Setting Up a System for Housework

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Day 20 of #Write28Days Challenge

So we have covered systems for meal planning and laundry. What about the other tasks like dusting, vacuuming/sweeping and mopping? This is where we have to set up a system for housework in order to manage the rest of the house.

Again, don’t overcomplicate matters. Just set up a basic system of housekeeping tasks so that housework is done systematically and tasks or areas of the house do not get missed out. Having a system allows us to hand over the tasks to our children or spouse should we be unable to do them.

Dusting

I will be the first to confess that when the children were much younger, I almost never dusted except the places we used the most like the dining table and our school tables. I had no system, time or inclination to dust the window grilles or the TV or even my dressing table. I would just let them be until dust balls were floating around.

Same thing with our ceiling fans. It got so bad that we thought the dust balls were flying insects because they were that huge!

And so I will say again, like a broken record, you decide on your cleanliness level and you set up a system that matches it. Dust daily if you must or once a month if that is more realistic.

A System for Dusting

But to make your effort worth it, you need to have a system. And you need to remember that work done regularly is less tiring than work done once a month. That is to say that dusting once a week is faster than dusting only once a month because you will have a lot more dust to get rid off.

Dusting is also faster and easier if there is little to no clutter. And so, you will see that there are almost no photo frames in our home. The lack of them also removes space for lizards to hide behind!

I dust every Saturday. One week is dedicated to the living and dining rooms and the study, where I dust the tables, TV console, window grilles and ceiling fans. Another week is dedicated to the bedrooms where window grilles, ceiling fans, bedside tables, etc are dusted.

This is what I do every Saturday without fail. If I need to be out on a Saturday, I will shift it to a Friday or a Monday, occasionally. But I do it weekly so that the dust build-up is minimal and the task is done faster.

Vacuuming

Vacuuming follows the dusting. You ought to vacuum AFTER you dust because dust will fall onto the ground no matter how you try to prevent it.

On a normal day (ie not a Saturday where I vacuum after all that dusting described above), I prefer vacuuming to be done after dinner. But now that I have delegated vacuuming to a child, she is rather random in when she does it. Yes, it is very frustrating but I am learning to let it go.

Sometimes when I cannot take it, I will vacuum parts of the house that bothers me and leave the rest to her.

Reduce/Eliminate Clutter

As with dusting, the less clutter you have on the floors, the faster and easier it is to vacuum. If you have a lot of items on the floor, you will have to remember to move these items out to vacuum under them once in a while. Dust and hair will accumulate under and behind objects left on the floor.

Reducing or eliminating clutter is helpful whether you use a standard vacuum cleaner or a robot vacuum cleaner. Less clutter = faster vacuuming.

I used to use the Kao Magiclean Mop when the children were babies so that I could do a quick clean up after they had gone to bed silently. But now that they are no longer babies and sleep way later than I do, I use our Dyson stick vacuum when I need to clean up.

Mopping

When the children were younger and made more messes that I had to clean up, spot cleaning was done on a regular basis. This helped to reduce the need to wet mop on a daily basis. I would mop only once a week. Do remember to vacuum before you mop or you will be smearing dust and hair all over the house.

When we invested in a Scooba (the wet mop version of Roomba), it took over my job. Yay!

* Scooba no longer exists. It has been replaced by the Braava which I don’t like.

Just be careful if you have young children who love to run when using the Scooba. It does leave wet spots and running children have slipped a few times on these spots in our house. If you are hardworking, you could go around the house after the Scooba is done and dry up the wet spots. I don’t.

System for Housekeeping: Clean by Zones

Flylady splits up the house into zones where you clean a certain zone of the house on a certain day. This ensures that you will get to all zones or parts of your house because it goes on a loop system. Find out more about zones here.

System for Housekeeping: Clean by Tasks

Clean Mama has a free task list available if you sign up for her newsletter where she will tell you exactly what to clean on specific days. Eg. Dust on Mondays, vacuum on Tuesdays. Find out more of her daily tasks here.

Which System?

Try out both systems and decide which one you prefer then TWEAK it for your own home.

I personally prefer cleaning by zones because that means that the entire zone is entirely clean. But some people prefer to go by tasks. It also depends on how much time you have to clean.

See you tomorrow for how to set up a system for toy organisation.

Related Links

Flylady
Clean Mama

* I am in no way affiliated to these companies. I just find their resources helpful and am passing them along.

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