A House of Order

A long time ago I had a set cleaning schedule and I followed it really well and had a clean house and food on the table.  Then I had kids and it all just flew out the window!  Well, it's been long enough, and a change of heart has led me to this new schedule that I am hoping to keep up.  I know it sounds cheesy to say this, but I've prayed about this so much lately and I really feel like this is something that has come to me through personal revelation, so I'm just really excited about it and ignoring the feelings of embarrasment, I want to share it.

SUNDAY is my "day of rest".  I use quotation marks not to quote scripture, but because that's just what it's called, not really what it is :)  I do however avoid housework on this day simply because I have such a fantastic excuse not to do it, and because I think we all need a break from everyday things.  It's kinda nice.

MONDAY is my LAUNDRY DAY.  From the minute I get out of bed, till the minute Nate comes home (all production stops when my sweetie walks through the door.... I'm not sure why, it just does :)) I will be gathering dirty clothes, sorting them, loading the washer, emptying the dryer, folding and putting clothes away.  I tried this on Monday and it worked pretty well.  I think I did about 9 loads.  This washer and dryer seem to work much more quickly than I'm used to, so it's been really nice to think that I could actually get it all done in one day.... we'll see if it always works that way.  Either way though, I have this HUGE laundry room to keep piles and piles of clothes if not :)  I am trying to sort out the small towels for Noah, big towels for Luke, Brad's clothes, and the girls' clothes for them to fold as their jobs on Mondays. 

TUESDAY is my KITCHEN DAY.  This is the day I will focus mainly on the kitchen.  Doing all the deep cleaning that is necessary.  I guess it will all depend on how much time I can actually devote to the task, how much gets done, but to know that I have a whole day for it.... that seems good.  We will of course do all the regular maintenance things all week long, this is just the deep cleaning day.  In fact each kid has what we call a "mealtime job" that they are responsible for at least once a day.  I am going to change their mealtime jobs monthly.  They are set table, clear table, wipe table town, load dishwasher and empty dishwasher. Tuesday the kids will all have bathroom related jobs.  I was going to have their jobs be in the same area as mine, but I was running out of things to do because I didn't want to do their jobs.  So now I'm alternating them.  I think this might help keep things all around nice too.

WEDNESDAY is my BATHROOM DAY.  Same deal as for Kitchen day except for the bathrooms.  It's nice that we technically have 2 bathrooms, but only really use one.  This makes for easy cleaning.  I look forward to having a cleaner bathroom.  The kids have floor related jobs on Wednesday, the sweeping and vacuuming.

THURSDAY is my FLOORS DAY.  I got this idea from Sherry.  She mentioned that she had a day for sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and that appealed to me.  I'm gonna try it.  This will be a very good thing for my living room I think.  The kids will be doing Kitchen jobs on this day.

FRIDAY is my EVERYTHING ELSE DAY.  This is the day that I will work on my bedroom, finish up any lingering jobs with the laundry, kitchen, bathroom or floors, and focus a lot on the Living and Family rooms.  The kids jobs will also be based around their own bedrooms and the toy room.  Hopefully I can get my kids' rooms to be nice and clean ONCE A WEEK!  It's a stretch, I know, but I'm willing to try.

SATURDAY is my BIG JOB/ORGANIZING DAY.  All the big random stuff, cleaning out the car, organizing a closet or dresser.  This week Kelly and I did the games, it was very productive and I felt accomplished :)  (I'm sure I sound so wierd to those of you who already have a regular routine like this.  I feel silly that it's taken me so long to get around to this.  Living in the basement really made me slack off a LOT in a lot of areas and this was one of them.  It was hard to motivate myself to clean up when there wasn't really a place for everything, and nobody except us was really going to see it anyway.  I was lazy.) 

I'm really excited for this!!!  I'm sure I"ll have to make modifications here and there and there will be days that I am gone and what not, but I'm thinking this will make a huge difference.