I want to preface this post by saying, my home is not always clean. In fact, it’s far from it. There are crumbs and dog hair all over my floors, my laundry piles up, and my bathrooms haven’t had a good deep cleaning in far too long. I’m a mom and I can’t keep a perfect home. Not because I have messy children, but because other things often take precedence over cleaning. That’s okay with me.
However, I do enjoy a clean home and believe there are a lot of benefits to trying to strive for it. A clean home allows me to relax. It makes me less anxious and overwhelmed. I can enjoy doing the things I really love when my home is clean.
About a month ago I wrote a post titled A Simple System That Will Keep Your Home Clean in which I shared 6 steps I try to follow each day that help to simplify my cleaning routine and keep my home tidy. That post now drives over 25% of my traffic each day. That made me realize that people really want a clean house, but maybe don’t quite know how to make it happen in their own home.
If you have been reading here for any length of time, you know I love my routines. I love having a schedule. It keeps me on task and ensures that I don’t forget things. You can spend hours typing up schedules, making cute checklists, and designing elaborate spreadsheets detailing all the little tasks you need to do each day, week, month, and year that will keep your home immaculate. However, creating all kinds of routines, systems, and schedules won’t keep your home clean. You have to actually be willing to put n the work.
Sometimes the hardest part about keeping a clean home is getting the ideas off the paper and into your home. These five tips will help you get those cleaning tasks from your to-do list and into your home!
Keep It Simple
If you don’t have a cleaning schedule in place, don’t try to plan out your entire yearly cleaning plan. Slow and steady wins the race.
You will do much better to create a very simple evening routine of running the dishwasher, putting away all the clean clothes, and picking up any toys or clutter from the day. Your morning routine of making the beds, starting a load of laundry, and unloading the dishwasher will follow. Once you have mastered that, add in a basic weekly cleaning routine. Don’t make it overwhelming. You will quit before you even begin.
Don’t Go Overboard
I will be the first to admit that I’ve typed up pretty cleaning schedules that I’ve then plastered on my refrigerator to only fall off the bandwagon within the first few days. Before you type up a pretty checklist or schedule, jot it down on paper and try to follow through with it for a few weeks. See how it works. Chances are you will need to tweak it at least a few times before it really fits your lifestyle.
Once you know that the schedule is going to work for you and your family, then go ahead make a nice to-do list to help motivate you to keep up with it!
Follow Through
As much as we would all like to have little cleaning fairies to come in and clean our home while we sleep, it’s just not reality. {If you know any cleaning fairies, please send them my way!}
We all have good intentions. We make the decision to finally get on top of the cleaning in our home. After creating an awesome schedule and daily routines we are ready to get it under control once and for all. However, if we don’t actually follow through with these routines, nothing will change.
If you want to have a clean home, you have to follow through with your routines. You have to actually clean.
If It’s Not Working, Change It
Have you ever found a great cleaning schedule on Pinterest and then tried to put it into action in your own home only for it to fail miserably? If so, you may need to switch it up.
It’s important to remember that we are all very different. We have different houses, families, lifestyles, schedules, children, etc. What works from one person won’t always work for everyone. Maybe you need to do all of your weekly cleaning in one day, while someone else does better to do just a little bit each day. If what you are doing isn’t working, switch it up and try something new until you find the best fit for you.
Give Yourself Grace
If your house doesn’t stay clean even after you try and try, give yourself grace. You may be in a season of life where a completely clean home almost all of the time just isn’t realistic. Can I get an amen from all the mama’s out there?! 🙂
Yes, a clean home is nice and something we should strive to create for ourselves and our families. However, it’s not the be all end all. If your home gets completely destroyed over the weekend, it’s okay. You have piles of laundry because you have a family. What a blessing! You have piles of dirty dishes because you were able to provide wonderful food for your family. What a blessing! There are toys scattered all over the floor because your children were having a wonderful time playing. What a blessing! {I’m saying this more for my benefit than anything else!}
Now, let’s get real. Will our houses always be clean? No. We live in them! Therefore, they will get messy! But if you keep it simple and follow through with the tasks that need to be accomplished, your home will stay clean, or at least that’s the theory! 😉
Do you struggle to keep a clean home?
Heather says
Kaitlin,
I love this. I do my best to keep the sink cleaned out and the stove wiped down and living room picked up. If I can do those two things it makes me feel as if I am keeping a clean house. Everywhere else in my house a door can be cleaned but the living room, kitchen and dining room are all open living space. I don’t worry about the mess of toys during the waking hours but before bedtime we all do a little pickup of our messes. This really helps to get my family involved! Great post!