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Posts tagged ‘house cleaning’

Mar 2

Week Seven and Eight: Ingraining New Habits

If you are living alone, or have no help from others in the household, only you can keep up routine cleaning and attend to the deep cleaning tasks. Stay professional by doing tasks with an analytical spirit. Look for ways to streamline. Experiment with a different way of doing the jobs. Pinpoint the interruptions or events that  delay or set you off track.

If you still have organizational problems in certain rooms, now is the time to make them disappear and go away for good. If you conquered them earlier, fine, but if not, make an appointment with yourself to handle them. Get the storage equipment, bags, or shelving needed to corral (if not eliminate) the problem.

I have one question: What is harder than doing all this work yourself–even after designing such great routines?

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Feb 19

Perpetual Calendar and Time Trial Sheets

Today you get your first look at the highly efficient perpetual cleaning calendar. If it only did the actual cleaning it would be perfect!

Do you know why I like charts? Even before it was so easy to make simple computerized forms, designing a chart or writing an article ratcheted up the professional level of a home project. My charts are embarrassingly simple, functional, not made to win design contests, but to get things done efficiently in a home that could always use just a little more time. Some of you amazing design whizzes out there can surely make them fancier. . .just send me a copy when you do. I appreciate good artwork.

Here is the  Perpetual Cleaning Chart.

Remember some simple codes will help you as you insert your own cleaning tasks. I’ll list mine after the break.

For a bonus, since the sun is shining and the snow is melting and a visit to one of my two favorite sisters is only a week away:

Here is a blank  Time Tracking Activity Chart  sheet. Print one of these and carry it around timing everything in sight for several weeks; time things more than once: four, five, six times or even more. Time your Bible study, dish washing, taking showers, getting to work, grocery shopping, team meetings, bed making, resolving childish arguments (the children’s arguments, mind you–not the adults having a childish argument). I guarantee you, you will be amazed at how little time some things take that you always put off doing because you don’t have time. Have fun! Read more

Feb 16

More Odd Looking Calendar Strategies

Joshua remembers the progressive dinner as “a lot of work,” especially for a middle school age young man. But to have him have time to throw a dinner party, he had to have time to learn to cook, and to have time to learn to cook, he needed a mentor who had time to teach, and to have a mentor who had time to teach, the mentor needed time to prepare, and for the mentor to have time to prepare, routine life had to be under control, and for routine life to be under control, attention and time had to be given to planning, and to have time to give attention and time to planning, Executive Oversight meetings had to be a settled issue. Accrued Benefits. Now are you ready to finish the list of thinking strategies before scheduling the deep cleaning tasks onto a perpetual cleaning calendar? You see there is a House-that-Jack-Built connection between all this cleaning detail and the world of family frolic and fun. Read more

Feb 12

An Odd Looking Calendar

When does a yearly calendar not look like a yearly calendar? When it only has twenty-four days in a month.

My perpetual cleaning calendar has only twenty-four planned opportunities each month to handle all the deep cleaning projects on the room cleaning chart lists. This schedule automatically eliminates all Sundays from cleaning (hooray!) and builds in four to seven additional “free” days for catch-up, sick days, book reading marathons, vacations, cooking sprees, puzzle building, or whatever else life brings.

Unlike the typical twelve page calendar, this calendar is only one sheet, a true year at-a-glance, to show which deep cleaning appointment you have scheduled for each day. Now all of that should make the task seem manageable, shouldn’t it? Read more

Jan 25

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Routine Goals

The preschool hour, cooking lessons, family devotions, home educating, personal devotions, quiet reading, puzzle building, game playing, responsibility training: when do all these things happen in a frazzled household?

All of those vital elements–priorities, if you will–of family life were precisely why an eye-rolling cleaning routine was necessary in my household. Housekeeping responsibilities can be contained and streamlined with planning, and if the household is going to be busy, then wherever streamlining works, it preserves time for activities requiring dedicated time.

A coordinated group routine for cleaning the kitchen following supper opens time for family devotions. Designed limits on daily cleaning clear the way for a preschool hour each morning. The accrued benefits of timed cleaning, planned menus and scheduled nap time give, not a few free minutes, but free afternoon hours for someone (maybe you?) to rest, to read, to pray, to think about behavior issues “scientifically,” to stare into space, if need be. (Don’t laugh; staring into space, if not a worrisome sign of a seizure, is a profitable daydreaming sign of the brain working beyond conscious constraints to creatively address dilemmas. Given good healthy brain food like Bible verses, pure motives, biblical priorities, and a willingness to think expansively, the brain can produce some amazing solutions.) Read more

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