How to organize your housework? Here are some tips. You
may want to print this out and digest it in pieces.
List all the chores that need to be done. List
everything you can think of. Do this in one long
column. Glue stick paper together if you need to but
make it one great long list. This list should go down
the centre of the page leaving a column on each side
of the list.
Next step will be assigning a letter to each
point.
D - daily chore
W - weekly
BW - biweekly
M - monthly
BM - bimonthly
Q - quartly
SA - semi-annually
A - annually
Assign letter to each chore as you see it applies to
your home situation. This is step one. Do not get
overwhelmed at the length of the list or the # of
things that fall into one particular area. Trust me
on this, it does work out in the end. Also, by the
time this plan is in the action stage you will find
many of the daily things become weekly, and weekly
become monthly.
Set this list aside for a moment. Next List. Make a
list of the commitments/routines that happen in your
home:
Sunday - church, afternoon r&r, no chores
Monday - swim club, cubs, garbage pick up
Tuesday - swim club, Brownies,
This list is really important as it will allow your
chores planning and menu
planning to fit in with your weekly
commitments.
After you have the commitment and chore lists roughed out go back to your
first list of chores. I also theme my house cleaning
days. I divide the number of rooms by the number of
days . Some need to be doubled up, but this works out
.
Mondays is livingroom/diningroom/collect all dirty
laundry, garbage/recyclables.
Tuesdays is laundry /laundryroom/ back door entrance
.
Wednesday is kids bedrooms.
Thursday is masterbedroom, bathrooms.
Friday is kitchen day.
Saturday is basement and outside.
Next step, I list what actual chores needs to be done. For example for "Livingroom" I write down dust, vacuum, pictures,
windows,etc. Then I add the daily chores: eg., dishes,
feed dog, and so on. On kitchen day I include baking, washing
cupboard fronts, clean one drawer, wash floor. I also include any
advanced cooking I may want to do.
Once you have gotten this far then look at your monthly,
bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual
chores. You will find that these chores will apply to
one particular room. For example, clean fridge is
monthly. What I did was type this into my calender
program and it spits this chore out on my chore list
on the first friday of each month. So what happens in
on my kitchen day, the first Friday of each month I
clean my fridge.
When I planned my monthly chores I tried to make it
so I only had 1 day each week that had an extra
chore. Do the same thing with the semi-monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly and annual chores.
Now that you have gotten this far, add one extra
chore per day. Plan to clean out one drawer, or
closet, or cupboard in each room you are working in.
For example kids room day, clean out/organize one
closet. You will find that you only need to do this in
the beginning, after a few weeks, this is
completed.
Next thing is to begin using your new system. Start your week with your list
in hand. Do only what is on your list for that day.
If Monday is Livingroom, don't go do bathrooms.
Instead, if you have spare time, vacumn under the
cushions. After a few short weeks of this system your
entire home will get cleaned up and you will see
steady progress. This is encouraging. One other
point, if something comes up and you miss dusting the
pictures, don't worry about it, you will catch it
next week.
After a few short weeks, this will get easier and
easier and eventually, you chores will only take an
hour or two at most a day. Last but not least, with
this system, usually most every room is tidy and
clean at the same time with only maybe one disaster
zone.
Also, if you use this system, if you get sick, it is
really easy to tell Hubby, what you need done that
day! Two other hints, When planning spring cleaning,
one room per week. This means spring cleaning will
take maybe 6 weeks, but it won't exasperate those you
live with. Also try to delegate the daily chores to
other members in the family. If you have a chore
time, where everyone does chores together this works
best. "Many hands make light work!" Even little ones
can help. They can empty trash, drag laundry to
laundry rooms, etc.
Like I said before, it will take some time to set up
the system, but the initial time investment will save you hours of
frustration in the long run. I choose to input all
the chores/tasks/menus into my calender program as
it is a perpetual calander and will go forever. As I
had more time, and as my home and life became more organized, I even
inputted the names and pages numbers of recipes.
This eliminates the thousands of decisions we have to
make everyday that often are just exhausting. Last
but not least, if you miss something this week, it's
okay because you know it will get picked up next
week, not just forgotten.
