HOW TO CREATE A

Personalized Housecleaning Plan

3 TYPES OF CLEANING
Your personalized housecleaning plan needs to take into account that not all cleaning is
created equal. In reality, there are three different kinds that all need to be done.

1. Deep cleaning: moving things to damp-clean and scrub and leave an area spotless.
2. Surface cleaning: wiping things down before there’s much build-up
3. Tidying, ordering, decluttering – putting things in their right places

These processes need to happen from the lower form on up – you can’t deep clean or surface
clean until you’ve tidied. Deep cleaning is not something that needs to happen every day, but
only as needed.

If you’re clear on your expectations, you’ll experience less internal mental block when you
face your to-do list.

3 KINDS OF ZONES
How much housework you have to account for in your personalized housecleaning plan
depends on the size and set-up of your house, the number and ages of your children, and
what happens in your house regularly.

1. Laundry – What sorts of laundry do you do? Do you have laundry with special steps?
How much laundry do you have? How many loads and how often?
2. Wet rooms (bathrooms & kitchen) – These rooms usually collect more serious messes
and need to be tackled more often and with more attention. They require actual cleaning,
regularly, or they get gross. List the number of wet rooms you must manage.
3. Dry rooms (living, dining, school, bedrooms) – Rooms that do not have sinks still need to
be cleaned, but it’s a different sort of cleaning. In these rooms, your concern is primarily
tidying and dusting. If done regularly, these tasks are not difficult and can be done quickly.
List the number of dry rooms you have to care for.

Once you see the list of areas you have under your responsibility, the next step to your own
personalized housecleaning plan is to break them up into zones. For example, our entryway is
next to our living room, and the dining room is open to the living room. These three areas in
my own housecleaning routines count as one zone.

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3 PARTS TO THE SCHEDULE
These zones in your house don’t all need to be thoroughly cleaned every single day. The real
meat of your own, individual housecleaning plan is to divide out the work over time, and then
loop back around to the beginning.

1. Seasonal/yearly – Some tasks do need to be done, but very infrequently. What are these
tasks for you? For me, they are scrubbing out the ovens (deep cleaning), clearing and
wiping out the kitchen cupboards and drawers, defrosting the freezer. Then, you have a
few options for scheduling these sorts of tasks:
• Reserve a specific time frame to do them in. For example, I generally defrost my freeze
in the spring and I do a thorough kitchen cleaning during our long Christmas break.
• Spread them out so you do one per month.
• Pile them all into a “spring cleaning” week (it doesn’t have to be spring)
2. Weekly – Some tasks need to be done quite regularly, but not every day. Weekly I need
to clean my stove, wipe out the fridge, and mop the living room zone. You can arrange
these tasks in a few different ways, too:
• Do one or two tasks off this list each day.
• Save them all up for one designated “housecleaning” day.
3. Daily – Some tasks need to be done daily or nearly daily in order to stay on top of the
chaos. In our house, this includes laundry and bathrooms. What, in your house, seriously
needs this sort of regular attention?

As you decide how often each sort of task needs to be done, try not to idealize your plan.
You’re not going to go from a slob to a housecleaning machine with a perfect home. And,
remember, your goal is not a perfect home, but a helpful rather than distracting stage for
your life.

3 ROUTINES IN A DAY
Now we get down to the nitty-gritty: the daily plan to tackle the work. In your daily rhythm,
look for 2-3 times you could block off for 30-60 minutes of cleaning.

1. Morning – before breakfast? immediately after breakfast? after kids have started school?
before your coffee?
2. Afternoon – after lunch? after school? before your husband comes home? If you’re going
to do one weekly task each day, blocking off a regular half-hour works well; if you want an
all-in-one day, you’ll need about a 2-hour chunk one afternoon.
3. Evening – after dinner is a natural time to tackle the dishes and kitchen tidying;
depending on your energy at this time of day, you might want to do some of your regular
chores at this point, also.

Tie your chore routines to a daily habit you already have to help them stick faster.

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 SAMPLE
Housecleaning Plan
So here is a sample personalized housecleaning plan – one very similar to
mine, in fact. Remember that number and frequency of chores depends
greatly on your family situation and your house size.

1. Deep Cleaning
• Kitchen deep cleaning during Christmas break
• Freezer clean-out in April
• Bedroom deep clean during Christmas & summer breaks
• Summer break: pick worst area to deep clean and reorganize
• Plus, every school break week, pick one trouble area to address
2. Weekly Cleaning – vacuum carpet (kid job), mop hard floors (kid job)
• Friday is my reset day – after school, I sort and tidy and clear and
try to get everything back to its right place and garbage tossed
• Saturday I clean the stove, clear & wash the fridge, and menu plan
if I need to
• Other weekdays I do odd cleaning jobs on a “as it bothers me” ba-
sis
3. Daily Cleaning – everyone pitches in throughout the day
• Morning: dishes (kids help), 1-2 loads of laundry (kids help), 1
bathroom (cycle through all 3), sweep (kid chore), take out garbage
(kid chore)
• Afternoon: EHAP tidying (everyone), surface clean as I go when
I’m able, sometimes a child damp mops the traffic areas
• Evening: dishes (husband), counters, quick mop

It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. The simpler you can
make it, and the more
you can just weave it into your day, the more likely it will actually happen
regularly.

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