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As a stay-at-home dad, one of my primary responsibilities is to get the cleaning done around the house. This used to be a very tough chore for our family. We felt that we lacked the time and would easily get overwhelmed by the house chores. It was a viscous cycle that would lead to issues as well. Today, I’m here to talk about how we broke the cycle and started getting our house cleaned by following some simple steps.
We Created Our House Cleaning Plan
A small sample from our spreadsheet that we created.
We knew that in order to be successful at tackling our house work, we needed to look at it like a project. With any good project management, a plan is needed. We decided to do a walk through of our house, room by room, and made a list of everything that we needed to “clean” and how often.
This was an eye-opening exercise for me especially because my wife and I view what needs to be done completely differently. I knew about the basics, but my wife is a little more in depth at what we should be doing. This was very helpful to me so that I could help her out more so she wouldn’t get so frustrated in things I wasn’t seeing.
As we went through each room, we talked over all the components of the room that needed to be cleaned and wrote down how often they needed to be cleaned. This was the starting point for our house cleaning checklist that you can download for free.
We automated our house cleaning checklist with Google Calendar.
After creating the house cleaning checklist master list, we went through and added recurring events to Google Calendar with notifications. We now just check our phone each morning to see what needs to be done. I am a big fan of Google Calendar as it allows me to create multiple calendars and sync them with others so that everyone can see what’s going on. My wife and I both get to see the Google calendar by sharing it with one another.
If you need help creating a recurring event, check out the guide from Google. Get started by downloading our house cleaning checklist and using it to create all the events on Google Calendar.
We execute the house cleaning checklist by following our guide each day.
Now that we’ve got our plan in place, we can simply follow along. There is no more “what do we need to do today?”. Our house work is a breeze now as we follow our house cleaning checklist and calendar. I would challenge you to try it out and take a new approach to your house work. Since we did it, we have had a much cleaner house. Our time is much more efficient since we don’t waste it on making decisions. We are focusing more on getting stuff done, reducing decision fatigue. Lastly, we’re saving a bit of money since we don’t have to bring in that maid service that we were considering.
What are your tricks that you do to get your house work done?
Do you use any sort of a checklist or method?
Thanks for reading and I hope your house ends up being cleaner in the future!
Don’t forget to get your free House Cleaning Checklist here too!
Steven Goodwin
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Sounds like a good plan. We don’t have kids, so we seem to be able to do it as we see it needs doing.
Laura, thanks for stopping by and commenting. Glad that you have a plan in place to get your housework done. I wasn’t really meaning for it just to be for people that have kids as much as just for people that find it hard to find time to get things done. My wife and I found that by creating an attack plan, we were better able to get ahead of things and not get paralysis analysis from just trying to start. Have a great day!
With four boys, I need to get a house cleaning plan. I do the bare minimum during the week, then pay for it on the weekends. I like how organized your plan is!
Wow, four boys would definitely create a house cleaning that would be a bigger undertaking! This plan is designed to try to make it so you can just do a few things each day (depending on how many things are on your overall list).
We actually used to feel the exact same way where we would kind of scrimp by during the week and feel like it was a mountain by the weekend. This plan has really helped us conquer that mountain and get our weekends back!
Steve – ugh i’m terrible when it comes to cleaning house. It was always something that has been dreadful and is time-consuming. My work week is too busy to spend on chores besides simply doing dishes after dinner and cleaning the counter-top. So I usually spend my Saturday mornings playing Cinderella.
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Krista, I hear you. One other reason I love this plan is because I didn’t know what all needed to be done. My wife would get stressed out because she would do things that wouldn’t cross my mind and then wonder why I didn’t see it.
Housework is tough, but I think that if broken down into smaller bite sized chunks, it can become more manageable! I hear you on the Cinderella thing!
What a great idea! I can’t tell you how much time I’ve wasted when I get behind on housework just trying to decide where to start.
Yes, this plan really helped us get organized and got rid of a lot of the decision fatigue since the list was shorter as long as we kept up with it! Thanks for stopping by and thanks so much for commenting!
Great process for keeping track of housecleaning! It’s a problem for us at home and it really appeals to the engineer in me – way to go!
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Thanks Jon! Yeah, I’m a big “schedule” type of person myself and this really helped me get things together and make the process much simpler, especially when my wife got to add the things she wanted done to the list so that I would know to actually do them! Thanks for stopping by and commenting! Loved your post today about taxation and Trump too by the way!
