What is a good daily cleaning schedule?

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As homemakers, mothers or wives (or all of the above) we know how important it is to keep our home clean and functioning every day. But how do we keep a clean house when we have kids running around, laundry piles staring at us and maybe even a job to attend to? With this daily cleaning schedule you will have a great daily checklist to work off of.

Why should you clean daily?

Before we start, let’s talk about why it’s smart to start cleaning every day. I am a huge fan of cleaning something every single day and here’s why.

It will take less time. Doing a little bit every day is so much easier than doing it all in one day. It only takes a little bit of your day but you will always feel like you live in a clean and pleasant environment. Even if you are a working mom, you can still keep up with cleaning daily. You could do half an hour before leaving the home and half an hour in the evening for example. There’s a lot that can be done in 30-60 minutes!
It’s easier to keep on top of bigger things. When you clean a little bit daily, you automatically have time to do one of the seasonal things like deep cleaning the oven. When you clean the entire day once a week, you don’t have any time left for deep cleaning an oven. Which often results in not doing it at all! So making sure you cover the basics on a daily basis, will allow you to add in other important tasks.
It makes it less daunting to start. Knowing you have a gazillion things on your cleaning list makes it really hard to get started. There is just SO. MUCH. TO. DO! And I don’t know about you, but I really don’t like knowing I have to clean all the things all day. So starting on a day where I have to clean all day is so much harder than just doing a few daily tasks in 30 minutes.

woman with a white t-shirt holding a laundry basket

Cleaning something every day will make your life so much easier. Another great thing to add here is; get help. And I do not mean you need to hire a maid. If you want to hire someone, by all means go for it. But I also know this is not possible for everyone (including me!)

What I mean is; get the family involved. Give your kids some chores and teach them how good it is to help. I explain all about the benefits of letting the kids do chores in this post. It is something I 100% believe in.

You could also have your husband involved in cleaning, but that is something you need to discuss with your spouse. For us it does not make sense. I am home all day and have time to clean, while he works outside the home and comes home tired. Plus, I don’t mind cleaning at all.

What to do every day

So now that we know cleaning a little every day is easier, what should you then clean daily? Having a good daily cleaning schedule makes it so much easier to stay on top of things.

There are many systems out there that can help you get a good cleaning schedule started. I have created a system that stems from the FlyLady system (be warned, that website is very ‘interesting’ and is a little tough to navigate, but the system is great!). She has a few key elements that I implemented:

Creating a little cleaning routine for the morning, afternoon and evening. I love having a good morning routine and this was something I was already doing. But her system is obviously focused on cleaning so I added a few of her things like start a load of laundry in the morning, vacuum in the afternoon and ‘shine the sink’ in the evening (which I turned into; get rid of all the things on the counter and do all the dishes. I don’t scrub down the sink every evening..) Not sure how to start a good routine? Check out this post!
Using zones to get through every room in the home. I really like her zone system to get the entire home clean. There are a few rooms/zones I clean in a week. Then, in one month, you have gone through every room in the house. You could easily adapt this to doing bedrooms in week 1 of the month, living room in week 2, kitchen in week 3, bathroom in week 4 and laundry, garage etc. in week 5 for example. But I just really like the way she turned it into zones.
Weekly home blessing. I absolutely love this. I had some sort of home blessing ready to go already, but having some of her ideas added to the list made it a perfect little Friday routine. I now have a list of about 10 tasks that I do during the week (but mostly on Friday) to bless the home and my family. There’s mop the floors, empty out the trash and change bedsheets on that list and it’s nice to be able to check things off as you go to make sure you actually did all the tasks.

Where do you start?

Would you like to get started with a daily cleaning schedule, but not sure where to go? Follow these simple steps!

Clean the kitchen before bed.
Create a good evening routine. A good day starts the night before!
Create a good morning routine.
Look at cleaning tasks you can add to the morning or evening routine
Do the home blessing every week
Create an afternoon routine
Start cleaning with the zones in mind
Perfect routines where necessary.

When you decide to follow these steps, make sure you don’t go overboard and change all the things at once. Go one step at a time. You don’t need to become a cleaning expert in a week. Start slow and add in a new step when you are ready to add in more to your day. At the end of the steps, you will have the perfect daily cleaning schedule for you and your family!

Now all you have to do, is get started!