How to Keep Your House Clean | Simple Cleaning Routine
When it comes to keeping my house clean, I like to keep it simple AF. I'm a big fan of using habits and triggers to create my cleaning routine because I've found that by doing this, cleaning and tidying don't take up a lot of my brain space and honestly that gives me all the #hustlesanely feels!
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ My daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly cleaning routine
⋒ How you can create a cleaning routine that doesn't feel overwhelming
DAILY:
If you’ve been around Hustle Sanely land long enough then you know that part of Hustle Sanely 5, our daily action steps for living a peacefully productive life, includes tidying for 15 minutes. Now listen, I’m not being dramatic when I tell you that since I’ve incorporated tidying for 15 minutes into my days - it’s changed my life. I used to spend so much time on the weekends cleaning and I always dreaded it because I knew I’d be giving up like 3-4 hours of my weekend to do it.
Now when it comes to cleaning and tidying, I like to operate in smaller day-to-day chunks rather than letting stuff build up and become overwhelming. I think about it as weaving tidying into my day-to-day life so that things don’t get too big and out of control feeling. So you’re going to notice that my daily cleaning routine list is longer than any other one but I really don’t spend more than 30 minutes a day (and that’s on the high side) cleaning.
I just use habit triggers to help me remember to do this stuff as I’m living my life. Here’s what I do daily as a part of my cleaning and tidying routine:
⋒ Tidy for 15 minutes:
I use tidy for 15 as a “transition task” in the mornings. It’s the task I do that transitions me from my morning routine into my workday. So after I do my morning routine, (either after the gym or after I finish reading and journaling, depending on if I have a morning or afternoon workout that day) I pick the room in our house that needs the most TLC: so it could be the guest bathroom, main bathroom, our bedroom, my office, or the living room. I rarely choose the kitchen and you’ll see why when we talk about the rest of my day. I literally set a timer for 15 minutes and either listen to worship music or an audiobook/podcast and just do what I can do until the timer goes off.
I’m so serious when I say you’d be AMAZED at how much you can get done in 15 focused minutes. It’s honestly pretty mindblowing and has shaved hours off of my weekend cleaning routine.
Whichever room I choose, I’ll wipe down all the surfaces (toilets, sinks, counters, desk, etc), pick up anything random laying around and put it away, and Swiffer the floor. Yes, I can get all of this done in 15 minutes for one room because it’s something I do daily so nothing is ever built up.
⋒ Make the bed:
To be fair, we have a rule in our house that the last person who wakes up has to make the bed, and 9 times out of 10, that’s Adam. But if it does happen to be me, I do make the bed as soon as I wake up. A made bed sets the tone for the rest of the day.
⋒ Run the Roomba:
I have a habit trigger to help me remember to do this. At the end of my tidy for 15 minutes, I walk over to where we keep our Roomba and hit the go button with my toe. The Roomba does its thing for like 30 minutes or so then puts itself back on the dock. We love automation. Boom, the whole house is vacuumed and the dog hair is kept at bay.
⋒ Sort the mail:
I do not let mail sit on our kitchen counter or entryway table because I know that if the pile gets too big, I’ll never look at any of it. I sort our mail while I’m walking in from checking the mailbox. I toss the junk, put anything I need to take care of on my desk (and part of my weekly workflow is dealing with any mail in my office so this doesn’t build up over time), and put anything that Adam needs to handle on his desk. This literally takes me less than 2 minutes.
⋒ Office tidy:
I spend the last 5 minutes of my workday just putting everything in my office back in its place that may have been used during my work hours. Doing this is so helpful because when I walk into my office every morning to start work, I am met with an inviting and tidy space which really does foster a productive workday.
⋒ Kitchen tidy:
We tidy the kitchen every day as we use it. It’s just what works best for our family. So the 2 rules of thumb we follow, when you use the kitchen at all, you put any dishes you used in the dishwasher and you wipe down the kitchen counter. Again, this takes maybe 2-3 minutes each time but it’s so nice to always have a clean kitchen space.
⋒ Nightime pick up:
Before I go to our bedroom to do my skincare care routine, I do a quick walk through the house and put anything random from throughout the day back in its place. This usually ends up being Adam’s hats and shoes honestly. And one thing Adam helps with – he usually comes to bed after me so he’ll fluff up the couch and fold the blankets so that when I walk out in the mornings, it’s tidy.
So those are my daily cleaning and tidying habits – like I said, I don’t even have to think about most of these because they’re just built into my day.
WEEKLY:
⋒ Full house clean once a week:
This is what I spend the 60-90 minutes doing in one chunk, usually on the weekends. The thing that used to take me 3-4 hours before introducing tidy for 15 minutes into my days. The tasks I do during this time are:
~ Clean the couch (I lint roll it and spray the cushions with Thieves cleanser and use a paper towel to wipe them)
~ Wipe down all high touchpoint surfaces (counters, tables, etc)
~ Wipe down the showers
~ Vacuum
~ Clean out the fridge (as in go through the food in there and toss anything that is expired)
⋒ Dishwasher routine:
I don’t have specific days that I run the dishwasher. I just run it when it’s full and that usually happens 2-3 times a week in our house.
