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Happy New Year, y’all!

Of course, not only is it the start of 2020, but it’s also the start of a new month which, here on the blog means the start of a new cleaning calendar. I normally don’t change much on my calendars. I usually just remix what days I’m deep cleaning which room. But going into the new year I’m switching things up a lot. Let me tell you really quick why.

The past couple months have felt super stale to me in terms of my cleaning routine. Something that once made me feel accomplished and organized was really just starting to feel overwhelming and it just wasn’t working anymore. So, I sat back and really thought about what was really going to make sense for our home and our lifestyle. I asked myself questions like: What’s the most time consuming task and which day am I going to be able to best accommodate it? And: Does it really make sense to split up dusting between the two floors if I’m deep cleaning each room once a month? These questions led me to answers that ultimately changed a lot in terms of my cleaning calendar, but there are a few essential and fundamental cleaning principles still at work here.

the best tips for cleaning your home.

1. Always work from top to bottom – You always want to work from high to low. Why? Because you want the dust to settle before you clean it up. It wouldn’t make much sense to clean the floor and then dust your surfaces since, inevitably, dust particles, dirt and those annoying fuzz balls will end up on the very thing you just cleaned. Make sense?
2. Do a little bit each day – Don’t let cleaning consume your life. Knock out a little bit each day to avoid mess and clutter, yes, but also to avoid being burned out, stressing too much about your home and neglecting the things in your life that matter more – i.e., your family, your selfcare and… your sanity 😉
3. Daily & weekly tasks – There are a few things I truly believe should be done each day in our house. You’ll find those tasks at the bottom of the calendar next to the word DAILY. Likewise with the WEEKEND tasks. Weekends vary slightly depending on the task. I’ve chosen to switch bathing the dogs from every Saturday to every other because I wanted to make room for another task: tending to our garage. The latter is something I’ve felt needed a place in my cleaning routine and this was the best solution.

All that being said, I wanted to take a moment to explain the changes I’ve made going into 2020 and why I chose to make them.

the three main changes i’m making to my cleaning schedule.

1. Floors: I used to clean our floors on Thursdays. However, I found that I was consistently skipping that chore for various reasons and making it up on Sundays. Or, I’d do them on Thursdays and find myself re-doing them on Sundays to get ready for a new week (clean floors are one of the most important things to me haha). So, this month I’m going to just plan on cleaning them on Sundays. We’ll see how that goes.
2. Dusting: I went from dusting the upstairs and downstairs separately to combing the two in one day. Also, on dusting days, you won’t see me dusting ceiling fans, vents, windows, etc. I’ll save those tasks for deep cleaning from now on. That will speed up the dusting process significantly!
3. Deep Cleaning Days: Since this new routine freed up Tuesdays and Thursdays, I decided those will be my designated deep cleaning days. This means that on dusting days, I’ll skip the two or three rooms in the house that are on the schedule to be deep cleaned – which will help to keep the time I spend dusting at a minimum – which is a big win!

As you can see, I believe in flexibility and creating a routine that works best for YOU! That’s why I make my calendars editable. Take a look at mine and adapt things that make better sense for your household. Don’t forget – it’s okay to try things and not like them. Try a routine for a month and if you don’t like it, switch it up the next month! Your hands are never tied  here and the point of this whole thing is to help you, if not enjoy cleaning your home, at least make it manageable and NOT overwhelming. If you need a little moral support from time to time, follow along with me during the weeks via Instagram Stories! I try to feature different aspects of my cleaning routine throughout the week!