DAILY CLEANING ROUTINE

Here are five cleaning tasks you must include in your daily cleaning routine. This is the start of my series about 35 cleaning tasks you must do around your home throughout the year.

For your free weekly cleaning schedule chart which includes all 35 cleaning tasks made doable on a weekly basis, click here!

Daily Cleaning Routine Task #1

Make Your Bed

To start the day with your best foot forward, make your bed! This goes for everyone in your household. Each person, who is able, should make their own bed. This sets the tone for the rest of the day. Each of you will have accomplished one task early in the morning. That feeling of accomplishment is priceless! And, with your beds made, you will each easily notice anything else that may be out of place and be motivated to do a quick tidy up of the rest of the room. These feelings of accomplishment and motivation will continue throughout the day making you that much more productive. Bonus: by the end of your very productive day, you will be able to relax as you enter into your beautifully made bed.

Daily Cleaning Routine Task #2

Put Away the Clean Dishes

An empty sink and/or dishwasher sets you up for clean-kitchen-success for the rest of the day. Instead of having dirty dishes pile up in the sink and overflow onto the counter, they can go directly into the sink or dishwasher. This simple task of quickly putting the clean dishes away, especially before everyone else makes their way to the kitchen in the morning, makes a huge difference. I like to put the dishes away while my coffee or tea is brewing. By the time my cup is ready, my kitchen is ready to work the rest of the day.

Daily Cleaning Routine Task #3

Do a Load of Laundry

Stop right there. If you think this will not work for you, I challenge you to try it for one week. Let’s think about this for a second. What laundry task takes the longest for you, physically? Is it washing, drying, folding? For most of us, the washing machine does the washing for us. And, the dryer does the drying for us (or the air if you use a drying rack like me). But the folding is all up to us. If you feel like it takes FOREVER to fold multiple loads of laundry at once, try to do a load per day. For example, you can wash each load as indicated below on each day:

• Monday: white laundry
• Tuesday: bright or light laundry
• Wednesday: dark laundry
• Thursday: delicate laundry
• Friday: towels
• Saturday: bedding

You can try this routine:

• Put a load in the washer before work.
• Put that load in the dryer after work.
• Fold the laundry after dinner.

I share all about how to set up your laundry area for your busy schedule here. If you tried this daily laundry routine and it didn’t work for you, don’t fret. In my next post, I share six weekly cleaning tasks including laundry if you are not able to get to a load per day.

Daily Cleaning Routine Task #4

Wash the Dishes & Clean the Kitchen Counters

For pretty much every household, the kitchen is the heart of the home. When it isn’t functioning smoothly, your whole house can feel frazzled. If you have a dishwasher, it’s a good thing you cleared it out this morning. Two good household rules for dishes are:

• that no dirty dish touches the bottom of the sink. They must go directly into the dishwasher.
• all handwash-only dishes are either (1) washed immediately by the user or (2) one person, all at once, throughout the day after each meal or (3) once person, all at once, at the end of the day after dinner.

I try to wash as many dishes as I can while cooking. If you have a gas stove with burner pans, like me, I wash those along with the dishes whenever I have a spill or splatter. I also clean the microwave plate insert whenever there is a spill. Then, I spray down the inside of the microwave down with all-purpose cleaner and continue washing the dishes. After the dishes are washed, I scrub the sink, and give the microwave, stove and counters a quick wipe down. I have my degreaser recipe and all-purpose cleaner recipe, along with the rest of my homemade cleaning product recipes, in downloadable form in my freebie library here.

Daily Cleaning Routine Task #5

Sweep & Mop the Kitchen

Cleaning your kitchen floor thoroughly every night keeps the rest of your floors, especially your carpets, from getting dirty. This works along with good floor mats inside and outside your front door (and the rest of your entrances) and having a shoe-free home. The biggest culprit, however, can be the grease and spills that can spread from your kitchen floors when not cleaned regularly. These spills can lead to irreversible build-up and stains on your carpets and rugs.

My favorite way to clean my kitchen floor every night is to, first, sweep. Then, I simply use a scrub mop, hot water, and a drop of dish soap. I share all about my favorite cleaning tools in my ultimate cleaning closet here. If you have floor surfaces that require special care, be sure to follow your manufacturer’s instructions.

An important note:

I don’t believe in using disposable floor cleaning pads. One, they aren’t environmentally-friendly. Two, they typically are full of chemicals that are not good for your health. And, three, they don’t even work well on all floors. Here is an example of Swiffer wet pads being used on porous tile. Notice the difference between the tiles on the left and right? The tiles on the right have been cleaned exclusively with Swiffer wet pads for several months. The tiles on the left have been scrubbed with hot water and dish soap and an iron handle scrub brush. Over time, the “cleaning” pads leave behind a sticky chemical residue. This attracts dirt which sticks to it. The only way to get rid of this chemical residue and dirt build-up is to get on your hands and knees and use lots of hot water, a little dish soap, and an iron handle brush. After lots of scrubbing and rinsing, you might be able to save your floors. Thereafter, I suggest simply cleaning with hot water and a tiny bit of dish soap to keep your floors clean.

I share what else I do to keep the floors clean on a weekly basis in my next post. I also share all 35 cleaning tasks in a video here.

An essential habit:

One “cleaning” task that may seem like it has been left out of your daily cleaning schedule here is tidying up. One rule you can implement in your home is to never leave a room empty-handed. Everyone gets in the habit of looking around a room before they leave it, and putting away anything that is out of place. Then, each of you simply grabs anything that doesn’t belong in that room and brings it to where it belongs. That way, everyone is in the habit of keeping clutter at bay making your home so much easier to keep clean and organized.

All my homemade cleaning product recipes can be found here and my favorite cleaning tools here.

I share all 35 cleaning tasks in a video here.

Be sure to grab your free weekly cleaning schedule chart which includes all 35 cleaning tasks made doable on a weekly basis here!

Happy Cleaning!