This is an absolutely great idea to make the housework go better. I definitely will be looking at doing this
Thanks Crystal, let me know how it goes! I really appreciate you stopping by and commenting!
Great plans! I admit I’m not very good at cleaning house, ha!
I hear ya, Kay! I’m in the same boat. This plan made our lives so much easier once we implemented it! Thanks for stopping by and commenting, I really appreciate it!
I really need to start doing this. Thank you for the tips!
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It’s all about starting with the end in mind, right Amber? Hope you follow through and find it helpful! Have a great day!
This sounds just like what I need, because the house gets messy too much. I don’t like cleaning and this is a good way to keep it clean. Note to self….Gotta get more organized….
Kim, we were always feeling that things were never caught up before we started this list and followed through on it! I’m not a big cleaner myself, but with this list, it takes me about 30 minutes at the most, per day! Feels nice to knock it off my list every day too!
A checklist is certainly worth a try!
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Hey Robbie, thanks for stopping by! Hope you find the checklist helpful and easy to implement! Let me know how the progress goes!
I never thought to put cleaning tasks on my Google Calendar before. That is a great way to keep everyone on board and a good reminder too. That would pop up on my phone and email so that’s awesome!
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Latoya, I feel like I live and die by my Google Calendar, LOL! It’s great and easy to get up and going and it’s very convenient to be able to share the calendar with my wife so that we can tag team the chores! Thanks for stopping by and commenting! Let me know how it goes for you!
I seriously NEED to implement this. I am SO bad about cleaning, mainly because I’m so tired by the time I get home from work that I don’t want to do anything. I really might try the Google Calendar thing. Thanks for the tip! 🙂
I hear you exactly, Danielle! We always felt behind when it came to cleaning up because we had spent all of our energy during the week on other things. Then, once our days off came around, we felt like we had a mountain to work on. This has really helped smooth things out and keep our house much more tidy! Thanks for reading and commenting! I hope you do implement it!
House cleaning charts are so helpful! What i’ve been doing is cleaning one part of each room that needs to be cleaned each day that way its less overwhelming.
Mihaela, we have sure found that ours has been! As long as you have a plan of attack, you are going to be successful! Thanks for stopping by!
This is sooo helpful and seems to be very effective. One of the keys to successful tasks is organization and this certainly makes it easier to do so
http://www.KatrinaJeanCarter.wordpress.com
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Absolutely!
I normally follow a schedule and a plan. There are always lists, for daily chores, weekly chores, and monthly chores just so that I won’t miss cleaning anything.
Sounds like you’ve already got yours created! Good for you!
Housecleaning? What is that anyway? Just kidding, but I’m literally sitting at a desk in our home office that is stacked with papers, books, and a host of other items. Having the busy life that me and my hubby have, we find it really difficult to get the basics done. I’m finding that reminders on my phone (through Google calendar) are what helps me best. Excellent tools here!
Jessica, I hear ya! Life is very busy! That’s why I love that all I have to do is breakaway for about 30 minutes a day to get mine taken care of. Not to mention that a clean house also helps my productivity soar!
I don’t have a plan. I just clean whenever I am able to or when we are having people over.
Sometimes company can be a great motivator as well! LOL love it! Have you ever thought about getting on a plan like this?
Hahaha, I think my family needs this because my mom is always yelling that no one cleans anything, even tho I ALWAYS clean what seems obvious to me… But she always finds 100000 things that are not done and I have no idea they should be done.
Annie, this was huge for our family because it allowed for both my wife and I to have input and lay the groundwork for what actually needed to be done! This was a big eye opener for me!
Using a calendar that you can all share and work through together has never been easier with Google Calendar! Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
Steven Goodwin recently posted…How We Automated Our House Cleaning Process
Steve,
You did a great job with this post. I know everyone else is going to comment on the content – which they should 🙂 – but visually the way you’ve got the practical charts as examples is great!
Thanks for showing us what you do!
Thanks Scott! You always find a way to look at things from a different angle! I appreciate that! I have found this to be super helpful in my life, so thought I’d share it with others!
Have a great day Scott!
That’s a very detailed cleaning plan. I don’t like a messy home so I make sure I have a schedule as well. This is pretty amazing!
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Thanks Carol! I find that having a good plan in place always helps me get more stuff done! It was amazing how much I was leaving on the list that my wife includes, but I clean differently. It really helped for both of us to make the list together and work out a plan. Now I get everything done so much faster! Glad you have a schedule too!
