Cleaning Schedule

I had an epiphany today while cleaning my house. I realized I've been doing it backwards for the last almost six years. Here's why.

I clean half of my house each week. One week is upstairs, the next is downstairs. And I just tidy up the whole house pretty much daily. Of course, bedding, laundry, and dishes don't wait for two weeks. What I'm talking about is the CLEANING: blinds, dusting, polishing, etc.

Anyhoo - when its the downstairs week, I always start with the kitchen. Oh yes, I am such a creature of habit. (or a little obsessive). So, the kitchen. Scary to admit it, but it takes me about 2 straight hours of cleaning. No, my kitchen is not even that big. (see the obsessive note above). However, I rarely get a two hour block of uninterrupted cleaning time, unless Grace decides to take a long nap - but even her naps are usually only an hour, so the kitchen is pretty much all I will get accomplished in one day with taking care of the baby, dinner, general clean-up, etc.

I clean the kitchen on Tuesdays. (again, see above), then I have the rest of the week to finish the downstairs. But the rest of the week seems to fly by with this, that and the other. Tuesdays are really my only long day that I'm almost always at home and Mr. D works late.

However today I decided to mix things up. I'm babysitting the rest of this week for our friends' baby, so I wanted the majority of the house cleaned. So I skipped the kitchen and went to the dining room instead. Oh my. I got almost all of the downstairs done - minus the kitchen. What a difference. I can probably squeeze in the kitchen sometime later this week. Rather than tackling the kitchen, spending all day in it, and then still feeling like I got nothing accomplished, instead, I feel pretty energized by my productivity today. So now, I clean the majority of the downstairs on Tuesdays and then finish up through the rest of the week.

Perhaps this makes sense to not another soul out there - chances would be yes - but I am pretty excited by this schedule revamp. Its the small things in life. And things that seem so obvious now.