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!

Swiffer Covers

As I was scouring for fabulous ideas in conjunction with my new Pinterest addiction, I came across the great idea for Swiffer covers.  The first version I came across was knitted, which I may also try for damp-mopping my hard floors, but I also found this great sewing tutorial on the blog Sew Much Ado.  Today I gave them a shot and they turned out fabulous!

I made two minor modifications that are different from her pattern.  The first is that I used a mircofiber towel for my dust-grabbing side.  This isn't so much because I doubted the effectiveness of a chenille sock, but more because it was what was in the aisle in front of me that reminded me that I wanted to make these.  I also made the decision to reinforce the stitching where the pocket meets the pad when I was completing the topstitch.  I decided that it might be helpful after I put my first one on and stretched it over the edge of the sweeper.  Otherwise, I found this tutorial spot-on and quite easy to follow!  Thanks for a great idea!