Three Hours to a Cleaner House

I'm a computer programmer by profession, but I always joke that 'I should have majored in home ec.' because I really love keeping an orderly house, clean clothes, and home-cooked meals. Since I work outside the home full-time, and have a 3-year-old, though, I'm chronically short on time. For a while, I tried hiring other people to do the housework, but I was never able to find someone who was reliable, honest, and consistently did good work. Disgusted, I went back to doing the work myself, but then found that I felt like a slave to my house. Finally, I did A LOT of reading, took a 'Speedcleaning' class at Colorado Free University, and came up with a system that allows me to keep the house in good order without giving up sleep. We have a 2200- square foot house, and I spend roughly 3 hours per week to keep it clean. And I'm pretty picky!

To start my new system, I did three things:

1. Clear the path. Over a period of several weeks, I went through our entire house and ruthlessly purged anything that wasn't justifying its existence. I got rid of clothes, books, unused linens, broken toys, knick-knacks, kitchen utensils - you name it. We have a big front porch that was FULL of stuff that I donated to ARC, after making an itemized list to use on our tax return. This is undoubtedly the most important first step to take, because if you don't have to clean around a bunch of stuff, it's going to be a whole lot easier to keep things in order. As Don Aslett says in "Clutter's Last Stand", "don't love anything that can't love you back". I don't miss anything that I got rid of, and it's amazing how much more efficiently the house runs.
   
   
2. Organize the stuff. Deniece Schofield's Confessions Of An Organized Homemaker was a tremendous resource for this one. She suggests wonderful ways to organize everything from the linen closet to the kitchen. Doing this has probably cut my "pick up" task to a third of what it once was, and now I can always find what I need in my kitchen. I found Deniece's book at our library, but it was so useful that I bought my own copy.
   
   
3. Schedule the tasks. Deniece Schofield also suggests scheduling your housework. At first, this seemed kind of silly. But after trying this technique, I find that it's immensely freeing - once I've done whatever needs to be done on a particular day, then I'm DONE. It helps me get things done regularly; I was about to give up keeping houseplants, for example, because I kept forgetting to water them and they'd die. Now I water plants every Monday, and they look great. Scheduling also keeps any one job from becoming overwhelming. If I clean the oven once a month, it never has a chance to get to the point where I have to spend hours cleaning it. Best of all, scheduling has given me MUCH more free time to spend with my family.
   
   

Here's what my schedule looks like:

Daily - go through the house and do "pick up".
Monday - water plants, spritz bathrooms (more about bathrooms later!)
Tuesday - clean stove, do paperwork
Wednesday - run a couple of loads of laundry, spritz bathrooms
Thursday - plan meals, wipe out fridge
Friday - paperwork, spritz bathrooms
Saturday - groceries in early morning (when I can find the best bargains), laundry, mending (while my daughter naps)
Sunday - clean the house (takes about 2 hours - more on that later, too!), monthly tasks

Monthly Tasks:

first Sunday - change furnace filters
second Sunday - damp mop hardwood floors
third Sunday - clean out freezer
fourth Sunday - clean oven

In the next few months, I'll share what I've learned about cleaning bathrooms, the kitchen, and the rest of the house.

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