Simple Happy Paper

I have yet to make peace with a cleaning routine. But I might be getting closer. Throughout the years, I have had different versions of routines. From whenever was “needed” (hello college years), the fly lady system, the Home Comforts book cleaning schedule, the Clean Mama system, and now one day during the week suggested my Martha Stewart’s Organizing book ( and I think the norm of cleaning).

Besides the college years of “whenever was needed”, all the other systems are good systems. What I have come to realize is each system works better than others depending on the season. Right now, the system working for me is taking one day during the week to clean the whole house.

I tend to collect home management books…love them!

Before I started doing that, I was doing the @cleanmama system of cleaning one room per day. It is meant to take no more than 30 minutes per day. I really liked this system, especially if your schedule is busy. It is similar to the Fly Lady System. The Fly Lady System goes by zones, by you touch a zone every single day. In my experience, these two systems (there might be more out there, these are the only two I have tried) work for me when the kids were little and my schedule was busier, and I really liked them. There was no way I could spend four hours in one day cleaning with two littles in tow. Small sections were more doable.

But as the kids have grown and I have more time during the day to myself, I am able to do it all in one day. Part of me fought spending a whole morning cleaning the house instead of doing other things on my to-do list or let’s face it doing fun stuff like breakfast with friends, crafts, reading and/or Netflix.

This is the struggle I have had for years with cleaning. It is not a thing I crave, I do not get enjoyment out of it, which makes me envious of the people who enjoy it and is part of the thing they like to do (talking about my mom here). But I do understand the benefits and I enjoy a clean house. The end goal is enough to make me figure it out.

I decided to try the one day per week schedule because in this season of my life, I can afford to give those four hours to cleaning. Mentally, it helps me organized my schedule the rest of the week. It allows me for less transitions during the other days.

So far, I have done it for a couple of months and it has been working out. I can’t lie that it was easy to transition to spend all that time cleaning the house at once. However, I have noticed that on that day, I wake up mentally prepared for it much easier now that I have been doing it for a bit.

Martha Stewart’s Organizing book recommends cleaning the house in the same order every time. This helps with getting into a routine that takes less thinking once it is set. I have also started listening to audio books and podcasts while I am cleaning. This gives me an incentive for the morning.

The order I have come up with and is working out so far is:

Bathrooms
Kitchen
Dusting
Vacuum
Mopping

Items I do biweekly are:

Windows
Fans
Vacuum furniture

This the normal cleaning routine and doesn’t include the seasonal items needed. There are other items I do everyday that I consider it part of maintenance. Different parts of these everyday items I have kept from all the different books, suggestions I have read. It shows that you don’t need to follow one specific method, but instead one that works for you and your season. I do laundry everyday (Fly Lady), wipe the bathrooms every night (Home Comforts) and sweep every morning (Clean Mama).

I track my monthly items and seasonal in my home base planner. When I was doing one thing everyday, I also had a form in my planner to remind me of the schedule until it became a habit.

What is your cleaning routine? Have you found one that works?