4MamaBear's 4 Week Schedule for cleaning/decluttering/organizing your home
The internet is full of cleaning schedules, decluttering plans and organization ideas. I’ve used many of them with varying success. The part that I struggled the most with is MAINTAINING the clutter free/clean home. That is when I developed a hybrid system that incorporates all three areas into one comprehensive 4 week schedule. If focusing on 2-4 tasks each day so your house is deep cleaned and maintains a comfortable level of organization is what you desire read on…..
• CLEAN • ORGANIZE • DECLUTTER•
And maintain it long term!
4MamaBear’s Cleaning Schedule is designed to deep clean your entire home top to bottom over the course of one month. No more scrambling to clean before company arrives or letting grime build up because you are overwhelmed with all there is to accomplish in one day. What makes this my favorite cleaning schedule EVER is that it combines the three big factors in maintaining a home:
* ORGANIZED * CLUTTER FREE * CLEAN *
But Carrie, I barely have time to do ONE of those things each day. How am I suppose to do all three? There will be some growing pains at first. I won’t sugar coat it.
There are two ways to approach it.
!) Declutter and deep clean like crazy to give yourself a blank slate. The advantage of this method is you won’t spend a ton of time on your daily tasks because you are simply maintaining a manageable level of organization and cleanliness. The downside is that you have to make the time to deep clean everything all at once. This is where people often get frustrated and quit. Things are bound to get messier before they get better so stick it out! It WILL be worth it in the long run. If you do the hard work NOW you can rely on the Cleaning Schedule to help you maintain a stress free living space.
2) Tackle trouble areas as they are assigned in the schedule. This will not give you the WOW results a blitz attack/reset will yield, but if you don’t have the time it would take to clean out the clutter/deep clean all at once then I would take this approach. You WILL get there and the time required each day will decrease. Promise!
Set a timer so you can stay on task and so you don’t overwhelm yourself by pulling out a bunch of stuff you don’t have time to go through. The last thing you want when the day is over to have made a bigger mess!
Whichever method you choose I recommend the book UNSTUFFED by Ruth Soukup. You can read more about it on her website here.
Visit my shop to get the download for just 99 cents. The schedule will print on one 8 1/2” x 11” piece of paper with places to mark off each task. You can print a new one each month if you want. Once the file is downloaded it is yours to reprint, but please don’t copy for distribution.
NOTE: This is a digital download that expires 24 hours after first download. Please make sure you download it to a device you can print from if your intent is to have a hard copy of the cleaning schedule.
Once you have the file printed you’ll be able to gauge how much time you’ll need to commit each day. It will be different for everyone depending on the size and state of your home. Personally I live in a 4 bedroom rambler with a finished basement for a total of 1,400 square feet. I have three kids living at home and run a handmade business which requires a LOT of materials (yarn, fabric, crafty stuff etc….) I also have a summer kitchen in the basement that we use to process vegetables from our huge garden. I don’t have a mudroom so my garage tends to get very cluttered with shoes, bags, , recyclables, etc… Some days my chores take 10 minutes, but others can take up to 30 if I haven’t been diligent about staying on course.
What will I have to show for my 4 weeks of work?
Each week is completely different so that by the time you get to the end of 4 weeks you will have wiped down every surface in your home at least once.
You will have changed the sheets twice and washed towels twice. (Noted in the heading for each week)
All of your bedroom closets will be cleaned out once the bedrooms are under control & you can include tidying closets on bedroom days (Thursdays).
Your floors will be sparkling - including the baseboards
No more dusty blinds or light fixtures
No more grime on the appliances or around the door handles or light switches
Four neglected spaces in addition to bedroom closets will be organized and functional again.
This last one is a HUGE motivator for me! Once I clean out a drawer or a cupboard I now get to enjoy the benefits of finding what I need right away. Less stuff = less stress. BUT as Ruth mentions in her book don’t fall prey to the ‘storage solutions’ trap. We don’t need more storage. We need less stuff. Or at least that is what I need to tell myself constantly as a recovering pack rat.
One of my biggest frustrations with other cleaning schedules I have looked at online was that no matter how diligent I was in following the schedule I STILL felt like I had to clean before we had company on the weekend. Vacuuming on a Monday does not last until the weekend so I made sure that vacuuming was pushed to the end of the week. Bathrooms get deep cleaned on Wednesdays so they only require a quick wipe down before company comes. I saved putting laundry away for the weekend when my kids are available to help sort and put it away. Everyone’s laundry needs vary so I didn’t even bother to add that during the week other than to note whether to wash bed sheets or wash bath towels each week.
Clutter breeds clutter so over time the less clutter there is, the cleaner your house will stay. The reality is that this cleaning schedule will not replace daily tidying. Two tricks we try in our home.
The ‘one touch’ rule. Put an item away the first time you touch it vs. setting it down only to have to pick it up and touch it again.
The ‘ten minute tidy’ rule. Nobody wants to have to spend all day cleaning - or at least I’ve never met that person. I use the ten minute tidy to motivate myself and my family to do a quick tidy of the house. Obviously we aren’t very good at the one touch rule. Oops! Cleaning off surfaces and running the vacuum quick makes our home much mom much calmer and pleasant. Our main living space is under 900 square feet and that includes 3 bedrooms and a bathroom. We wouldn’t be able to MOVE in our small home if we weren’t diligent about this rule. When my kids were little I would assign a space for them to clean so they weren’t overwhelmed. Another technique is to task them with putting away a certain number of things. Careful with this one though - they’ll fluff a pillow and call it ‘picking up one thing’. If you have littles at home and are struggling with getting them to do chores check out this post I wrote when my oldest were 6 and 8. It was a HUGE game changer for our family!
2022 is right around the corner, but you don’ t need a fresh year or even a new month on the calendar to begin making strides towards a clean and organized home.