Working Girl's Cleaning Schedule

I've been struggling lately to keep up with life in general. I've had several busy weeks with work and weddings and birthdays, which means very little time for...well, everything else!

The first thing to take a hit is tidiness. I am so very unmotivated when I get home at night and finally have a chance to breathe. Of course, this laziness leads to a messy house, which, of course, leads to frustration and despair over how messy my house is. But, staring that mess in the faces is...overwhelming, to say the least.

I've had a variety of "chore charts" and cleaning schedules on my fridge. I used to update one version weekly, and changed the chore schedule based on what was going on in life that week. I even included my weekly meal plan.

This planner is awesome... in theory.

But, eventually, I just got too busy, and stopped updating it.

So then, I created a standardized chore chart, that just stayed on the fridge and had different chores to do each night. The idea was to rotate through smaller tasks each day on a weekly basis and complete one "major" chore each Sunday.

I really liked this printed chore chart, and it lived on our refrigerator for months.

But, let's get real folks!

Sometimes, on Thursdays, I just didn't want to dust!

So, now I've landed here. Totally stressed by how messy my house is and totally overwhelmed by the idea of finding time to clean it

The idea is, you complete tasks whenever you can and you mark them off when you're done. When you've made it through the whole list, you start over again!

I've put this in a refrigerator frame and use a dry erase marker so I don't have to reprint the sheet over and over.

Some days, all I can manage is to empty the trash. But some evenings, when I'm super motivated and have extra free time, I'm a cleaning machine!

It helps to have the list in front of you - this keeps me from doing the same chores over and over, and it maintains the house as a whole. Big "spring cleaning" events are much less stressful if you've kept up with these tasks regularly.