Hey guys!
So, I'm still having problems with getting my pictures to show up. So instead of making y'all wait for eternity while I figure this stuff out, I'm just going to do a general post. The reason why I'm not using it as one of my "Free Topics" in the blog challenge is because this is just too simple of a post for me to count it.
I hate to clean, but I hate living in a dirty house. With that, I'm caught in a sticky place for me. I don't want to clean, but the house is sending out S.O.S. signals to the base behind it. I've tried so many different ways to get into the groove of just simple cleaning but to no avail. I even went on to the lovely world of Pinterest to try to get some ideas just to knock them all down. I've seen some who have daily cleaning schedules, weekly cleaning schedules, monthly cleaning schedules, and even saw a few yearly cleaning schedules. The dailies were just too much for me. My house gets dirtier faster than I was able to keep up. The monthly were just driving me crazy because I felt like there was just too much time going by between room cleanings or cleaning tasks (like vacuuming and dusting. I couldn't take the vacuuming twice a month and the dusting only once a month. My mind was just repeating "Must vacuum and dust! Must vacuum and dust! It's getting to the 'ew' factor!") Don't even get me started on the yearly schedule.
What I found that worked time-wise was the weekly schedule with very few things daily. I don't mind vacuuming and dusting once a week and doing dishes everyday (which I believe is how it should be. Imagine washing Monday's dishes on the next Monday! There goes my 'ew' factor.) The problem that I was having after figuring out that the weekly schedule worked for me was trying to figure out how to separate everything. I once again relied on the lovely world of Pinterest for this. I looked up about four or five weekly cleaning schedules and tried each one for two weeks. Some of them didn't even make it past the first week. A general example: Monday-Clean counters Tuesday-Dust Wednesday-Vacuum Thursday-Sweep Friday-Catch Up Day Saturday-At Least One Load of Laundry Sunday-Rest. I couldn't help but to think "The dishes aren't in there! The bathroom! Imagine the toilet ('ew' factor)! What about the bedroom! Think of the bedroom! (I can't believe that I'm admitting this, but the bedroom is probably the worst place in the house. All the clean laundry gathers up on the dresser, dirty clothes gather up in corners of the room, random stuff is thrown in there when we have guest coming over and there's not enough time to clean like I should. It's just a wreck.)" I couldn't do that.
I almost gave up on the weekly schedules that I found, but one spoke to me. Monday-Clean Living Room, Clean Dining Room Tuesday-Vacuum Down Stairs Wednesday-Clean Kitchen Thursday-Clean Downstairs Bathroom, Laundry Friday-Clean Bedrooms, Clean Upstairs Bathroom Saturday-Vacuum Upstairs, Catch Up Day Sunday-Rest. I tried to do exactly like this said, but since I'm in a one story house with one bedroom and bathroom, I found that some days I was doing very little where I could have been doing more. So what did I do? I tweaked it, of course!
Here's my cleaning schedule:
Monday- Clean Kitchen (Includes sweeping and mopping)
Tuesday- Clean Bathroom (Includes sweeping and mopping)
Wednesday- Clean Dining Room (Includes vacuuming)
Thursday- Clean Living Room (Includes vacuuming)
Friday- Clean Bedroom, Laundry (Includes vacuuming and putting away)
Saturday- Clean Windows (All windows)
Sunday- Clean Out Fridge (Bi-Weekly)
Everyday- Dishes, Make Dinner
Woo-hoo! I figured something out! The only problem that I was having after a while was to keep up with it. The first week of Beta testing this, I did great, the second week though, I started to get lazy and think "Oh, I'll do it tomorrow." Eventually, I wound up with everything to do on Saturday and Sunday, see how much it was, then just say "I'll get to it next week." I had to do something to get this to change. That's when I found this handy-dandy little app: Remember the Milk.
Remember the Milk is great because not only is there an app for the phone, there is also a website to sync everything on the phone to. Check it out! It shows the week (starting on the current day), there are options to have different kinds of lists, priorities can be set (1, 2, or 3 with 3 being the highest and shown with red), there is an option to postpone (sometimes my best friend), and each task can be set to repeat. There are quite a few more options, but those are the main ones that I use. I really like how I can have my phone with me listening to music and just check it to see what else I have to do for the day, check off what all I've done, and then get right back to work. Or if my phone is dead and charging in another room, I can just have the laptop as my back up and set it in a central location I'll be passing by frequently through out the day and just check off what I've done or edit what I need to. I'm a fan of being able to see how many tasks I have for a day. If I'm feeling a little lazy on any given day, I can check out the entire week and say "Hey, I don't have that much going on this day. I'll just postpone this chore until that day" or "Hey, I have a pretty packed week. I don't have much going on today so I might as well go on and do it today so I don't get backed up later." Like I said though, it hasn't made me want to clean, just helps me decide if I can afford to be lazy.
All-in-all though, this cleaning schedule has helped me in so many ways to get to cleaning. Comparing it to what all I was doing before (using sticky notes with everything that had to be done, scratch what I've done off, then re-write for the next day until the week was over just to start back all over again), it has helped me come a long way. Now, if only I could find a way for my husband to help me clean. ;)
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