How to Establish a Weekly Cleaning Routine

A weekly cleaning routine can keep our homes looking clean almost all the time. An effective cleaning routine can help us be more relaxed while we live, work, do school, and play in our homes.

I love to clean my house on Friday mornings because it means that I can enter the weekend with a picked up home.  I feel as if I’m spending the weekend in my own resort.

How My Routine Got Derailed

I have had an interesting year, with a breast cancer diagnosis and now with the pandemic. My cleaning routines have been out of whack for a while. Let’s just say I wasn’t worried about vacuuming the house when I was in cancer treatment. Plus, I was too fatigued to do the housework regularly.

Thankfully, I have a great team at home who stepped up and took over the cleaning tasks. My sons would clean the house for me as an extra job and they enjoyed having the extra money.

With school starting up again, my sons have been busy doing their lessons, studying for tests, working, and applying to college. I began to notice that the weekly house cleaning wasn’t getting done. 

We also have not been able to host any guests for bible studies or dinners because of the pandemic. In the past, when we were expecting guests, we would all work together to get the house cleaned up. But now, we don’t have that external motivation to get the weekly housecleaning done.

The weekly housecleaning was turning into a less regular event. I was keeping up with the laundry and the dishes, and the house was picked up, but the floors weren’t getting swept or vacuumed as much as I liked. 

That’s the thing about homemaking. Our lives are constantly changing, and our routines need to flex with them. Cleaning the house while I was in cancer treatment was too tiring. So, I took a break from that work and asked for help.  

I’m feeling stronger and more energetic than I have all year.  It’s time for me to take back the Friday house cleaning routine.  

Make a Plan for Success

1. Pick the Right Day For You

The first step to making a weekly cleaning routine work is to pick the right day for you

When I was working, I did my house cleaning on Saturday mornings. I started this routine when I got my first apartment after college. For the first time, I was living by myself, and I had total control over how clean or dirty my apartment was. 

 It was therapeutic for me to put my apartment back together on Saturday morning after a week of teaching. 

Once I got married, I continued that pattern of cleaning until I stopped working and had my first son. It was time again to adjust my expectations. I had more freedom to clean on whatever day I wanted or to spread it out over the course of the week.

I tried both methods, and I discovered that I loved Friday morning cleaning. There was something that appealed to me about starting the weekend with a clean home.

When do you like to clean? Or, maybe, the better question is, when is the best time for you to get the cleaning done?

You may not enjoy the actual cleaning, but if you think about your week, what days and times work for you?

When we pick the right day to clean our homes, we can work with our family schedules so that the cleaning fits into our routine, rather than working against it.

2. Energy Patterns and Cleaning

Cleaning is a physical task. We are moving our bodies, pushing heavy things, and using our muscles as we clean our home. 

We can’t be effective at cleaning if we try to do it when we are tired. If we try to clean at a time of the day when we are low in energy, it will be much harder to do the job.

I have more energy to do physical tasks in the morning. I will do my exercising in the morning, the gardening, the laundry, and the dishes before lunch.  

After lunch, I have a natural energy dip. I drink my second cup of coffee and take  a midday break to relax. But, I still don’t have as much physical energy as I did in the morning,

Scheduling the cleaning for the afternoon or the evening would be a really bad choice for me because I don’t have the physical energy to clean then.

If I put cleaning on my morning task list, I’ll have the energy to get it done. Plus I can reward myself for a job well done with a lovely cup of coffee on my couch in my clean family room. 

As you think about the house cleaning, I’d like you to think about when you have enough energy to do the job. If you’re struggling with physical energy and stamina, perhaps you need to schedule small bursts of cleaning followed but break times.

We need to find ways to work with our physical energy level. If you don’t have the physical energy to clean the home all at once, that’s ok.You can ask for help, hire a house cleaner, or even lower your standards for a while.

There are times in our lives when physical energy is in short supply. Exhausting ourselves so that the floors are perfectly clean isn’t going to help us take care of ourselves in the long term.

3. Have a Good Weekly Cleaning List

We need to have a good weekly cleaning list that works for our home, our energy level, and our time. Your weekly cleaning shouldn’t take all day. It may take an hour or two, but if you are spending five or six hours cleaning, then you have too much on your list.

There is a big difference between daily routines, weekly cleaning, and detailed cleaning. If your weekly cleaning is taking over two hours, then you are likely putting too much detailed cleaning on your list, or you aren’t picking up as a part of your daily routine.

I first learned about a weekly cleaning routine on flylady.net. She calls it her weekly home blessing hour. If you haven’t read about her philosophy of homemaking, I would highly recommend her website and books. I first discovered her after the birth of my son, and I love her methods.

I have taken her idea of weekly cleaning and modified it for my home over the years. Here is what I do every week:

• Dust the flat surfaces: End tables, coffee tables, dressers
• Clean the bathroom mirrors and the glass coffee tables with glass cleaner
• Change the towels and sheets
• Empty all the bathroom and office trash cans
• Spray and clean the bathroom counters and toilets in the main bathrooms (not the showers…. Those I can’t do every week)
• Sweep, mop, or vacuum the floors- but don’t move all the furniture around
• Give the kitchen counters and cooktop a good cleaning

I will take each of these items one at a time and move through the home pretty quickly. If I keep up on the tasks, the dust and dirt don’t build up that much from week to week, so it isn’t an overwhelming job.

You might find that you need to break up this list if your home is large. You could focus on the downstairs on one day and then the upstairs on another day. 

I like to leave the vacuuming until last because it is the most physical task on the list. We have lots of carpet upstairs and it takes time to get it done. Also, if you do the floors last, you’ll pick up all the dust you created with the rest of the cleaning.

We don’t have tile floors, so I don’t mop regularly. When we had tile in our old home, I would try to damp mop the floors as a part of my weekly cleaning. I do spray and wipe the bathroom floors regularly, but those rooms are so small, I don’t need to use a mop. Depending on your flooring, you might want to add damp mopping to your list of weekly cleaning.

It usually takes me about an hour and a half or two hours to get through the list in our current home. When we lived in a smaller home, it took less time to do the cleaning.  

 Sometimes I get distracted with the kids and I need to stop and help them with something. Or, I may need to take a break in the middle to rest.

Do you have a weekly cleaning routine that you like to work through for your home? If not, I would encourage you to create one that will help you keep the surfaces of your home clean.

You’ll note that there are a lot of things that didn’t make this list. That is because those items do not belong on your weekly cleaning list. Those tasks are detailed cleaning or organizing jobs that don’t need to be done every single week.

4. Enjoy Your Clean Home

The most important step in your weekly house cleaning process is to take some time and enjoy your clean home. You put the time and effort into cleaning it. Take a few moments and look around. Enjoy the vacuumed floors and  the clean bathrooms.

Once you’re done with your weekly cleaning time, take some time to do something nice for yourself. I usually treat myself to a nice relaxing reading session on the couch with a lovely cup of coffee.  Pick out something fun to reward yourself for completing your weekly cleaning routine.

Weekly cleaning keeps our homes presentable so that we can enjoy living in our space. We may need to adjust our routines as our lives change. I would love to know more about your weekly cleaning routines.

What does your weekly cleaning look like?