How To Build A Cleaning Schedule For Working Moms

A cleaning schedule for working moms can be a life saver, but it can also be hard to create if you’ve never tried it before. So I thought I would create this simple guide, which will teach you how to create a cleaning schedule that works for you and your family!

Why You Need A Cleaning Schedule

But before we get into the ‘how’, I want to discuss the ‘why’… Because I know that a lot of people see a cleaning schedule as useless. In fact, my eldest daughter is one of them! And ever since she’s moved into her own apartment, I’ve been trying (and so far failing) to convince her to make a schedule for cleaning her home.

The usual argument is that most people already know what they need to do in order to clean a house. So why would they need a schedule for it? Why not just clean an area as they see it become dirty? But the counter argument that I would give is that, while that strategy might work in theory…

How many times do we actually see a mess and clean it up immediately? Versus how many times do we just say “I’ll do that later” and procrastinate instead? For most people, the latter happens far more than the former. And because of that, housework tends to pile up and become really overwhelming! Especially when you have kids.

Which is why I’m a big believer in a cleaning schedule for working moms and stay-at-home moms alike. As having that structure makes it a lot easier to stay on top of tasks, and feel less overwhelmed.

A Guide To Building A Cleaning Schedule For Working Moms

Step One – Create A List Of All Your Tasks

First of all, you’ll want to make a list of every household chore that needs doing. As this will make it a lot easier to sort the tasks into various sections (which we’ll talk about in a moment) and create schedule.

Examples of things you might put on the list include… doing the laundry laundry, washing the dishes, making the bed, dusting the house, etc. But you can also make the tasks more detailed if you’d like; such as saying “dust the living room” and “dust the bedrooms”, so on and so on.

Step Two – Divide These Tasks Into Sections

Next, once you have your list of tasks, you’ll want to divide them up into smaller lists! Starting with how often you need to complete each chore. Usually I have a section for daily tasks, weekly tasks, monthly tasks, and even yearly tasks!

So things like making the bed and wiping down counters could be a daily task. Whereas things like laundry could be performed once or twice throughout the week, and things like cleaning the windows could be done on a monthly basis instead.

Then, you can further divide the tasks by assigning them to certain people within the home. Because a cleaning schedule for working moms shouldn’t be created only for her, it should involve the whole family. Since no singular person should be responsible for keeping a family home tidy.

Maybe everyone takes a certain room! Like each child is responsible for their bedroom and bathroom; and the spouse is responsible for the kitchen and bedroom, while mom handles other common areas. Or maybe each member of the family is just responsible for different tasks instead of whole rooms.

Step Three – Schedule The Tasks

If you’ve successfully completed the first two steps, then this last part should be easy. And it is to actually complete your schedule!

In terms of your daily tasks, this will simply entail choosing whether you complete the chore in the morning or at night. So that you know ahead of time which housework you need to do before work, versus which ones you need to do afterwards.

Then, when it comes to your weekly tasks, you’ll need to choose which days you want to dedicate to which chores. Maybe dusting the house could be done on Wednesday mornings and cleaning the bathrooms could be reserved for Friday nights, etc. And if you’d like, you could also schedule a large majority of your tasks for one specific day when you’re off work. Then leave one of your days off for just relaxing.

Lastly, as far as the longer term tasks go, you don’t necessarily need to schedule those for a specific date. Instead you could make a note of it on your calendar when someone does complete the task, so that you know the approximate time you need to do it again next month.

Tips For Maintaining A Clean Home

A cleaning schedule for working moms is already immensely helpful, but there are also some other things that you can do to ease the overwhelm of keeping up with housework. Such as…

• Involving other members of the family, and not trying to clean everything by yourself
• Keeping clutter to a minimum, and getting rid of anything you don’t use regularly.
• Having a deep clean every once in a while to get things back on track.
• And knowing which tasks cause the other chores to snowball out of control, so that you can prioritize those over less important ones. For me this has always been laundry, but for my daughter it’s her dishes!

Final Thoughts

I hope you found this article helpful, and it inspired you to make a cleaning schedule of your very own! And if you’d like to learn more about parenting, managing your finances, and keeping up with your house then feel free to check out my other posts! Such as this one on the advantages and disadvantages of homework.

Thanks for reading!