who here likes cleaning? oh right. nobody.

Yeah, me neither. Cleaning is the worst. I was raised in a house where cleaning wasn't a very high priority, so I never really learned how to do it the right way. This is a post about a cleaning routine for those of us who were not born and bread to love cleaning.  If that's you, then read on!

I was once featured in my high school year book because of both my messy room and messy locker. OK...This is embarrassing, but this post is about coming clean, so here it is.

Please note the awesome lava lamp, CRT computer monitor, and abundance of dried flowers from boyfriends past. Y2K. Good stuff. Also, I think I basically look the same. I'll call that a victory.  Last note about this image - at least one of the blog followers was featured in this article with me, but I did not include your image to spare you the shame. You know who you are.

Thankfully, I went to college and things got remarkably better. Living with someone else and an influx of new friends and visitors meant that I had a bit more motivation to clean up my act. Nobody would have ever known the pig sty I came out of. Dorm rooms are small, thankfully, so it was pretty easy to keep the place presentable. 

Then I got an apartment with roommates, which increased the square footage of space to clean, but there were more helping hands. But let's face it, the cleanliness bar is set pretty low for college students. 

In 2005 Steven and I got hitched and he moved into my apartment for a few short months, and then we moved into our first together apartment in Dallas. Here's where the rubber met the road. I was working full time, he was in law school full time, and cleaning fell WAY down on the priority list. We would wait until things got pretty bad (or people were coming over) before we would do much about it. There's nothing like the 10 minutes before someone comes over to get you moving. Thankfully Steven split the housework with me down the middle. He's awesome that way.

We pretty much carried on like this until Henry was born in 2011. We were in our first house by then, so even more space to clean.  This was our typical cleaning "routine."

• Daily: clean the pots, pans, and dishes from breakfast and dinner.
• Saturday morning: hate our lives. Spend 4 hours cleaning the house and curse the entire time about how much we hate it and how we would rather be doing fun things together. And at the end, it only looked OK.
• Several times a year: frantically clean the house because my in laws were coming. My mother in law is out of this world and one of my best friends, and possibly the only person I know who truly doesn't mind cleaning. Her house always looks amazing, so I want mine to at least look presentable when she gets here. 

Fast forward to present day. I now have two kiddos, and I'm staying at home. Praise The Lord, I actually have some time to clean the house outside of Saturday morning. I've implemented a cleaning routine, which makes life so much easier. 

Disclaimer- I tried to implement a cleaning routine last year. It lasted one week and then epically failed. For the life of me, I just couldn't bring myself to scrub a toilet after a 9-10 hour work day, cooking dinner, bathing a child, putting him to bed, while being 8 months pregnant. Hats of to the ladies and gents out there who work 40+ hours outside of the home and have a clean house. You should write a blog post about how the heck you do that. 

So here's my cleaning routine.  There are things I do every single day, and then a special activity for each day of the week. 

Daily: 

• Make beds
• Do a load of laundry, start to finish, and out it away 
• Clean kitchen counters and put away dishes
• Sweep under the high chair
• Wipe down dining table and high chair
• Pick up main living areas

Weekly:

• Monday- bathrooms
• Tuesday- dust
• Wednesday- vacuum
• Thursday- mop
• Friday- grocery shop (yes, this is not a cleaning activity, but the way I do it with coupons and meal planning, it sucks up a day)
• Saturday- vacuum main living areas. Wash sheets. 
• Sunday- rest

With 4 of us in the house now, I'm a convert from "laundry day" to "laundry daily."  I really dislike folding and putting away clothes. If I have a giant mound of laundry, I'll just let it sit. And sit. And then eventually you can't remember which pile is clean and which is dirty, so I would end up washing the whole dad gum pile again. Small batches that can be folded and put away in 20 minutes makes me much more likely to do it. For more laundry tips, check out one of my previous posts.

Things I like about this system:

• If I find a spare 15-30 minutes, I know exactly what to work on. I don't waste 5 of those minutes figuring out what to clean, or cleaning something that is less urgent, or, let's be honest, doing nothing. 
• My house looks fairly presentable at all times. If someone drops by, I don't have to stress about when the last time the bathroom was cleaned. I know that everything looks pretty good. 
• I get a DAY OFF from major cleaning. I don't feel like I have to clean on Sunday and can relax and enjoy my family. When you're a stay at home momma, there is a sense of guilt that you should always be doing more or the house could always look better. This helps me ease that nagging feeling. 

Downside:

• Your whole house isn't ever really spotless at the same time.  If you're a total neat freak, this system is not for you.  But you also probably aren't reading my advice on cleaning. If you've made it to this point, then you're more like me. And that's why we are friends.  And I think you're pretty. 

I have not taken this to the full Type A Planner level of adding monthly tasks into the mix. I know, for instance, that I should clean my microwave, clean my oven, dust my baseboards, oil my cutting board, etc. once a month. But for the life of me I can't bring myself to schedule it out. It's just too rigid for me and I know I would burn out. So I just do those things as they need to be done and I have the time.  I'll add them to my weekly goals (another post for another day) and tackle them when I can. 

So that's my cleaning routine. Do any of you have a system that you like?  If so, please share!