Do you have a household schedule?
 

Laying in bed last night trying to think of all the things I needed to do today I wondered what it might be worth to have a weekly routine. ie Monday: baking, Friday:laundry, Sat: floors, etc.
Do you have a schedule like this in your home? Do you like it?
I feel conflicted...while it would be nice to have everything set out, I worry that I would be frustrated if I didnt have time to do what I was "supposed" to do that day, and then I would ditch the whole thing. LOL

I've gone back and forth with having things scheduled each day. Right now, I just have a list of things that should happen each week and I check things off when I get them done.

Once upon a time I did. I had everything planned out in an excel worksheet. Our day was broke up in 15 minute increments and I had everything planned out from laundry and nap time to grocery shopping and showers. LOL It worked for a few days. Then my baby (he's 7 now, but he was a baby then) got really demanding on me and I was lucky if I could put him down for 2 minutes to use the potty, let alone 15 minutes to scrub the floors. It all went to heck at that point.

Now I loosely follow FlyLady's Zones. This week is Zone 5, the living room. I spend the majority of my week focusing on the zone room(s) in 15 minute increments when ever I get a chance to get to it. Other things I do as they need to be done. I do laundry daily because there's no other way around here.

I do! I once made a Squidoo page all about it! Even won "Lens of the Day" years ago... :D

http://www.squidoo.com/homemaking

^^^ because, you know... I am so on top of everything, I am an expert!

(she says as she thinks of all the dirty dishes in the kitchen and the clean laundry piled all over her bedroom.)

Hey, once upon a time, I only had two kids and a lot of time to play on the internet! LOL!

No schedule in writing but it's pretty much known the weekend is for laundry and cleaning every room, bathroom. We also move furniture in living room to dust, broom and mop.
We vacuum every other day and take out garbage.
Everyday is making your bed, passing the broom, dishes and pick up after yourself...
This works great for us.

I love Flylady, but I never seem to be able to stick with it for very long, because I'm really too much of a perfectionist. :cursing: Anyway, maybe modifying it to just following the Zones would work for me. I tend to be too hard on myself when I don't do what I set out to, so I like this idea. I can do 15 min. and put the boys to work too. We are on the run so much with activities that I know I can't do particular things on particular days. This sounds less stressful and I might actually be able to maintain it! :)

I have a schedule but I am inherently lazy so I therefor both need a schedule & never feel bad if I fail to stick to it. :)

Basically I mop on Tues & Fri, do laundry on Wed & Sat, clean bathrooms on Mon & Thurs and sweep every day. I work my way around the house during the week, one room at a time, there are only 5 rooms plus the bathrooms so Thurs-Sun I do a room a day, dragging in the help of whoever else uses the room. The kitchen gets a general clean pretty much every day after supper.

I could never manage flylady because DH does the dishes so I have no control over the state of my sink. He also gets up after I am gone so I can't control the bed being made.

I've tried having a schedule, but right now the external demands on me (appointments, volunteering at the kids' schools, errands, etc.) vary too much from day to day for a weekly schedule to work. Sunday is always grocery shopping because DH puts the kids to bed that night while I shop, and I do the bulk of my cleaning and errands on the 3 mornings that my youngest is in preschool.

I'm most on top of things during the phases of our life when my schedule has been consistent enough to allow for a weekly cleaning routine, but those have also been periods when I am home more than usual and can devote more time to housework. The schedule does help because I'm less likely to procrastinate the chores I don't like; I need to figure out something that will work better than what I'm doing (or not doing, LOL) right now.

ETA: My biggest cleaning problem is that the things that need to be done daily (cooking, cleaning the kitchen, and straightening the house) and several times a week (like laundry) are eating up too much time, so I'm not good at getting to the things that need to be done less frequently.

Nope. I work full time, so I just run around like a madwoman for an hour or two on the weekends and cram all of the cleaning in, lol.

Daily tidying and then when I want to have company over and I run around scrubbing and cleaning and freaking out. That is kinda a routine right?

That's my favorite cleaning method: invite someone over at least once or twice a week. It does the trick better than any list or routine. LOL!

Ha ha! I know! Me, too!

I do jenn's method :)

Not really, I have Sundays and Mondays off so I split things between those 2 days. I do the heavy cleaning and a lot of prepping for meals on my days off. Other things get done as they need it. I do not leave laundry for one day of the week, I'd rather do it as it needs to be done. We toss our laundry right in the machine every night and then DD or I start a load when we see that it's full. I vacuum throughout the week due to animals that shed a lot. Floors get swept almost daily also.

