The House that Cleans Itself: The Power of a Weekly Cleaning Schedule

I’ve been using a cleaning schedule for several years now, and when I’m good about keeping up with it, I really feel like my house cleans itself. With just a few 15-minute tasks a day, I have a presentable house pretty much all the time — and that’s not a small feat with five kids, a dog, and two cats.

I’ll share my weekly cleaning list below. But first, here are four rules that make it work for me…

Don’t be too thorough. Aim to keep each task to 15 minutes. Do what you can do in that amount of time. It doesn’t have to be perfect; you’ll get to it again next week (or sooner for chores you do more than once a week). Just get it done.

If it takes you 5 minutes just to gather up all your cleaning supplies, you’re wasting time you could be using to actually clean. Keep rags and cleaning products in each bathroom so you can easily grab and clean, for example, and house kitchen cleaning supplies under the sink. An inexpensive cleaning caddy (like this $5 find from Amazon) will be your best friend here.

In addition to saving time by storing products where you use them, save time by thinking about how you use them. For instance, if you haul out the vacuum to clean your bedroom carpet, make that the day you vacuum all the bedroom carpets (rather than, say, cleaning your bedroom and bathroom in one day).

Make a laminated printable and cross-off items, or use an app. Tody is an app available in the Apple App Store and Google Play designed for just this reason—keeping track of housekeeping. You will know exactly what you need to do every day, and you’ll feel accomplished crossing items off.

Now here’s my regular schedule…

You can use it as a starting point, and within a week or two, you’ll have a good sense of what you need to tweak.

• Vacuum bedroom carpets
• Wash bathroom towels
• Clean common area floors

• Primary bathroom
• Monthly to-do
• Dust surfaces and clean glass doors

• Clean common area floors
• Outside pruning, sweeping, etc.
• Wipe kitchen chairs

• Guest and kids’ bathrooms
• Deep clean kitchen, sort through fridge
• Vacuum bedroom carpets

• Clean common area floors
• Pick up desk, laundry room, mudroom
• Wet mop kitchen

• Strip beds and wash bed linens
• Monthly to-do
• Pick up closets

• Rotate toys and books

Do you have a cleaning schedule? If so, what does it look like?