A New Cleaning Routine for a New Home
A cleaning routine is a very personal thing.
There is a set pattern to your movements and particular days and times you choose to clean things. Also all of this has to mesh with your own daily and weekly routines.
We just recently moved into a new home and moving into a new home means new ways of doing things.
A new kitchen layout. Maybe a new bathroom layout. New places to put things…hopefully. And a new set of rooms to clean.
Most of the time when you move into a new place it has already been cleaned and is awaiting your belongings. Aside from disinfecting the kitchen and bathroom the home has usually and hopefully been eradicated of dust and any other unpleasantness. It's nice and clean and ready to go.
But then you live there for a week or two. Dust starts to creep into corners. Okay yeah, it's about time you vacuumed. And let's not even get on the bathrooms. Did you really think you could go for weeks without sprucing them up?
The newness wears off quickly and if you don't set up a cleaning routine and get busy it will overtake you quickly too!
I recently had to get busy in this arena and here's how I set up my new household cleaning routine.
1.) Daily Cleaning: Maybe you've read my articles on daily cleaning and you know the different things that should be done daily to keep on top of things. This wasn't hard to implement. My hubby is now in charge of recycling junk mail. Our new kitchen is nice and clean and I like to keep it that way. I'm new to a gas stove and have been wiping down the eyes each night. Dishes are done and counters wiped too. I also do a quick dust/mop each evening. It's a teeny bit more work but it's actually about as much as our place before our last home (2 homes ago) so I've just had to regroup. We all make our beds and that's now a habit so this has been fine.
2.) Weekly Cleaning: You know I think this is where the real house cleaning comes in to play. One a week I go over the main parts. I pick up my cleaning kit and give my bathrooms a full going over, vacuum the whole house, wipe down the kitchen, and sweep and mop the downstairs. The problem is trying to do this all at once is overkill. Previously I would clean the bathrooms on Monday but due to new activities and a new schedule now I've moved it to Saturday. I also sweep and mop the downstairs on Friday. I now vacuum on Friday evenings and confess to not having found a good day to wipe down the kitchen yet although Thursday may be good since I do my shopping on Wednesday. Since most surfaces are wiped down each evening I'm keeping the dirt at bay until I find a good day to do specific things and whittle the work down to 15 minutes.
3.) Monthly and Seasonal Cleaning: If you follow a zone cleaning plan it's easy to keep on top of your whole house by keeping a deep cleaning list of what is to be done in each room. When the time comes around to clean that room you can tackle the next.
If you don't follow a zone cleaning plan (perfectly fine) then seasonal cleaning happens about two times a year. In the Spring, in the Fall, and in the Mood.
I haven't started either type of cleaning yet with this home but as I feel more settled I would like to start back in with zone cleaning. When I keep my home clean on such a schedule it feels cleaner, more organized, and I'm able to keep on track of the even the smallest cleaning detail.
What kind of cleaning schedule do you keep?
