Week Four: Using the Cleaning Calendar

In a twist of your sub-conscious mind, as you have been sitting there plugging in tasks, you have been alert to the actual days of this current year. You may have plugged into April 6:  Q: B1: wash win1 (Quarterly task in bedroom 1, washing window 1 in the room) into a slot that just happens to be a Saturday, because you always do jobs like that on a Saturday.

But it won’t always be  Saturday, will it? Next year, April 6 will be Sunday, and who washes windows on a Sunday? Or even worse, if it is leap year, it could be a Monday–or is it a Friday? What possible good can such a calendar be, and after you’ve wasted ALL THIS TIME MAKING ALL THESE LISTS!!

Using a Perpetual Cleaning Calendar

Take a deep breath. It’s true. Those numbered slots on the calendar do represent dates on the calendar and it’s also true they won’t match the days of the week year after year. This is the genius of having completely unscheduled days available each month. Think of this calendar as a permanent reference for what tasks need to happen each month, week, or day to attend your home stewardship. Each year, you will personalize each week and month to suit the actual life events of the time.

• During one of your “preview the new month before it comes” EO times, put the cleaning calendar next to your planning and/or family calendar and compare. Accommodate conflicts between the two. Say, you will be gone overnight to a conference on the 10th, and the 10 slot on the calendar is the time set for semi-annual dusting of cobwebs from the basement. Clearly, you are not going to miss a conference to clean cobwebs, but clean cup cleaning means not letting the conference make you forget about the cobwebs, either. For this year, you decide to move that exciting task into a free day. Occasionally, monthly tasks can be skipped until the next month, so if a monthly task comes just before or just after that conference trip, you might make an executive decision to forego the monthly task and insert the cobweb removal task instead. Do you feel the power over your own destiny surging just a twinge?
• Arrange another slot for whatever task lands on a Sunday.
• Handle each group of five tasks as a weekly package. Adjust the tasks as needed within your week. Shift the task for the 2nd to the 1st if the 2nd is Sunday, for example. Or add it to another day and do two fifteen minute tasks in one day.
• If your favorite way to deep clean is one bigger block of time once a week, think through how to combine what’s on the docket so you can attack the tasks in a prepared fashion when your designated cleaning day arrives.
• Record on your family/planning calendar the dates you plan to handle major projects (carpet cleaning, going through old papers, reorganizing the linen closet or the workbench). These major projects should have two dates on the perpetual calendar: the actual do it date and the back planned preparation for doing it date. Getting both these dates onto the family/planning calendar, helps you during your weekly oversight times to minimize conflicts by planning simple meals, clearing other appointments, enlisting family help, and arranging for any necessary purchases in a timely fashion.
• Review the tasks you have done in the last week (or month) from the perpetual cleaning calendar and do a quick evaluation: Were you ready to handle the task when the day arrived? Should it have gotten attention earlier than it did? Did you do something “out of turn” because it made sense to do so this year?  (such as nothing in the deep freeze prompted defrosting it, or a broken water heater prompted cleaning the basement) Did it take too long? Pencil in changes and notes to yourself.
• Do schedule at least one EO time each year to review the whole calendar, make permanent changes from your penciled notes, delete out of date tasks, and incorporate new ones (a new deck off the back adds some cleaning tasks to your life and turning an office into a bedroom or vice versa changes the tasks for the room).
• Begin completing the tasks once they are scheduled and the week to handle them arrives.