Where to start when you regularly want to have a clean house? I share three simple ways to keep your house clean, especially with toddlers underfoot.
Cultivating a heart for homemaking has not always come naturally to me. In fact, I sometimes wonder why homemaking matters so much.
When I first got married, my grandmother gave me six tried and true homemaking tips. I’ve since added a few more to the list of homemaking tips that work for me.
3 Simple Ways to Keep Your House Clean
1. Develop a Simple Schedule & Routine.
Developing a simple schedule and routine helps me to simplify in order to provide more peace in my home.
I’ve carved out time in my day after our family devotions for daily chores.
My daily chores consist of the essentials to living (like food and clothes) along with a light cleaning task each day. I’m resolved to the philosophy of clean enough while I’m growing babies and raising toddlers.
Amen?
My Daily Chores:
- Clean up kitchen – Includes washing breakfast dishes, clearing/wiping counters, wiping dining room table, and sweeping floors. Basically, I get my kitchen and living space (it’s all one big open space) back to “start position.”
- Dinner prep (i.e., lay out meat to thaw, put a meal in the crockpot)
- Laundry – I manage about one load of laundry a day. This includes wash, dry, fold, and put away.
- Tidy bedrooms – Includes making beds, clearing floors or dirty clothes, shutting closet doors (does open closet doors drive anyone else crazy?) and tidying master bathroom.
- One light cleaning task (optional)– I don’t have a cleaning schedule (you can read more about that here). I tried and failed miserably at sticking to it. I also don’t clean my house from top to bottom every single week. I clean when I notice something needs cleaned, or I clean something when I know it’s been a while (bathrooms anyone?). So each day I try to choose one task to complete once I’ve taken care of the above list. It can be as large as cleaning all the bathrooms or as small as cleaning out from under the dish drainer (why do clean dishes make such a mess?). Basically, I just clean something!
Other than a complete load of laundry, which takes all day, all of these tasks are completed by 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning. This means I spend about 45 minutes to 1.5 hours on daily chores each day. If I weren’t wiping up spilled milk, running to the potty with a toddler, checking Facebook, or texting with my mother-in-love, I’d probably manage a lot more quickly. Just keeping it real. The point is developing a simple schedule and routine helps me to keep my house clean, and these are the chores I do each day in a time frame that works for my family.
Update: See our new family routine now that my husband works from home.
2. Enforce a family pick up time.
The Bible says I’m a manager of my home. That doesn’t mean I’m the doer of all things.
Good managers know how to delegate.
Each night before we head into my son’s bedtime routine, we have family pick up time. We make sure the kitchen is back to start again, floors swept, toys put away, and pillows are back on the couch in their proper places.
As a family, we get the house “back to ready” so when we get our son to bed, my husband and I can sit down to relax, have office hours, or enjoy an in-home date night.
Now before you go cracking the whip, demanding your husband get on the band wagon, talk to him first away from the children.
My husband and I talked at length about enforcing a family pick up time. It wasn’t something I told him to do. It was an idea I had, and he was on board. It works for my family. This might not work for yours. But for us, enforcing a family pick up time, which takes all of ten minutes when everyone pitches in, helps me keep the house clean.
3. Make your bed every day.
I know how old fashioned I sound right now. I also know I have friends who say this does not motivate them. But I don’t see how it doesn’t.
The bed is most likely 75% of each bedroom in the house. Just by making the bed you’ve cleaned three quarters of the room. I’m not all that great at math, but that seems like pretty good statistics to me. I don’t know any other room in the house that can get a polished look so quickly.
Not to mention, a crumpled bed just doesn’t scream “romance,” if you know what I mean. Maybe it’s just me…but I need all the help I can get in there sometimes. Did I mention the baby growing thing and raising a toddler? Help yourself out, lady – make the bed. 😉
Making the bed every day helps me to get motivated to complete the rest of my chores. When I just don’t feel like doing dishes, or another load of laundry, sometimes I will start by just making the bed. Usually that’s all it takes for me to just get into the groove and knock out the remaining daily chores.
Now your turn! How do you keep your house clean?
For more inspiration for keeping your house clean, go to Spring Cleaning Prayers for Your Home and get your FREE printable prayer cards.
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I knew I liked you! 🙂 I’m not perfect at it, but I’m also not perfect at keeping my house clean. I’ve learned if I make my bed, then I’m most likely keeping up with other “mundane” chores around the house, which keeps my house clean. If I don’t make my bed, it’s reflective around my home. My bed is essentially my heart on display. haha! By the way, I made the bed today. Go me!
Wonderful post that clearly shares some realistic goals and strategies that will work if done consistently. We are all not perfect, but when we use what we’ve been given and put a plan into action, it can work. Simple is good – a plain schedule is really good. I probably need to be better at creating a schedule like you, especially with a husband who travels out of town. Thanks for the graphic, that was helpful!
One of the reasons I created this was because I have a husband that travels a lot. So I’ve had to find ways to stay on top of house work while still having the energy for my toddler and other tasks! It has helped so much in that area for sure. I don’t get as far behind and each day is manageable even if I’m by myself.