You can still follow FlyLady without doing the sink thing. Believe me. When I first found and started FlyLady we didn't even HAVE a sink! I did my dishes in the bath tub back then. No shiny sink for me. The advice she gives if the sink is a problem is to find something to serve as your shiny sink... something that motivates you when you see it nice and clean. :) As for the bed... my bed is never made. I don't worry about it. I get up and a little more than an hour later DH goes to bed. He gets up and it's probably 4 hours before I am back in bed. No reason to make it. ;)

i follow Clean Mama's monthly calendar. 4 things happen every day & then each weekday is something different-bathrooms, dusting, mopping, vacumming, etc. if something pops up & throws the day off or i have a lot of appointments, i don't sweat if i missed dusting one week because i can do it the next week. her schedule has been my saving grace. it's simple enough for me & my family. the daily load of laundry has been nice too. i hate folding 7+ loads of laundry at once (though that still manages to happen frequently).

here's her monthly calendar: http://www.cleanmama.net/2013/01/cle...-calendar.html

The boys know that nothing will be happening on Saturday until cleaning is done. We pick up throughout the week but major cleaning is reserved for the weekend.

I only have a schedule for laundry!!! With 7 people (sometimes 9) in this house I have too and I have to stick to it or all heck breaks loose!!!

But I can't really have any other kind of schedule because none of my days are the same....and with 7 people (sometimes 9) in this house many things pop up everyday!!! :D :D

So I just kind of go with the flow for everything else but laundry!!! :thumbup:

Thanks for the link! Unlike many of the cleaning schedules I've looked at online, that one looks doable for me. I'm going to give it a try.


LOL-We have overnight guests (family) every month or 2. Those are the only times when the whole house is truly clean and tidy.

i follow jenn's method as well :)

Holy gosh, you guys are organized!! I work during the day, cook dinner and clean the kitchen each night, vacuum, dust, mop, toilets, laundry etc on the weekends. That is the extent of my schedule.

Another vote for Jenn's method...and I don't even have kids. :/

I don't have a schedule. I can't follow one. I've tried and it doesn't work for me. If I am feeling really bad, i.e. my lower back hurts a lot and so do my hands, I will call my niece and she will come over and help me. She is a lifesaver. Other than that I try to tidy up every day.

I follow Sherri's method, cram it all into the weekend and pray it lasts until the next weekend. It doesn't...

I don't have something for everyday, but I do have a couple days with specifics on it. It changes when our other activities change. Right now my son has a martial arts class twice a week, I have one evening a week for a 'mommy' class, my DH has choir practice one night etc....

So for now its:

Monday Morning: clean bathrooms, vacuum
Wednesday: grocery shopping
Thurs or Friday: change towels (and toss them in laundry - do laundry if needed)

I cook and do dishes daily. If I'm not running out for an evening event, I often bake one of those days. I check the laundry everyday, but only do it about twice a week when it's ready. I sweep every few days when I start to notice it!

Then I put bigger jobs in when I have time (often weekends). Like mop the entire hardwood floor, clean out the freezer etc...

I should also add that I did FlyLady religiously for a couple years. By then alot of her methods were 'habits' so I started modifiying it for my own house/situation.

I think the biggest thing for me was realizing that I could move things around as our lives changed. So every few months I re-do my basic structure as needed!

I never tried FlyLady because it seemed like too much trouble to keep up. Too many different things to do.

I think I might try a modified version of the Clean Mama one...thx for the link! I definitely do NOT to laundry every day, though!

yep.......this is me......but fortunately I have a DD that is almost 20 and she does get a chore list everday for certain things :)

We actually keep things more picked up since we got the puppy. But I have no schedule. I make the boys do chores by giving them a list, but that's not even every weekend. We do things when we can. And because of that, my house is never in shape for someone to stop by. :p

I have taken to doing laundry on Sundays. I wash and dry everything and pile it (neatly) in laundry baskets. Then I take it upstairs to my room and turn on the TV. I fold while I watch, then the boys have to put all their own clothes away. I don't mind doing it so much that way.

Unfortunately I often have unexpected guest. If you come without calling you deserve to see a messy house :D

Normally I do laundry, dishes every other day. I pretend to do them the other days.

I pick Cole's toys up nightly but, by the end of the day you can't even tell.

Then the other stuff such as bathroom, bed sheets, Cole's tornado of a room, all toys in the living room get picked up on Sunday when he goes to church. It's the only time my house stays cleaner longer then ten minutes. That's life with a soon to be four year old :D

It's been raining here for weeks.. So I haven't vacuumed but once a week lately. Only because, it does not one ounce of good!

Funny to see this thread! I've been working on a "schedule" for a while. This is more of a guideline... I homeschool, so I can also use this list to assign chores. ;) Some of the stuff on it I really do every week on generally the same days, the other stuff is for if I am ambitious or something is bugging me (like a drawer getting disorganized.... I tend to get distracted, so if I know I have a day "assigned" to do things like that I can leave it be.) Basically my house is so much work to keep up, since we are here so much and really use our space, it also gives me permission to sit and relax if I have done all the stuff on my list but there is still more to be done. :)

I have tried various checklists over the years, and some Flylady... so this is basically different routines personalized for our family's needs.


https://www.sweetshoppecommunity.com...g-Schedule.jpg

I like this. And I am the same way - I got distracted for 3 days cleaning up the storage room.
Do you print this once and re-use it, or print it once every week?

I printed and laminated it. If I'm having a week where I'm trying to whip my house into shape, I can check everything off and track it more closely... otherwise it is there as a reminder of what I should get to if I can. :)

And making it pretty means it looks nicer on the front of my fridge! :)