Cleaning Is NOT My Passion

I need to start off by telling you that I am no Molly Maid. My house is not a perfect, spotless show home and I will never win an award for my tidiness! My house is a continuous ebb and flow of mostly tidy and somewhat messy. When I started planning my organization overhaul, I found I spent a lot of time cleaning the house. But it was not a lot of time everyday, it was a full day once every couple of weeks. And it was usually the day before we had company coming and I was time crunched as it was trying to pull everything else together. It was stressful, not to mention exhausting.

So I went in search of a way to simply my cleaning, without sacrificing a clean house. I headed to pinterest (I swear they should pay me for advertising!) and found quite a number of cleaning plans and schedules. There were even a few that claimed I could have a clean house in 15 minutes a day. Which I would love to believe but it takes me more than 15 minutes to vacuum my house, so I think they may have exaggerated just a wee bit. I ended up finding a link to a Home Organization Plan posted over at JustMommies.
The site sets out a weekly basic cleaning routine. For example Monday you do laundry, change bed linens and bath towels. It has different basic cleaning activities for each day of the week, and it repeats certain ones like laundry so that you are not doing 5 loads of laundry all in one day (like I usually do!).
There is also a monthly calendar that gives you a different task each day. AND, this is my favorite part, there are periodic Catch-up days. So if life has handed you a plate of crazy one day, you can just do that days activity on your catch-up day. Whoever made this calendar obviously has kids! Also on the monthly calendar is a Declutter Challenge for each month. January's Declutter Challenge is the master bedroom. You have all month to tackle the checklist. Unfortunately for me, the lack of structure on the challenge leads to putting it off, but I am determined to finish the challenge before month's end!
Another great thing that I love on this site is the Daily Habits list near the bottom of the page. She (I assume it is a she, because this Home Organization Plan is brilliant!) sets out some simple daily habits you should adopt and breaks down what your day should look like. For example, your morning tasks are to make your bed, wipe down the bathroom and set something out for dinner. Simple little things that will save you time in the long run and SIMPLIFY your life! Love it!

So now that you know what I LOVE about the Home Organization Plan - take a look at what it looks like at my house!

This is Grand Central Refrigerator! Personally, I need to have all of my schedules/plans front and center so that I will follow them.

I keep my monthly cleaning calendar in a plastic sleeve. In behind January are the cleaning calendars for February and March so that I won't have an excuse to slack! I also changed a few of the tasks to better reflect my family/cleaning needs. I have done very well at keeping up to date on these tasks (except the 'clean out car' one - it has been WAY TOO COLD!)
Also, you will notice I got my FREE calendar template at calendarlabs.com . If I can keep my momentum going, I plan to reward myself with some cute, colorful printables.

I changed this a bit too - it just makes more sense to vacuum and mop on the same day, right?

I feel really good about this part of my organization overhaul. I feel like I have more time for my kids and husband (or maybe I just enjoy the time more because I am not looking at a messy house?) It also means that I can have impromptu playdates in the middle of the week and not run around like a mad woman before everyone arrives.

Now for the hard part - sticking to it!