If you google ‘cleaning routine’, you get a lot of results with a lot of different routines.
Some of them are helpful, some of them seem a bit insane.
The problem with following a routine that might work for someone else is that you may have a completely different life from them.
The routine might make perfect sense but it doesn’t mean it’s going to fit in with your life.
For example, if you are working mum or if you are a mum who is also a full-time carer to a disabled child, following someone who is a stay at home mum whose children are all in school all day probably won’t work for you.
Even though it might seem like it could.
That’s why it’s important to make a routine that actually works for you and that fits your own life and circumstances.
That doesn’t mean you can’t use their cleaning routines for inspiration, but make sure you change things up so that it fits your life.
Things can change
I have followed the same cleaning routine since my youngest was a baby, and it has worked really well.
I would do a reset on a Monday (dust, hoover, mop, bathrooms etc). Then on a different day I would do a ‘zone clean’, which would mean cleaning one specific room from top to bottom.
This is the routine if you think that actually that is what would suit you the best.
And it worked really well.
Until it didn’t.
Things would come up on a Monday that meant I wasn’t getting around to cleaning the house, or I was rushing through it to try and get it done and it felt like the house just wasn’t getting properly cleaned.
For lots of different reasons, it just wasn’t working.
One of the things I have been doing the last few years is to have a second cleaning routine which is my summer cleaning routine.
It’s just a routine that breaks everything down smaller so that it’s actually manageable in the school holidays or post-surgery or for whatever other reason life get’s a little bit crazy.
I decided before the summer this year, when I had just had enough of trying to make it work to try and make that routine my new cleaning routine all year around.
It’s only been a couple of months, and it does feel like a bit of an adjustment – mainly because I love a routine, but it’s working much better.
If there is something on that day it still works because it’s broken down so much.
If I am in a cleaning mood and have lots of time it still works.
The new cleaning routine I am following
I love seeing what other people are doing with their cleaning routines so this is mine at the moment.
It is still a bit of a work in progress, but it’s getting there.
Daily tasks
Everyday I do these things
- Empty and reload the dishwasher
- 2 x loads of laundry (we are a sen household – there is a lot of laundry)
- Wipe down the kitchen worktops
- Quick tidy up
- Wipe down the sink and toilet
- Check the floors – if they need a hoover I hoover, if they don’t I don’t.
It might seem like a lot of things, but once you get in to the routine of doing them everyday it takes hardly any time at all.
It means as well that the house is always company-ready.
If someone drops by unexpectedly, I know that the toilets are clean and the sink isn’t covered in toothpaste and it’s generally clean and tidy here.
It saves a lot of stress.
So on to the actual routine:
Monday – Dust, mirrors and Reset Day.
I dust the house which is kinda self-explanatory, but as I am moving room by room dusting I am also putting things away and tidying up.
I empty the bins around the house on this day too.
So it feels like the house is having a reset and by the end of it, it is such a nice feeling, especially if it’s been a busy weekend.
On days where I don’t really have much time, I just do the dusting and clean the mirrors and leave the tidying other than the things that really need tidying.
Tuesday – Bathrooms day
I clean the bathrooms on a Tuesday, I don’t mop the floors, just clean the bathrooms.
It doesn’t take as long as you think, especially if you are doing it weekly.
Wednesday – Kitchen day
I give the kitchen some TLC on Wednesday, wipe down the cupboards, clean the sink and a quick wipe of the fridge.
This isn’t a deep clean, I’m not cleaning inside cupboards or the oven or anything like that.
It’s just the basics.
Again – no mopping.
Thursday – Hoover and mop day
The house is all nice and clean so it’s time to hoover and mop.
Self-explanatory.
If I have time, I will hoover the settees and maybe hoover the corners, depending on how much time I have.
Friday – Zone day
So the idea on a Friday is to have one room that get’s focused on.
The more deep cleaning tasks get done here, so things like feather dusting, decluttering, skirting boards, windows.
It’s just one room so it’s not as overwhelming as deep cleaning the entire house, and it stops you needing to do a mega cleaning marathon.
I set an alarm for an hour (or however much time I have) and try and power through.
It’s a case of whatever I can get done, get’s done and that is it.
Weekends
On weekends we are usually busy so the only things I try to do on a weekend are change the beds, I love going into a Monday with fresh sheets.
Water the plants.
Meal planning and do my grocery order for delivery on a Monday.
That’s it.
Other zone options
Another way of doing the zone cleaning is to break it down into smaller chunks.
So for example if the zone for this week is your bedroom, on Monday while you are dusting you could also do a quick feather dust and a wipe over the skirting boards being you are already dusting.
Tuesday could be the day you clean the windows.
You could declutter on the wednesday.
And dust behind the furniture etc and the things that don’t routinely get hoovered etc on a Thursday while the hoover is out.
Then on a Friday you have a lovely clean room ready for the weekend.
That might work better for you.
I am considering trying this approach for a bit to see if it works better, I will update this post if I do!
How to make a cleaning routine that works for you
Step 1: Make a list of what you need to do every day/week/month
Go room by room around your house and make a list of all the things that need to be cleaned and how often they need to be done.
This is one of the first places that we can get a bit swept up in someone else’s cleaning routine and it just doesn’t make sense for us.
A family with dogs or a wheelchair or pets will probably want to hoover and mop their floor more often than a family who doesn’t or isn’t at home that much.
