cleaning schedules

When I had my own apartment it seemed to stay clean forever. Sure I would dust every now and then, vacuum and wipe down the bathroom and kitchen every week, but there wasn't a need to do a full out cleaning very often. Well now that I live with a boy (he really is pretty clean) and an 85lb dog (he is primarily the culprit of the messes) I find myself having to clean ALL the time. There are a few things we do or try to to everyday...dishes, making to bed, picking up, sweeping, etc... However usually by Thursday or Friday I am about to go crazy (Jon says I am OCD when it comes to having a clean house) because I feel like our house is just plain dirty. I always want to have that house where people could just show up and the house looked clean and inviting. Don't get me wrong I want our house to looked lived in and I want us to be comfortable, but I feel so much happier when I can study in a clean house vs a dirt one. So I started reading this blog and she suggested cleaning a little bit everyday that way you spend more time in cleaning each room and everything stays pretty clean throughout the week without having an all out cleaning fest every Friday. I decided I would try it out for 2 weeks and see how I like it.

Here is my schedule:
Monday: clean outside (porch and flowerbed)
Tuesday: kitchen
Wednesday: bathrooms
Thursday: bedrooms
Friday: living room and office - which leave it nice and clean for weekend guest.
Saturday: laundry
Sunday: RELAX

I started on Tuesday and I spent 45 minutes on the kitchen. It had just rained the night before so Hiro tracked in a bunch of mud which meant I had to sweep and mop twice just to get it all up. Hopefully in the future it will only take me about 30 minutes.

Today I tackled the bathrooms. Since ours are pretty small it only took me 30 minutes to do a good scrub down of everything in both of the rooms.

I hope this plan works. It definitely helps to know that I don't have to clean the whole house at once (who has time for that during the week anyway!). There are still going to be things we have to do more frequently than once a week (sweep and vacuum). So far so good...we'll see how I feel in 2 weeks.

I'm off to pick up a cookie cake for Jon's birthday!! Tonight we are going out with some friends and then everyone is coming back here for cake!