How to Create a Cleaning Schedule for Working Moms (and other busy people!)
How to create a daily cleaning schedule for working moms. Even busy moms can make a cleaning routine with these tips!
If you’re a working mom, or busy woman in general, you may have wondered how the heck you can keep your house clean. It’s hard enough to juggle your job and your kids (and their activities!), not to mention the grocery shopping and cooking.
Maybe you’ve thought about creating a daily or weekly cleaning routine to help keep yourself organized, but don’t know where to start.
After hearing from multiple readers about this, I decided to put together some tips and ideas to help you make a realistic cleaning schedule you can stick to. Hopefully it will help you to keep your house clean when you’re busy!
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10 Tips to Create a Cleaning Schedule for Working Moms
1. Determine your priorities
In order to set up a cleaning routine that best suits you and your life, consider your priorities.
Do you care more about your house being tidy, or your house being clean? Because there’s a difference.
Personally, clutter lying around bugs me more than knowing there are some dust bunnies in corners I can’t see. Keeping a tidy house is my first priority.
Your cleaning schedule may fall more toward the deep cleaning end of the spectrum though. Knowing what bothers you the most is an indicator of where to start.
2. Delegate and split tasks with your partner
If you have a partner, there is no reason that all the cleaning tasks should fall on you.
Both parties in working couples should balance the load.
Whoever is home more often may need to take on a bit more, but both people should be doing something to keep the house clean.
Have a little meeting to decide which of you will do what tasks. Write it down on a cute whiteboard if it helps!
3. Teach kids to help out from a really young age
Even as young as 2, kids can start helping around the house. It’s best to start them that young too, so they get very used to pitching in.
Younger kids can learn how to put away their laundry, put away shoes and toys, or carry non-breakable dishes from the kitchen table to the sink.
Older kids can take on bigger responsibilities like sweeping, dusting, and cleaning the bathroom.
This is especially helpful if you’re a single mom. Keeping the house clean isn’t your burden alone to carry!
4. Tidy the kitchen and run the dishwasher every night
Dishes are one of the first things that can make a house look messy. Try to get in the automatic habit of loading the dirty dishes into the dishwasher after dinner.
Then it can run, and everything can dry, overnight. And you can unload it really quick in the morning before work.
Or have your kids unload it after school!
5. Put a load of laundry in in the morning
If laundry seems like an endless hamster wheel of chaos, one way to keep up with it is to do a load every day.
You could put a load in to wash before you go to work, then throw it in the dryer when you get home.
It’ll be ready to fold while you watch a TV show before bed.
If it skeeves you out to leave wet laundry in the washing machine all day, throw the load in after work, then transfer it to the dryer before dinner.
6. Do a quick tidy up before bed
Just take a quick walk around, and put away the things that aren’t in their place. Have your kids do the same.
This type of low-grade tidying habit become second nature fairly quickly!
7. Do one bigger cleaning task a day
Create a cleaning schedule where you dust one day, then vacuum the next, mop the following day, and so on.
Breaking up your housecleaning like that means that you never have to spend one whole day doing it all.
Plus your house just stays cleaner, because it’s never a completely dirty disaster.
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8. Determine your best time of day
If you’re a morning person who’s having difficulty finding time to clean, try waking up a little earlier.
Having time before the rest of the family wakes up can be a nice way to ease into the day.
Then when everyone is up, you’ll feel awake enough to tackle a cleaning task or two.
If you have more energy after work, schedule in your cleaning tasks then instead.
9. Use small pockets of time
It’s kind of amazing how much we can squeeze in during tiny pockets of time. I actually wrote a whole post all about 10 minute chores.
You could clean something while dinner cooks, or wipe down the bathroom sink and toilet while the kids are in the tub.
It’s just a matter of looking at those short moments (where you usually check Instagram or Facebook), and use them to do something productive.
10. Try a Power Hour
I’m not sure who came up with the cleaning Power Hour, but it’s all over YouTube.
The idea is that you make a quick to-do list, crank some tunes (or your favorite audiobook or podcast), set a 60 minute timer, and just whiz through as much as you can.
Since you know it’s just an hour, you’ll be extra motivated and less distracted.
Try implementing a couple Power Hours a week into your cleaning routine.
Plan a little reward for yourself after you complete the hour!
Final thoughts
Keeping your house tidy can be a challenge for anyone, and especially for working moms.
I hope these tips gave you some ideas for managing household chores, and creating a realistic cleaning schedule.
A huge kudos to you for wanting to make a nice, tidy house for your family, despite all of your responsibilities outside of the home.
Be sure to give yourself grace during the busy seasons of life. And please get everyone to pitch in!
You May Also Like:
- 6 Simple Ways to Keep Your House Clean ALL THE TIME
- 10 Minute Chores: Cleaning Tasks To Do When You’re Short on Time
- 12 Tricks to Motivate Yourself to Clean When You HATE Cleaning
