The New Maid

I wish I was making an announcement about the new cleaning lady who'll be coming over to our house once a week...but alas, the cleaning lady is still plain old me, upgraded to Maid 2.0 with a new plan of action.  After our big clean of the house this past weekend, I really, really wanted to get crackin' on the cleaning schedule.  I intended to create one after the last big clean...but it didn't happen.  So I set to work on that yesterday, and after some searching, I found a template that I thought could work for me.  This isn't the first cleaning schedule I've created--my first one was scribbled hastily on a scrap piece of paper, and it stayed in my nightstand drawer for a few moves.  Why was it in my nightstand drawer, you ask?  Because I wrote it after I went to bed late one night, when inspiration hit me and I thought, "I need a cleaning schedule to make life more manageable!"  I crawled out of bed, found a scrap of paper and a pen, and wrote out the bare bones of a plan.  I want to say that was at least 4 years ago?  In case you couldn't guess, a piece of paper shoved in my nightstand has not at all helped me keep my house clean.  That first attempt at a cleaning schedule (and all my research since that has unfortunately not resulted in anything concrete) was at least a little helpful in that it gave me some direction when creating my new, improved cleaning schedule:

it looks good, so I'm hopeful that it's functional as well!

As you can see, the schedule is already hanging on my fridge, right next to our calendar.  I'm hopeful that checking the schedule will become part of my morning routine, so I'll know what's on the docket for the day.  I tried to give myself a lighter load earlier in the week, because Mondays are short days for Abby at school (which therefore cuts into my naptime hours to get anything done), and Tuesdays are busy with Jake's gymnastics in the morning.  I'm not sure how only doing laundry twice a week is going to work out--I will probably have to add extra loads here and there since Dan has a habit of springing things on me (like, "Honey, I'm going to bed since it's almost midnight...oh, I meant to tell you that I spilled coffee all down the front of my uniform today, so I need it to be washed before tomorrow..."), but if I can make it work on Mondays and Thursdays, I'll be pleasantly surprised.  I don't know if you can see the detail of my schedule from that picture, but I put certain tasks in bold font--those are the "deep clean" tasks, and I tried to space them out so that I do light cleaning most days, with one day a week devoted to a deep clean in one area of the house (bathrooms, kitchen, floors, etc).  Hopefully this will keep me from having to "company clean," which has been my ad hoc cleaning schedule for the last few years...and we don't have company over nearly enough to keep this house clean on a regular basis!

The Company Clean--my previous haphazard approach!

I'm sure I've forgotten some crucial things that should be on the schedule, so I will tweak it this month and have a better product next month.  The stars must have aligned to make the timing right on me finally setting up a schedule--yesterday was the first Monday of the month, and I was able to start my schedule on Week 1, Day 1.  That totally pleases the OCD in me!  :)  I had done laundry on Sunday (not knowing my new schedule would call for Monday laundry), so I spent yesterday doing a few more loads, as well as folding and putting it all away!  I know this will make Dan happy--I think one of his least favorite things is overflowing laundry baskets all over the floor.  So I've already checked off the tasks of one day, and the sense of accomplishment I derived from checking them off will definitely keep me on schedule.  Hooray for my new cleaning schedule!  Please tell me I'm not the only person who gets excited about stuff like this!  :)