Whole House Cleaning Made Quick and Easy

(Published on Bounty.com)

Whole House Cleaning Made Quick and Easy: Make a Schedule

By Maude Elaine

If you have not put together a house-cleaning schedule, today is your day. Do yourself a favor and organize your cleaning just as you do other important tasks in your life. Approach cleaning your house as a part of your daily routine, doing a few tasks each day, and you will never need the dreaded deep clean again.
The following technique helps you break down your house into five simple zones. Once you begin to think of each area as a specific zone, then you can assign one week of each month to dedicated cleaning of that zone. House cleaning can feel overwhelming when we think of it as one large task. Broken into smaller bite-size pieces, cleaning even the largest house becomes a manageable project.

What You'll Need:

• A 1.5" 3-ring binder
• Clear plastic page sleeves
• A monthly calendar
• A marker
• 5-7 sheets of 8.5" x 11" paper

Instructions:

1. Place the plastic sleeve covers in the binder.
2. Label the spine "House-Cleaning Routines."
3. Take five sheets of paper. Label the top of each page "ZONE 1," "ZONE 2," and on until you have five zones.
4. Walk through your house and divide your house into five relatively equal areas. For example, Zone 1 might include your foyer, dining room, front porch, and deck. Zone 2 might consist of only your kitchen, because it currently requires extra attention. Use your judgment. As your house becomes more orderly, you may want to reconfigure your zones. Continue with each area of your house, designating a zone for your guest bath, your children's bedrooms, your office, the laundry room, the living room, bonus room, and maybe one zone alone for the master bedroom and bathroom.
5. Once you feel comfortable about the zone division, enter the name of each room on the appropriate page.
6. Now that you have your zones established, walk through each room and list each task you want accomplished in that room. Pretend you are giving detailed instructions to your new housekeeper, who is eager to please you and wants to clean every corner of your house just as you want it. Write one sentence for each task (e.g., Dust the window sills; wipe the light fixtures and outlet covers; wash the mirror; et cetera).
7. Use your monthly calendar to schedule one zone to be cleaned each week. Some months will have five weeks; others will have four. Adjust your cleaning accordingly.
8. Divide your list of tasks into five days, so that you do only two or three tasks each day.
9. By using this simple scheduling method, you slowly but surely will clean your whole house at least once every month. Use your calendar to keep track of your work and rotate quarterly and annual tasks through list.
10. Voila! Whole house cleaning made quick and easy.