As I stated in my last post, I use a maid service once a month to help supplement my house cleaning chores. But what do I do for the 3 weeks in between? With two dogs and a social husband who loves to entertain, I have to clean every day to keep my house in a “guest-ready” state. Here are my tactics.
Laundry everyday: My first tip is to do one load of laundry every day. This means, wash, dry, fold AND put away. It honestly takes me the entire day to do one load of laundry because of Parkinson’s Law (the amount of work required adjusts to the time available for its completion), however, the fold and put away part of the chore takes the most amount of time for me. I found when I do multiple loads a day, I’ll leave clean laundry in baskets and pick from them slowly rather than put them away so the task is never actually complete. If I don’t have clothes to wash one day, I’ll focus on towels, throw blankets or bed sheets. I’ve never run out of items to wash.
Chore of the day: Monday through Friday, I set it as my goal to complete one chore each day. The chores I rotate through are grocery shopping (I alternate this task with my husband), dusting, sweeping/vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom and decluttering. To be clear, I’m spot cleaning when I do these chores. For example, I don’t dust the whole house, I focus on areas that have the biggest impact such as the baseboards, computer monitors and TVs. When I declutter, I’m clearing off a surface that has accumulated junk or a drawer with useless items. My trick for casual decluttering is to have a donation box in your basement or garage that you can slowly add to and donate once it’s full.
10 minute tidy: Everyday I set a 10 minute timer on my watch and speed tidy my home. The time of day I do this varies a lot, but the result is the same. It keeps items in their “homes” and makes my decluttering days more focused. It’s a small accomplishment that makes be feel better and keeps my home looking neat overall.
On average my chores take about 30 minutes or less each day and is broken up over the course of the day. Since I dedicate 30 minutes of my time each day for 5 days, that means I’m doing these chores for 2.5 hours a week. If we go back to my hypothetical numbers breakdown from the last post… If my time is worth $40/hour, then cost of doing these chores is $100 worth of my time weekly. You may think, “what a minute, that means you’re spending $400 of your time a month! You could afford to hire the maids more!” But there is a key difference and that is the scope of work. I’m not deep cleaning in my daily chores and not all are focused on cleaning. I’m completing tasks that maid services don’t cover such as decluttering, grocery shopping and laundry. Also by chipping away at chores in this fashion, I avoid frantically clearing surfaces and rooms of clutter, laundry and misplaced items so that the maid service can do their deep cleaning that I’ve come to love and rely on.
While my house is not always in a perfect state, it is easy to maintain and makes me happy. A bonus I’ve found from this daily ritual is that my husband enjoys the cleaner space so much that he also pitches in during the 10-min tidy! What tips and tricks do you and your family use to stay on top of the household chores?
You are my aspiration, I have few blogs and infrequently run out from to post : (.