Less Work with Daily Cleaning

We are all busy people and fitting cleaning in our schedule can be difficult. If we do a little cleaning each day, we can have a better chance of getting it completed with less energy and without a full day of cleaning. Cleaning all day can wear us out and impact other days. By cleaning a bit each day, then this huge overwhelming task can be behind us. It is a lot less work with daily cleaning!

Daily Cleaning Tasks

To keep up, I have broken these tasks into daily activity that is about 40 minutes of work that can be done over time. My plan has me doing daily cleaning of the kitchen and doing some laundry. Then other tasks are divided across each day for about 20 minutes. I give myself a couple days that are lighter in case life gets in the way and we need catch up time. This time could also be used to do a larger task you may have or organization.

The kitchen and laundry tasks are:

Kitchen Daily Cleaning

• Wash Dishes
• Load/Unload Dishwasher
• Wipe Counters
• Sweep Floor

Daily Laundry

• Before Work
  • Wash a load in the middle of the night using the delay cycle
  • Moving that load to the dryer in the morning and if time allows, fold/hang that load
  • Starting another load of laundry to run while you are work
• After work
  • Run the refresh cycle (or fluff cycle) after work on the morning load if you didn’t have time to fold/hang it before work. Then fold/hang morning dryer load
  • Move during washer load washed during work to dryer
  • Fold/hang the evening dried load
  • Put away laundry that was done that day

How Do I Clean the Rest of the House?

If you have already figured out cleaning task timing from my Easy Cleaning During Commercials, then you can break up work according to the minutes and the task. While working on your plan, also apply the energy needed so that you do not overload yourself with high energy tasks. Hopefully, you can also assign and divvy up cleaning tasks.

If you have not worked on that, then you can split task up per day according to your best guess and give it a try. I have examples of how I did my weekly cleaning planner in my freebie library. You can sign up for the free password at the bottom of this post.

Then to break up the rest of the house, other rooms need to be cleaned each day. It is helpful for me to keep this at 20 minutes and if a room takes more work than that, it needs to move to a weekend day. An example of that extra work is the deeper cleaning of the kitchen and the cleaning of bathrooms. 

Weekend – Kitchen Deeper Cleaning

There are some things that grow larger if you do not keep up on them. As the kitchen tends to get messy quickly, the daily tasks above really help out. If you do not clean the kitchen for days, then the task grows exponentially. We try to prioritize the kitchen daily because I cook a lot. If we ate out more, then I would hardly need to clean 😊

However, even with the light daily kitchen cleaning, we do need to do more weekly. I have planned to work on the additional cleaning that the kitchen needs on Sundays. I picked Sunday as I sometimes do some weekly meal preparation on that day and often a big messy breakfast.

The cleaning that I do on Sundays would be both the daily kitchen cleaning and the additional cleaning needed:

• Wash Dishes
• Load/Unload Dishwasher
• Wipe Counters – Deep Clean under items
• Clean Stove and outside of other appliances
• Sweep and Mop Floor

Weekend – Bathroom Cleaning

Bathrooms are harder to clean if you do not clean them often. You may be able to go 2 weeks, but at 3 weeks, showers and bathtubs are a lot more work. Depending on how many people are in your family also impacts if you can slide that task. I have to work on bathrooms on a weekend day as it takes so much energy.

I clean the two main bathrooms on Saturdays. My powder room I do as needed, as well as, a basement bathroom that is less used.

The bathroom task for Saturday are:

• Clean Toilet Bowls
• Clean Outside of
  Toilets
• Clean Vanities
• Clean Shower
• Clean Bathtub
• Sweep Floors
• Mop Floors
• Clean Mirrors

If this sounds really scary, check out my Easy Cleaning During Commercials post. It will make the duration of bathroom cleaning longer but build in some breaks. 

Monday – Master Bedroom Cleaning

The Master Bedroom is one room that if you miss a week, it usually is not a problem. I like to clean the Master Bedroom on Monday as we do more weekend warrior activities during the weekend. That means that we may end up napping or sleeping right after golf or yardwork. I prefer to put on the clean sheets in the new week after work at our desk jobs 🙂

Master bedroom cleaning consists of:

• Strip Bed
• Add Clean Linens
• Dust
• Vacuum 

One thing that really helps out here is having two sets of sheets. That way there is a clean set already ready as I washed them during the week. Once a month, I do move this cleaning to a weekend in order to strip all the way to the mattress. I then wash the mattress pads and comforter so they are fresh for the month. 

Tuesday – Basement Cleaning

Basement Recreation Room Cleaning

The basement recreation room at our home is called the Wood Room. That room has a woodstove and cedar paneling on one wall. It is the main living area in the basement. 

I’ve picked Tuesday to dust and vacuum that room as it may have been used more over the weekend and needs to be ready for the next weekend. It usually needs a bit more cleaning in the Fall and Winter as there are more fires in the woodstove. In general, my hubby often cleans up that mess. 

Basement Hallway Cleaning

The basement hallway only needs a very light dusting of pictures and vacuuming. I also do this on Tuesdays as I am already downstairs.

Kids Play Area Cleaning

We have a small area for the grandkids that has toys, games and future TV. At this time, it usually just needs dusted and vacuumed as they are not here during quarantine.

If you have a kids area near your recreation area, they could work on picking up their toys while you are cleaning the other area. I do this on Tuesdays as well as I am there. 

I found this wall unit for $40, cleaned it up and painted it. I still need to put in a pretty panel where the glass used to be. That was already missing when I purchased it. With this and a toy box, we have a lot of storage. 

Wednesday – Catch Up Day

I have set aside Wednesday as a catch up day or organization day. This is a good time to catch up something missed on Monday and Tuesday. I have put vacuuming the basement stairs on this day if I decided to not tackle it on Tuesday. 

Thursday – Main Floor Cleaning

Living Room Cleaning

Our living room tends to only need light organization, dusted, and vacuumed. This is a quick task and can easily be done during a couple commercials. 

Dining Room Cleaning

This is the same case with our dining room. With a little light organization, dusted, and vacuumed, it is done. 

Game Room Cleaning

I did not actually list this cleaning on a specific day as it also does not need much. I either do this room as needed, or I happen to continue this on Thursday just because I am nearby. 

Friday – Catch Up Day

I have set aside Friday as another catch up day or organization day. In general, I do not want to do cleaning on Friday.

Friday is a good time to have someone over or even during the weekend. As I am keeping up every week, it is easy to entertain. 

Less Work with Daily Cleaning

With working on the house, a little at a time, you can avoid the weekend power clean. Hopefully, then you can have more fun on a weekend day while yet not overloading a weekday.

By not overloading your weekend, then you can do the cleaning and organizing that needs to be done monthly or seasonally.

How do you tackle cleaning? Do you have other recommendations?

Whatever you do, do you!

Not Crazy Nana