Steven Goodwin recently posted…How We Automated Our House Cleaning Process
My husband and I have very different definitions of clean as well. He thinks dusting is a waste of time. I’d rather steam sterilize every possible surface.
Jennifer DeFrates/Heaven Not Harvard recently posted…Do your Kids need Help Focusing – Meet KazuTime
Ha ha Jennifer, must be a guy thing! I’m not all that into deep cleaning as much as my wife either, but, since we made the list together, we’ve really been able to agree on things much better and our house is looking great! Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment!
Cleaning is a nice activity although sometimes it is stressing us out. This is a nice idea.
We were very stressed out by how we cleaned before we made our action plan and started working it. Now it’s a lot easier to keep up with having just a few things to do each weekday versus using most of the weekend to catch up. Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
Steven Goodwin recently posted…How We Automated Our House Cleaning Process
Totally downloading this. We are not in the same page and could definitely use the accountability that putting something in writing brings!
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Thanks Femme! I would love to hear how you worked it out and maybe things you added or left out! It has really helped us not fight as much since we’ve gotten on the same page and both really pitch in to make it work! Hope you find success with it!
A really helpful blogpost!
I nominated you for the 3 Days 3 Quotes Challenge! Please take a look at this Blogger Outreach project! You can learn more about it by clicking the following link!
http://www.rolosuniverse.wordpress.com/3day3quotes2
Thanks Rolo, I appreciate that you found it helpful. I have a whole Quotes section on my site, but don’t know that I’ll participate in the Challenge since I’ve kind of restructured my blog and am trying to only post about once a week now. Thanks for nominating me though!
Steven Goodwin recently posted…How We Automated Our House Cleaning Process
This is awesome! I sort of tried this once but didn’t completely follow through. You are inspiring me to try again though! 🙂 Much respect for a stay at home dad of two girls by the way, and I love how well you responded to your wife’s need for extra cleaning detail. 🙂 <3
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Erin,
Thanks so much for stopping by and reading. The nice thing about falling off a bike is it’s so easy to get back up and start riding again! I hope that you will try to get a plan and start working it again! Would love to hear your progress!
Thanks for the respect on the SAHD side of things! I love being home with them and the ability to help our family get some extra needed family bonding time.
Have a great day!
Because organization is not my “thang,” I love reading posts like this that motivate me to find better systems to get it done. Thank you!
The How-to Guru
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Ha, well I hop my system will hold up for you and you’ll be able to “get it done” once you have it up and running for yourself! Keep my posted on the progress! I would love to hear how you get along with it!
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment, it’s much appreciated!
This is something I should be doing as well. Oftentimes, I find the house in a mess because instead of cleaning, I would be too tired and prefer to sleep. having a baby in the house can be so ow demanding. But staying in a clean and orderly house is also very inspiring. My husband and kids deserve to see a nice smelling house. I might try this spreadsheet thing as well.
Berlin, thanks for stopping by and commenting! I really appreciate it! I hear you on the tired part after taking care of the kiddos. Being a stay at home dad myself to two girls (4 and 2 years old) I know how demanding it can be! I would say though, that since we’ve put this together and actually started following it, we are feeling so much more refreshed and the house is staying much cleaner as well since most of the tasks, when split up over the 5 work days, only take me about 30 minutes on most days to complete! It is so nice to be caught up and not have to “binge” clean over the weekends! I would highly recommend the spreadsheet as it will help you get started! However, once you have the spreadsheet created and tweaked, you have to find a way, like Google Calendar, to remind yourself of what tasks to do. Let me know how you progress! I would love to hear your results!
Love this Steve. I seriously live and die by my google calendar. Can’t wait to add this layer to my google calendar. I’m glad you posted in the The Blog Loft thread tonight.
Kate, yeah Google Calendar is so important! Thanks for visiting and I’m happy to be a part of the blog loft!
This is something I struggle with for for sure! Scheduling specific tasks in a calendar for even my kids would be helpful.
I use google calendar for just about everything LOL! I keep a calendar of my kids schedule everyday so that my wife knows what we’re up to as well! Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
Thanks for tweeting this today – I needed the reminder to get my to do cleaning list off my to do list!! I’m a big fan of automation but when there is only one in a household it is easy for me to put it off until later. With this reminder I am going to set it up once and for all!! My house thanks you. 🙂
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Glad you saw it! I’d love to hear how you like it and how you implement it! I found it very helpful and use it all the time to get things caught up to score extra brownie points with my wife!