I’m sure many people can relate to me when I say that cleaning the house is very difficult to upkeep and just plain tedious. I mean, I’ll spend a good half day of my weekend to make sure the house is spotless, only to find myself doing the same thing all over again the next weekend! I want my weekends back!
After reading this article about housekeeping, it seems that people CAN keep their homes clean when they work on it a little everyday, consciously preventing the mess from happening all over again. This isn’t a deep cleaning, but more of a way to keep things organized in your home and prevent clutter. Deep cleaning still would need to happen, but it won’t take up 1/2 of my day!
So, here is my vow to my home until the end of the year. I will spend 15 minutes everyday cleaning you, other than doing the daily things like dishes and laundry. I will also share with you every week what I did!
15 minutes is nothing. It’s a quarter of an hour, in a day when I come home from work and have 7 hours to spend on doing other things. Now that I type that..7 hours….wow, I feel lazy! Where does that time go?
So, it’s time to put on the iPod, jam to 4-5 songs and spend that time CLEANING! It’ll be over before you know it!
15 minutes cleaning ideas
- Steam clean the kitchen floor with the Shark Mop. I can’t tell you how much my kitchen floor gets grimy from my messing cooking and baking. It gets on my dang nerves!
- Throw away junk mail and organize bills. I usually do this once a month and it proves to be a pretty daunting task. Once a week would be MUCH easier and would allow me to have our kitchen island back!
- Clean out the pantry and organize food to giveaway to a food bank. This is especially great since the holidays are coming up, and I know we won’t be needing all of that Chef Boyardee since no hurricanes hit this year! Whew!
- Clean the bathroom countertop. Blech…all that make-up residue and hair around the sink? Clean it up with a Clorox wipe and put everything back in their drawers!
- Weed the garden. If I did this once/week, I know would only take me fifteen minutes. Pesky weeds!
- Clean the bedroom floor. I can’t tell you how much stuff I just throw on the side of my bed. Magazines, dirty socks, coupons…ugh!
- Switch out the bed sheets! I think I’m supposed to do this once/week or something like that. I don’t want to imagine the dust mite colony that we sleep in. I only change the sheets every 2-3 weeks!
Does anyone want to take this cleaning vow with me? C’mon, you know you hate it when your weekend is taken up by Clorox and the broom!
There used to be a fantastic blog called The Hyper Homemaker. I think she took it down but I saved all the posts in my google reader. She talked a lot about the 15 minute cleanups and it was amazing what she could get done! I’ll definitely join in and take the cleaning vow with you, our junk mail gets out of control in a matter of days, and I even joined that list where you sign up to NOT have people send you stuff!
I used to read that blog too. She was a cleaning superstar! I got some great ideas from her a while back, but since the blog is down, I can’t hyperlink.
Argh.. your better than I am, I haven’t cleaned in a month, at least. Cause I don’t like giving up my days off (and I have twice as many as you do!) We have a clutter problem that needs to be dealt with and then maybe I can keep a clean(er) house!
This is a great idea! I’ve tried to do something similar – taken all my chores (like dealing with junk mail, vacuuming, taking out the recycling) and put them into my Google calendar and set up reminders. I’m not good at getting everything done, but sometimes it does remind me to stay on top of things!
Good luck!