Great post! I like our family clean up time to be before 5 when my husband comes home from work. I think he deserves to come to a tidy house. I also like to follow a cleaning schedule. Monday is bathrooms & glass, Tues – vacuum, Wed – dust, etc. It is always good to read what works for others. As a family of 7, I am always looking to improve things around the house.
We tried the clean up before Daddy gets home, but … that was me cleaning behind a toddler and it was undone before Daddy got home. When I talked to him about it, he said, “I could care less if I come home to a clean house. I want a happy wife and a thriving toddler.” Well okay then. When my children are older, it’s my goal to change family clean up to before Daddy gets home! I love hearing that it works for others! Thanks for sharing!
I like the simplicity approach. I do similar things to keep my house clean and in order. And I agree that making my bed is a necessity. It does make our bedroom look more than halfway done. :o) I tweeted your post to encourage others. Have a blessed week.
Great! Thanks for sharing the post on Twitter. And I’m glad to know I have other bed makers in my midst. 😉
Love this! I have a seriously hard time keeping to a cleaning schedule and this sounds perfect!
It has consistently worked for me. There are seasons when even these simple tasks are overlooked, but then I just take a week to catch up when energy returns and start all over again. Hope you find something to work for you!
We have found that having assigned chores for each one really helps keep things running smoothly. We also have each of the children do their own laundry~that has really been a great way to keep laundry caught up and teaches all of the children a valuable life skill.
Great ideas
Lori, I look forward to assigned chores – you know the ones that don’t require constant vigilance on mama’s part? Right now I just bring my toddler alongside me in my chores. This could also be why it takes me so long to get them done. 😉 Anyway, I like the laundry idea. Storing that one for later!
If our bed gets made, it’s because my husband made it, lol. Or because the house is for sale and anybody could come for a showing at any time. It’s not real high on my priority list. The kitchen, on the other hand…
You were the friend I had in mind! LOL
I love this post! I love anything helping me be more effective in my home. Thank you!
I am visiting from The Homemaking Party Blog Hop! I look forward to your visit at http://www.homemaker-mom.com/the-homemakers-journey-blog.html
Happy Homemaking!
I really need to do implement a famiily pickup time. The kiddos do dishes and take out trash, but more needs to be done on a regular basis, especially with a little one crawling around.
It has truly been so helpful for our family! I highly recommend it. 🙂
I made my way over here via Fellowship Fridays and I’m so glad that I did! I am finally getting back on top of housework after a very rough few years where everything happened at once. My Mom got sick and moved across the country to live with us (bringing a 26-foot truck worth of stuff to our 1300 sq ft house!!) so that I could take care of her, then I got pregnant and had a baby and three days later my Mom died. I had a year to recover from that and then turned up pregnant and was very sick for my entire pregnancy, then hemorrhaged severely at birth and had a baby in the NICU for four days. Due to blood loss, I couldn’t even walk across the room or lift my other children, let alone clean the house. Now that the youngest is 10-months old I’m back on the chore bandwagon. This past week, I cleared out the clutter and scrubbed away the filth from the past few years. My house hasn’t looked this awesome since early 2010! I am now at that point of being absolutely terrified that things are going to go back to the way that they were and looking for tools to help me simplify my cleaning routine. I adore the idea of a family pick-up time. I think my fam would really go for that and it would help me immensely.
Praise The Lord for cleared away clutter and grit! I know that feels so much better. We love family clean up time. It helps a lot. Praying you can find your rhythm again!
I love that you have a family pick up time. We had one too, when the kids were little. Every night at 7 p.m. we all (daddy included) ran around and picked up and put away. Since we had three toy pick up times a day (before lunch, before dinner, before bed) this 7 p.m. time was actually their toy pick up time and putting away anything else they left out. It just made everything easier to go to bed with everything picked up and have a fresh start in the morning. It still does!
Thanks so much for linking up to Making Your Home Sing Monday! By the way, the new linky party is live and ready for your posts! 🙂
Family pick up time is one that is needed in my home. To fold clothes immediately is a tough one for me but I have to get into it. And I’ll be needing a proper schedule soon,one that I follow.
I’m with you on making the bed everyday, it makes me feel so much more productive too! I also keep a simple schedule/routine in place so that I can accomplish a little bit of house cleaning, yet still have intentional time with my kids too!
So glad I’m not alone on the bed making 🙂
Thankfully I have 2 older children who can do dishes, empty cat litter boxes, take out trash, care for rabbits and vacuum! I make breakfast, do the laundry (usually have at least 2 loads, I manage to put away the first load and the last sits in dryer until the next day), help my 2nd grader with his school work (if I’m not sitting right next to him he gets nothing done), sweep kitchen, try to do something fun/educational with my 2.5yr daughter (paint, color, alphabet magnets, speech), make supper, put away left over and whatever else needs to be done for the day. It seems like I live in the movie groundhog day (same day over and over), only exception is on the weekends (still have most of the same chores but no school work and church on Sunday). I will have a cleaner house when my children are grown and living on their own! 😉