Maybe the cleaning routine you are looking at for inspiration is saying to clean your oven every month, but every three months works better for you.
Maybe the thought of cleaning something every month shocks you because you would do it every week.
There isn’t a right or wrong answer for how often things should be cleaned (other than the obvious of like wiping down worktops after eating etc), it needs to make sense for your circumstances.
So go room by room and make a list of what needs cleaning and how often makes sense for you to clean it.
Step 2: Think about what time you have
Think about your day to day life.
Do you work? Are your children in school? What sort of time do you have to spend cleaning your home.
If you have hardly any time, then it’s going to make sense to make a cleaning routine that does smaller bursts of cleaning.
If you don’t have much time, but you have one or two days a week completely free then maybe it makes more sense to have a cleaning day.
Look at your own life and schedule and see what sort of time you have to work with.
Step 3: Make a plan for the daily tasks
So you have an idea of what time you have to work with.
And you have a list of what needs to be done in each room and how often it needs to be done.
So the next part is to actually make a plan.
Take your daily list and think about what part of your day does it make the most sense to fit those things in.
Remember it has to fit your life.
If you wake up at 8am, have to get the kids out the door and to work by 9am – then deciding to do a hundred things in that time isn’t just not going to work, trying to make it work is going to make your stress levels a lot higher than they need to be.
What do you have time for in the morning?
What does it make more sense to do in the afternoon or the evening?
Step 4: Make a plan for the weekly tasks
Next take your list and look at your weekly tasks.
When does it make the most sense to fit those things in?
Would it make sense to break things down in to a task a day?
Monday – Dusting, Tuesday – Bathrooms etc
Or maybe a room a day makes more sense for you.
Monday – Kitchen, Tuesday – Living Room, Wednesday – Bedrooms
Does it make more sense for your life to have a day of cleaning?
Or on one day you clean downstairs and on another you clean upstairs.
There is no right or wrong way to clean your home.
But there is a way that is going to fit you better.
So once you have done that, it’s time to move on to fitting in the monthly tasks.
Step 6 – Plan in the monthly tasks
It’s personal preference where you fit in your monthly cleaning tasks.
Look at your weekly cleaning routine which you made in the last step, and work out where it makes sense to fit in those monthly tasks.
Maybe every Friday you do a room/zone focus.
So Week 1 of the month would be Kitchen, week 2 Living areas, Week 3 Bathroom etc.
When I do this, we have 8 rooms in our house, so over 2 months every room in our house gets a deep clean.
That works well for me, occasionally I get into thinking that maybe I should do it over a month so every month the house gets a deep clean but I just feel like it’s too much time spent cleaning.
So over 8 weeks works well for me.
If the thought of each room in your house only being cleaned once every 8 weeks makes you feel a bit gross – then do it every 4 weeks, just do what works for you.
And remember as well, that you are doing a weekly clean too.
It’s not that the room isn’t being touched for 8 weeks, you will be doing your daily and weekly cleans – it’s just the deeper things like the skirting boards, windows etc.
Another option would be to do a monthly task a week
In this scenario, you would get your list of monthly tasks and then do one a week.
So week one could be feather dusting and you feather dust the entire house.
Week two could be windows, and you clean all the windows.
How many weeks your cleaning cycle goes through will depend on how many monthly tasks you have.
This option might work well if you are really short on time.
A third option could be fitting them in to your weekly plan
There are two ways of doing this, you could choose a weekly zone every week – week 1 is bedrooms for example.
And then on Monday when you are dusting (or whatever your plan looks like), you could also feather dust the bedroom and do the skirting boards.
Tuesday when you are doing bathrooms, you could clean the windows.
Wednesday when you are doing the kitchen, you could have a declutter in there etc etc.
This is what I spoke about above as an option I was thinking about for my own cleaning routine if it sounds familiar!
Another option for this would be do it by task in a whole house approach.
So Monday when you dust, you also feather dust and clean the skirting boards.
Tuesday you clean the bathroom and all the windows.
To me personally, this feels like a lot of cleaning in a day.
It might sound perfect for you.
Some people prefer to do a marathon spring cleaning type cleaning spree and over a few days just do all the monthly tasks.
Find a method that sounds like it would fit you and your life and try that.
Remember if it doesn’t work, you can change it.
And if you don’t know which to chose, just pick one and try that and if that doesn’t work try another one.
What to do when you feel like your cleaning routine isn’t working
I think one of the issues we have with cleaning routines is that we think things will always be the same.
But life has busy periods and quieter periods.
So maybe it will make more sense for you to have a cleaning routine that works when everyone is in school or when things are more normal.
And a cleaning routine that works for when life gets busier.
Maybe it’s the school holidays or a season of surgery recovery or a lot of appointments.
I did this with our cleaning routine and I did find it worked really well (until it didn’t which is the point of this post!).
But if you find that cleaning one day a week works better for you, then perhaps a summer holiday cleaning routine for those busier times will work well for you too.
And if your cleaning routine just isn’t working – then go back to the drawing board and try a different approach.
Sometimes things work perfectly well on paper, but it just isn’t working out like that in real life.
And that is okay.
We can pivot and we can change things until we find something that does work.
I hope this helps and if you need any help with creating your own cleaning routine, let me know and I will help you!
Beth x