Organization Challenge: Cleaning Chart

Over the past year I've been making an effort to organize our home a bit more.  In general, it's fairly organized, but there are those areas that need upkeep, ones that were overlooked, or areas that just some adjustments due to our changing needs.  Instead of waiting for the perfect time to present itself for me to organize a closet or drawer, I realized I needed to just do it.  One day when I opened the junk drawer I spent a few minutes tidying it up and moved out anything we didn't need.  Our "junk drawer" looks great now, and although it's full of mis-matched things, I can find exactly what I'm looking for quickly.  It's made my life easier and it makes me happy when I reach in and see how organized everything is.  Over the next few weeks (maybe months), I'll be sharing with you the areas I've recently tackled, challenging you to spend a little time organizing those troubling areas in your home, and sharing some tips.

To start out my new cleaning challenge, I decided to make a cleaning chart with daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks.  Mr. C has been telling me for years that while I can just look around and know what needs to be done, it’s not so easy for him (apparently it’s a guy thing?) so the chart was partially aimed at addressing this.  We have busy lives and I don’t always remember when I last cleaned something so the list ideally was also supposed to save time by reminding us what needed to be done and what things are priorities.

We sat down together and came up with a list of things that need to be addressed, either things that we just do so often, or things we should be doing on a more regular schedule.  I didn’t include things like laundry, linens, or trash because those things are already done very regularly and aren’t really an issue.

As I’ve begun using the list I’ve found some things that need to be adjusted, but I’m really enjoying having a list to work off of and being able to check off a box when I’ve completed a task is the best feeling!  Obviously everyone’s list will be a little different; you just have to figure out what works for you. If you're interested in a copy of my list, you can download it online here.