The ol' cleaning routine

I think that I've finally settled on a cleaning/chore rotation that works for me.  I've been home caring for my little one for about eight months now and I've tried a variety of things that I found on the web, but eventually I decided that it was going to have to be simple if I was going to stick with it.  So I sat down and made a list of all the things I needed to accomplish each month and then decided how often each of them needed to be knocked out.  Once I fell into a bit of a routine, it was so nice to see how much more sane I was about housekeeping!  Instead of stressing out whenever someone was coming for a visit, all I had to do was touch up here and there because I'd been staying on top of things!

So in case you're on the quest to simplify and have less stress like me, here's the plan I've been tweaking!

Each day after Short Stuff goes to bed:

• Knock out the dreaded dishes so I can start the next day with a clean sink.  It just makes me feel better.
• Spend 15-20 minutes picking up the stuff that accumulates throughout the day.

Weekly Rotations:

	Week One	Week Two	Week Three	Week Four
Monday	Laundry & Household Linens	Laundry & Dusting	Laundry & Household Linens	Laundry & Dusting
Tuesday	Bathrooms	Vacuum Floors & Furniture	Bathrooms	Vacuum Floors & Furniture
Wednesday	Budgeting & Bill Paying	Sweep & Mop Hard Surface Floors	Budgeting & Bill Paying	Sweep & Mop Hard Surface Floors
Thursday	Deep Clean Day (pick one item like the fridge, shampoo a room's carpet, etc)	Correspondence (birthday cards, catch up on old email, etc)	Dog Grooming Day	Project Day (organize a closet, rethink my living room arrangement, etc)

And then I have Friday "off"!  (Is there really such a thing?)  Mostly I found that I generally had something going on Fridays, it just wasn't necessarily something that I could schedule, like planning & executing our meals for the month or packing to go on a trip.  I also found that I felt better about my plan if I knew I had an extra day to accomplish the bathrooms if we did something like spending the day at the zoo on Tuesday.

Finally, it was good for me to write these items on my calendar for the coming month to get a little accountability.  When I did this, I had to pick my deep cleaning and projects and write them down or I would just end up not doing anything that day.  Need some ideas about what to include?  Here's a great list!