A couple weeks ago my topic was my organizing my cleaning schedule. I put together a cleaning scheduled based on various sources for what needed cleaning weekly, monthly, every 6 months, and yearly. I had an idea for keeping my house clean in which I would complete one or two of my weekly tasks per day. I was very optimistic that if I did this, I would be able to maintain a sparkly clean house week after week. Well, I’m writing to share that for me, that idea stinks! I kept it up faithfully for about a week and a half. Then I realized I was becoming the Cleaning Nazi. That darn schedule on the refrigerator was ruling my life. I was skipping runs, opportunities to play games with my kids, time with my husband, or staying up late just so I could mark off the little X by “vacuuming” or “dusting” or “bathrooms.” It hit me one evening after dinner when my husband asked me to come join he and kids in the living room. “I can’t,” I replied, “I haven’t done my dusting yet.”
“You know you don’t have to dust right now, right?” he asked. “Come spend some time with us.”
I have had to do some reflecting about what I really want to be. Do I want to be organized? Yes. Do I want to have a clean house? Yes. Do I want to do all this at the expense of my family? No. I have a lot I want to/need to accomplish in my day. I homeschool, so a significant portion of my day is dedicated to schooling the kids. In between I have laundry, meals, dishes, playing with/entertaining/educating/keeping up with the destruction of my preschoolers, personal Bible study, preparations for my children’s church lessons, exercise, taking kids to practice, maintaining my marriage, blogging/organizing — you all know how it is — we are busy people! There aren’t possibly enough hours in a day to fit it all in. Something has to give. I’ve decided that something will be my dream of the perfectly shiny-clean house. I’m not going to give up my running time anymore; for me it’s too important and keeps me sane. I also want my family to know that my priority is them, not my house. That doesn’t mean I’m going to quit cleaning all-together. It just means that I can’t do major cleaning items each day. I’m going to have to go back to doing what I can to maintain during the week and doing the majority of my cleaning Friday afternoon/Saturday morning. If some of my weekly cleaning tasks don’t get done in a week, well, that’s okay. I’ll start there next week.
I am keeping my schedule on the refrigerator. It serves to keep me focused on what I need to get accomplished. But I’m not going to obsess if one or two items are left un-checked. Using it for the past 2+ weeks now has also made me see that it needed a bit of revision, so I’m making my revised version available below. I added my daily maintaining routine, and made it available in a couple different colors just for fun. If you don’t like my list, you can make your own with the customizable schedule. (I got a little carried away. :-)) Off to clean my counters – yippee!
Easy-Going Organizer 