What with school runs, packed lunches, working, shopping and running around after all the other members of the household, cleaning can sometimes be the last thing you get round to. Spending your evenings washing, cleaning and trying to silently run the hoover round (cos we all do that right), is no where near as much fun as spending the evening with your loved one, a glass of wine or a nice cup of tea and some chocolate biscuits – or all of the above. But did you know that if you plan your cleaning carefully, you could halve the amount of time you spend on it, and free up more minutes in the day for you to spend doing something much more fun.
So, here at Maid In Essex, we believe in offering practical and useful, user friendly cleaning tips for our lovely followers. This weeks blog is designed to help all you overworked mums out there, by showing you how to plan your housework for the week. Give the cleaning the short shift it deserves and spend more time…well just being you!
So where to begin, we think that a super fast but still efficient cleaning regime should begin with good planning.
1. So first off, make that plan
And by that we mean a proper plan, not a few random notes and reminders written on the back of a old screwed us bus ticket. There are two ways we prefer to do this, although you may of course find another way, but maybe try ours first:
Type, Print and Laminate
You can easily find good sample schedules on the internet, or even just type up your own. Remember, you are not trying to be superwoman here, you are just trying to balance enough cleaning every day to keep your house ticking over and tidy so you can still handle all your other obligations and have some downtime.
This one is a good example:
Set yourself daily tasks, then add in weekly, monthly or maybe even annual chores to ensure you see the bigger picture.
Daily tasks should be quite self explanatory and you are probably doing them all already. If you are feeling super efficient you could even allocate times for each chore. Or, if you are feeling REALLY brave perhaps you could get the other members of your household involved and have them take on various chores to help you out.
Anyway, back to the plan! (stick to the plan, always stick to the plan!)…….make sure you keep it simple. “Make Beds”, “Sort Washing”, “Sweep floor” etc are about as much detail as you need to go into, and really about as much as you need to do. The whole idea of having a schedule in the first place is to keep things simple to maximise your effort. If you start messing around with extra detail and faffing about and getting distracted it won’t be any help to you at all.
Download An App
In these days of devices, there is an app for everything. So, why not download an app that keeps you on track and evens sends you reminders of what needs doing and when. We’ve researched several of these apps and the following seem to be the most favoured ones on the market today. There is also the good old iReward app which rewards the little people in your life when they do good things – you could incorporate housework into this too. Download these and keep your iPad on hand.
2. Keep it where you can see it.
If you are planning to print and laminate your plan, make sure it’s kept where you can see it. Sounds obvious we know, but you would be suprised how easy it is to forget something or get distracted if it’s not directly within your line sight. Best, and most obvious, places to keep it:
– On the fridge
– On your upper kitchen cabinets
– On a mirror
– Next to the front door
– Anywhere you go regularly (so pinning it on a pin board, out the back, behind the washing machine – is totally not going to work).
You can download, and laminate a single sheet that you can keep reusing, or you could digitally fill in a form online and change it on a weekly basis. You could even go as far as this lady did, by digitally amending and printing every page and having them bound together like an annual housework instruction manual. Her website, www.theconfidentmom.com, also offers you printable downloads and a whole array of other useful guides to keeping your house in ship shape condition at all times.
