When you establish an effective chore routine you will find it is much easier to keep on top of the housework.
You will find that by creating a system for household cleaning, you’ll always know what needs to be done.
Establishing a chore routine now will take the guesswork out of things, and give you a solid plan to get the jobs done regularly.
This is going to take a little while, but it’s totally worth it.
Go room to room and make a list of all the chores that need to be done in your home.
Write down everything from wiping the walls and cleaning carpets to organizing the pantry and scrubbing tubs.
Work on it for a few days, then look back and see if there is something you might have missed.
Once you have everything written down, go through and mark how often it should be done.
• (D) daily
• (W) weekly
• (M) monthly
• (A) annually
This first step will be the most time-consuming part of the project. You might be tempted to whiz through the part, but take your time. It will be worth it in the long run.
Your list is probably pretty long, right? Don’t worry, we’ll break it down and make it manageable.
Take all your daily chores and put them on a new list. These are all the things you believe are
important to be done each and every day.
Some of these might include feeding animals, wiping the bathroom, and doing the dishes. Undoubtedly, your list contains a few more items than that, but you get the idea.
As you write these down, put the initial of the person who is responsible for the chore.
Be sure you include your children. They are the mess makers after all, right?
Giving them jobs keeps them busy, builds character, teaches responsibility, and helps you out at home.
Now that you’ve got the daily chores done, make a separate list for the weekly chores, but with one difference.
Put them in categories by room. And next to the chore, write how often you need it done.
For example, if you need the bathroom trash emptied twice a week, then write a 2 next to that chore.
A sample weekly chores list for the kitchen might include:
• Wipe out the microwave
• Mop floors
• Organize pantry
• Clean stove
• Wipe outside cabinets
• Wipe out the refrigerator
Remember that this is a work in progress and you’ll likely discover you’ve forgotten to add
something. Just keeping adding to your lists.
Now that you have your weekly chore list done, you are going to decide which chores should be done on which days.
Take a look at your calendar or your weekly commitments, you’ll see that it makes sense to do
certain things on certain days.
If you’re going to be out of the house most of the day on Thursdays, then don’t put huge chores down for that day. Maybe make that the day you clean the bathrooms and dust.
You’ll likely have to assign more than one room per day, depending on the size of your house. Arrange the chores according to the demands of your current season of life.
Now it’s time to work on your monthly chores.
Some sample monthly chores might include:
• Wash bedding
• Wipe fan blades
• Clean the oven
• Organize freezers
• Wiping the washer and dryer
Typically, you have four weeks in a month. Divide up the chores by week. If you have 16 monthly chores, simply put four chores Week 1, Week 2 . . . etc. Try to group similar chores together. Once you have this done, assign the chores with an initial like you did with the above weekly chores.
Annual chores can be done on that random fifth week we get about every three months.
Divide the number of annual chores you have by four, and every time that extra week comes around, commit to get one set of your annual chores done.
As you work through your rough drafts and find a routine that works for you and your family, type them up.
Print your lists so they are stored somewhere (on the cloud) that won’t get lost. You’ll find that if you keep up with your chore routine, there will be no need to spring clean because your house will always be clean. The initial setup can be time-consuming, but the end result is so worth it!
After you establish an effective chore routine, be sure to communicate with your children. Let them know the plan and your expectations, then work together to follow the new routine!
Before getting started on your chore routine, I have a few tips to help you get going. First, take a look at my post, 5 Things That Characterize A Good Homemaker. And if you are setting out to get on top of your housework, make sure you don’t have too much stuff in your home by joinng our 30-Day Declutter Challenge.
One Response
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