I will say that I always run it at night before we go to bed, and then when I wake up the next morning before I start my morning routine, I take 5 minutes to put all the dishes away. This is helpful because then we know that the dishes in the dishwasher are always dirty and we never have to leave dirty dishes lingering in the sink, ya know?
⋒ Laundry routine:
Same thing here, I don’t have specific laundry days, I just have a rule of thumb to do laundry when the laundry hamper is about halfway full. I used to wait until it was all the way full but I got overwhelmed with how big loads of laundry were when it was time to fold and put away.
We have 3 laundry hampers in our home: one for whites, one for towels, and one for everything else. I told Adam that separating laundry as we go makes my life a lot easier so he’s on board for helping me out by putting the laundry in the hamper it needs to go in.
I probably do 4-5 loads of laundry a week and that includes clothes, towels, and sheets. What I do to make it a habit and not overwhelming is, when I see that any of the hampers are half full, I set it by our laundry room door as a reminder.
Then in the morning when I wake up, I toss the load into the washer. I transfer it over to the dryer when I eat breakfast (usually like 3-4 hours after I wake up) then I fold the load during my lunch break. I use all of those as triggers to do the laundry without wasting mental space on it.
Trigger: Wake up, see the hamper by the laundry room door, then put the load in the washer.
Trigger: Eat breakfast then put the load in the dryer.
Trigger: Go on lunch break then fold and put away the clothes.
The triggers are things I do without thinking about them. And by following the do the loads when the hampers are the halfway full rule, it never takes me more than 10 minutes to fold and put away a load of laundry.
Now let’s say you work out of the home and can’t follow this exact plan. Maybe you could do something like:
01. Put the load in the washer before bed.
02. Wake up and move the load into the dryer.
03. Fold and put away the load when you get home from work.
⋒ Wash the sheets/throw blankets:
I do this once a week - usually, the day that I do the towels (when the towel hamper is halfway full). Since towels and sheets take hardly any time to fold and put away, I just follow the same process but do it in the evening. So when I put the towels in the dryer before breakfast, I’d put the sheets in the washer. Then at lunch when I’m folding the towels, I’d put the sheets in the dryer. Then when I finish work, I’d put the sheets back on the bed. Easy peasy.
I really like setting up my cleaning routine like this – doing things when they need to be done instead of on specific days because I personally like the flexibility in my routine. I don’t ever feel like I’m behind or chained to a strict schedule and can’t go out and do something because “it’s laundry day” if that makes sense. I make my cleaning routines support my life instead of bending my life around a cleaning routine.
MONTHLY:
So honestly, with my daily and weekly routines in place, there isn’t much that I do on a monthly basis. There is only one thing really:
⋒ Kitchen deep clean:
~ Clean out the pantry
~ Wipe down the inside of the fridge
~ Wipe down the outside of the cabinets
I just tack this onto one of my weekly full houses cleans which is why I said they take me 60-90 minutes to do. When I tack this on, it’s 90ish minutes but otherwise, it’s usually closer to 60.
I don’t have a certain week of the month that I do this – just when I notice that the kitchen needs TLC.
QUARTERLY:
⋒ Full house declutter:
I go through all of our closets and drawers and get rid of stuff (either throw it away or donate it) that we no longer use.
Because I declutter quarterly, it’s never overwhelming. I used to do a yearly declutter and it was INTENSE. It would take me a whole weekend and there would be so much stuff to donate that it was a whole other ordeal to take everything to the donation center.
I’ve found that doing a quarterly declutter is more sustainable for our household. Ever since I’ve started doing a quarterly declutter, I’m so much happier. I appreciate the stuff that we do have more because I can see it and use it (rather than it being hidden by a bunch of junk) and it’s so much easier to keep the house tidy.
⋒ Full house deep clean:
Once a quarter (but on a different month than the full house declutter) I set aside like 2 hours to:
~ Clean the baseboards
~ Scrub the showers
~ Wipe inside of kitchen cabinets
~ Clean the oven
~ Clean washer & dryer
The way I schedule this is I do this in place of one of my monthly full house cleans once a quarter. Because of what I do to maintain our home daily, weekly, and monthly this deep clean isn’t really all that intense.
“I hope you’re seeing a pattern here – the small actions that you take every day really do add up and make your life easier in the long run. ”
And there you have it — my Hustle Sanely cleaning routine! I really hope this was valuable and gave you some ideas to make keeping your home clean less overwhelming. Because that’s what Hustling Sanely is all about…trading overwhelm for living a peacefully productive life.
I love having my cleaning routine weaved into my day-to-day life because I’m never stressed if someone randomly pops in for a visit because the house is always visibly put together. And it’s so nice not having cleaning take up space in my mind rent-free, you feel me?
Oh and because I love ya, I’m giving you a free Hustle Sanely Cleaning Routine Checklist! It’s available in the Free Resources section of my site!
If you enjoyed this blog post, tune into episode 115 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to dive deeper into this topic:
