I am still tweaking and working with my cleaning schedule in my own home, because as other portions of my family’s schedule changes, it changes when I can do things, but one thing I actually do feel on top of at the moment is my laundry schedule.

I have listed my blog my thoughts on why a laundry schedule is ultra important if you have several kids, especially little ones, and what my schedule is (click the link above) in my home.

I work outside the home full time, have three kids, and with my laundry schedule I have finally found a system where I generally (not always, but most of the time) keep up with the laundry. That has really improved my life and that lives of my family.

I first went around my entire house and made a list of everything, including fix it jobs and then I took the list and decided how often each item needed to be done.

Then in Outlook, I created a task for each item and had it repeat based on my decision in part one. One week, two weeks, once a month, yearly…

Now I use my phone, but in the olden days, pre-phone, I used my computer. Each morning when I read my email, there were my list of tasks for each day. As I complete a task, I mark it complete, and it moves to the next day it needs to be done. All tasks done means I get to do what I want to do.

I found keeping it simple helps. For instance: Have one task that says “Clean Living Room” instead of tasks that say “Dust Living Room”, “Mop Living Room”, “Vacuum Living Room floor”… Too many tasks can be overwhelming. Plus “clean living room” allows me to say that vacuuming the rug is good enough. After all, that task comes up twice a week, so if I do a halfway job today, in three days it will be back.

If I am sick, a task can only stay on my to do list for 48 hours. If I am sick on Monday, then on Wednesday night before I go to bed, I complete all of Monday’s chores-not by doing them, but by marking them complete. They’ll be back. The only ones I don’t allow myself to do that on are animal related tasks, and yearly tasks. Animal related tasks can be delegated, but the puppy has to be fed every day. Yearly tasks can wait a few days, but they do need to be done.

Another thing is I actually made two calendars in outlook and I scheduled in housework when I was creating my tasks. It doesn’t make since to say tomorrow I am going to do 4 hours of housework related chores, if you know full well that tomorrow you are only going to be home 9 hours and you need 8 of those to sleep. Instead, schedule those chores on a day when you are going to be home 4 hours.

The key is to know what needs to be done so if you have free time you can do it, be flexible so you don’t get overwhelmed, and when you have free time, work on the list. I find I actually work less around the house now, because I am constantly picking up, or maintaining and not having to do major overhauls to keep up with it.

Of course, having said all that, it also helps that my children are 11, 16 and 18 and not 1, 6 and 8.

Our tv room, fell victim to my littlest tornado and his older brother while he was out of school. It is finally taking some shape, but before that I moved out of that room which usually has the computer in it to the main living room. Which is usually pretty tidy. LOL I am looking forward to me and DH both being off this weekend, so we can have a cleaning frenzy.