How often should I clean my house.....

Valerie J. Steimle

This is a different topic for today........but everyone needs to think about it some time or another... I wrote this seven years ago and it still pertains to me today........

How often should I clean my house?

            Dog hair! Toys! Dust!  A home that is well lived in with people and pets has to be cleaned.  But how often?  As the mother of nine children with two black lab dogs at home, I know about messes and the battle of keeping a house clean.

            As writers and busy Moms this is a never ending quest. Sometimes cleaning isn’t on the top of my list and dust piles up WAY too much but if you follow this organizational cleaning guide and get children to participate, then your house will look and feel much better.

            Whenever I have organized my cleaning time in a new home, I would make a master list of what needs to be done to keep a clean house: wash windows, dust furniture, mop floors and clean toilets. Take a thorough tour around your house to find all the jobs that need to be done so nothing gets unnoticed and write them down on a master list.

            Once this list is established then chores are organized by time frame.  Everyone knows that a carpet with pets running free needs more vacuum time than a home with no pets so think about the needs you have and plan accordingly. Group cleaning jobs by what needs to be done daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-yearly and yearly. Be sensible about cleaning tasks by what gets the most traffic in an area. For example, my children’s bathroom needed to be cleaned twice a week because of all the traffic. 

            Once you have divided your master list up by time frame, you can keep a chart in a useful place of all the daily and weekly tasks for all family members to see.  Monthly, biyearly and yearly cleaning tasks are best kept on colored 3x5 cards.  Buy a pack of colored 3x5 index cards and list all monthly, biyearly, and yearly jobs together on a card or two with any details needed about the job. Then using different colored cards, write the months of the year—one on each card---and list on that month what cleaning job you have decided to do.  Punch a hole at the top left hand corner of the card and place a metal ring through the hole. You can even tab the cards by month so you can find them easier.

             Now you have all of your cleaning jobs listed by month and what needs to be done so you don’t forget.  You don’t even need to keep the master list you wrote because they are all listed on your cards and/or job chart. The worry of what gets done when and how often is already decided and you just follow the cards you made for a clean and stress free life.