How To Have A Clean House in 7 Days by Hannah Bucklin with Sweetest Moments Photography
Having kids comes with it’s fair share of messes. With us having three littles at home, I sometimes don’t remember life before the mess and all the hidden dangers of tiptoeing through the shag rug carpet. Those hidden dinosaurs and pegged puzzle pieces get me everytime.
If I have learned anything throughout the last 4.5 years of staying home, it's that no matter how hard you try, your house will not look as clean and put together as a Pottery Barn magazine; at least not at the Bucklins.
I have always been kind of a neat-freak. I don't like things on the floor, crumbs under my feet, and especially loose clothes thrown all throughout the house. I don't like a pile of dishes in the sink or overflowing laundry. I totally get visually overstimulated by all the things. Call me a sensory adult if you will but I just don't like a cluttered, dirty mess, which is exactly the house recipe when you have children.
Throughout the last few months I realized how ridiculous I'm being for wanting all of these things checked off my to-do list because you can't have a perfectly tidy clean house and enjoy the hot mess express that these kids bring. Well luckily enough I love my kids more than life so that's when I decided that instead of focusing on cleaning up the whole house top to bottom in one day, I should split it up over a period of seven days. By creating this cleaning schedule and dividing my time up appropriately, I feel I'm able to focus on accomplishing one household chore each day in hopes that by the end of the week my house will be "clean."
Today, I thought that instead of sharing something photography related that I could instead share my cleaning schedule with you. I hope that this can help release a little inside anxiety of how you can embrace motherhood but also have a plan to keep a tidy and clean house!
So for me, my Monday-Saturday chores are done for the upstairs only and my Sundays are specifically for downstairs. This is obviously just the way it works best for me and my house plan so feel free to change the days up so that it fits your needs and your schedule appropriately! I should also mention, depending on your house size and the time or days you have more time to do these things can help determine if you need to switch the days up! For example my kids are in school TWTh so this is when I do the majority of my "heavy cleaning."
Hannah's Seven Day Cleaning Schedule
Monday is dust day
Tuesday is floor day Wednesday is bathroom day
Thursday is laundry catch-up day Friday is window day
Saturday is change the sheets day. Sunday is basement clean-up day.
Now that you've seen the schedule let's talk about each day a little bit.
Monday's: I grab my handheld swiffer duster and swiff like crazy around the house. I basically just walk around the house and adjust the swiffer to the desired length ( I have the one that extends; see link below). I start in my kitchen and dust my cabinets and baseboards and window sills along the way as I move to the living room where I do our living room furniture, our fireplace/mantel and halltree, then I move into the upstairs bedrooms. I dust the fans, the furniture, the baseboards, and the doors in each of the three rooms upstairs and then I'm done. All it takes is about 20-25 minutes to do this with my house size and workflow.
Tuesday is when I focus on my floors. We have dark hardwood floors and they show every dust particle and every baby footprint. This is super sweet but also looks like a human slug has been meddling on the floor, so mopping weekly is pretty much mandatory. I start by using a dust mop and getting all the dust off the floors and under furniture and sweeping that into a vacuum called an eyevac (link below.) These things are life changing. It's basically a vacuum that you place in a designated spot and you sweep your floor crumbs into it and it sucks it up as a vacuum would! These are actually what are placed throughout hair salons to suck up all the hair and they are GAME CHANGING. After I do that I get my steam mop and mop our upstairs. As the floors are drying I vacuum our area rug, kitchen rug, and the rugs in the kids rooms and BAM I'm done. This is my longer day at around 30-35ish minutes.
Wednesdays are bathroom days. I grab a roll of paper towels, a window cloth, a spray vinegar solution that I make, and toilet bowl cleaner and head to the bathrooms. I clean the mirror with a norwex window cloth, clean my sink and toilet with the vinegar solution and clean my toilets from the very top to the bottom base and around the back. [I like to use the vinegar based spray because it's non-toxic and all natural. I also like to use Method toilet bowl cleaner so that it kills bacteria and also smells really good and is bleach free.] I really focus on the bases of the toilets as well because with boys this is where all the "pee spray" as I call it lands. For me this takes about 20 minutes for 3 bathrooms upstairs.
Thursdays are laundry catch up day. Throughout the week I usually will do a few loads of laundry and dry them and put them in a hamper. I save the folding and putting away for Thursdays because for me that is what takes the most time, the actual act of washing and drying the clothes is easy and not as time consuming, especially with a clothes hamper with multiple clothes dividers so the clothes are already sorted they just need to be washed.
Fridays my kids are home so the easiest thing for me to do on Fridays are the windows and the windowed doors. Most of the time I can bribe them with a sticker from their chore chart if they help me and they actually enjoy it! I usually just use a window cloth for this dampened with a little water so it's fun and safe for the kids to help too! I'm totally for delegation and earning those stickers on their chore charts!
Well, there you have it. That is how I get my house clean over seven days. I hope that you can find this somewhat helpful and can take a tip or two from it and apply it to your life so that the ease of cleaning doesn't have to be a constant stressor like it is for me.
This was written by Hannah Bucklin, owner of Sweetest Moments Photography, a Knoxville, TN lifestyle family photographer specializing in family, maternity, newborn, and milestone photography sessions in Knoxville, Tennessee and the surrounding areas. Click here to learn more about family photographer Hannah Bucklin and the reason she is a photographer!