Creating cleaning routines help reduce the overwhelm of maintaining a home, and even more so when you have little ones to care for as well!
Maintaining a home, especially with little people to care for, is big job and can be very overwhelming. Day to day, things can pile up so quickly that, before you know it, you are drowning in housework and cleaning with no hope of catching up! Creating cleaning routines, rhythms and systems helps you stay on top of everything and avoid the overwhelm. Let’s look at some ways to create routines for different areas
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How to Create Cleaning Routines
Laundry
I think laundry is one of the biggest problem areas I hear homemakers complaining about and getting behind or overwhelmed with. Like cooking, laundry is a revolving door. It is one of those chores that is constantly going every day. And even more so as your family grows! Here are a few things to help breakdown the chore of laundry and make it a little more manageable.
1. Use small hampers – using too large of hampers means the laundry gets put off longer with larger loads
2. Have a simple system for putting away clothes to make it easier and less daunting
3. Do load of laundry every day or every other day – one load is not that overwhelming and its easy to switch a load and folding/putting away only ONE load is not has daunting as SIX loads.
The way I implement this in my home is by first having a very simple clothing system. All of my family members had a cubby system with a few clothes on hangers. The clothes we have on hangers are usually dressy/church clothes that are worn the least or need to be washed the least. All the other clothes like socks, underwear, pants, shirts, pajamas, etc., are in cubbies. This system COMPLETELY took out the overwhelm and procrastination of putting laundry away. They don’t even have to be folded! I simply have a bin for socks, one for tops, one for bottoms, and so on and just drop the clothes accordingly. Cubby bins do not get stuck like drawers, they always look neat, and I spend FAR less time putting away clothes!
I use small hamper baskets for each of my children and a small hamper for my husband and I. Our hamper is exactly the perfect size for one load. My girls hampers together make one load. It forces me to do laundry more often to keep it from overflowing, yet also gives me only a manageable amount to wash. I do have a larger hamper in the laundry room where throw in rags, towels, sheets (when they have to be washed) and my husbands work clothes. I call this my “dirty” hamper (as if all the others aren’t dirty too!). I do one load per week of rags/towels/work clothes and every other week I do an extra load of sheets.
All these systems have taken a once very overwhelming task, and made it pleasant and somewhat enjoyable!
Clutter and Picking up
Okay, when you have kids, especially toddlers? This is arguably one of the most impossible chores! Sometimes, it feels like the mess is happening as I’m picking up! There are a couple ways I have found to help reduce clutter and manage it better.
1. Do a quick pick up a couple times per day. For me this is a few minutes immediately after the kids go down for naps, and at bedtime.
2. Reduce toys and books. We have found that toy and book rotation works very well for this. I can keep a lot of different toys that she enjoys and I want her to have, without having ALL the toys out in the house at one time! It also helps with not getting bored of toys.
3. Don’t allow them to get into cabinets, bring toys in the kitchen, etc. This is the toughest part I have found. It takes a lot discipline and training which is hard in the short term, but a win win in the long term! The kids learn order, discipline, obedience, and so on. And you are able to reduce the mess happening in your home.
4. Teach your kids to pick up after themselves. Going along with the previous tip, this takes a tremendous amount of time, effort, and discipline. Short term? It’s far easier for me to do it myself! Long term however, it will help my child to learn a valuable skill for life and also help out our family.
5. Everything has a place and a place for everything. I have found that reducing any “catch all’ areas has helped reduce our clutter SO MUCH. Having a spot for everything also helps to manage the clean ups making it less of a thought process and quicker.
Of all the chores to manage in the home, I think picking up and dealing with clutter with the kids around is the hardest. It takes a lot of effort and discipline (for you and the kids!) to keep up with it. However, there are ways to make it more manageable and have a more relaxing environment to live in.
Have a Cleaning Schedule
Setting up some kind of schedule or routine for cleaning has helped me so much. This is what it looks like for me:
1. Clean bathrooms on Monday
2. Vacuum daily
3. Wipe down kitchen daily
4. Mop weekly
6. Do one small cleaning task daily or every other day (clean the microwave, or stove top, or trash can, or dishwasher, or dust, etc.
7. One big cleaning task weekly (clean the car, wash some windows, scrub cabinets, etc)
This set up has helped to stay on top off the small tasks as well as the larger tasks without doing something overwhelming like allowing all the mess to build up then struggling to clean everything all at one time.
All of these tips and tricks are meant to help give you direction into how you can implement small changes in your life to help manage the housekeeping and create cleaning routines that help reduce your stress and overwhelm. It will also help give you a more enjoyable environment to live in!
This has been a post about how to create cleaning routines.
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