Housework 101

It's taken a lot of years to get a system that I have been happy with when it comes to the cleaning of our home. We used to do all our cleaning on Saturdays, but as the kids got older we found we would rather do family stuff on Saturdays, instead of clean all day. We also like to use Saturdays to prepare food for Sunday guests.

So here is a peak at the way things run right now.

I made up job cards for every room of the house.

Some rooms like the entrance and mud room, toy room and games closet are combined.

There is a check list for every room and also some monthly jobs.

So every day each girl (or team if they team up with a boy) cleans the designated room for that day and does one monthly job.

We do the monthly jobs instead of spring or fall cleaning. I found that I never 'got around to' a good thorough cleaning, so breaking it up into monthly jobs works better as long as they actually get done :)

Monday: Girls Bedroom Kitchen Chores Dining Room Tuesday: Downstairs Bathroom Upstairs Freezer Room Car/Van/Truck Wednesday- Laundry Room Playroom Babyroom Thursday- Living Room Playroom Babyroom Friday- Office Upstairs Bathroom Wash Floor Here is what the job cards look like. I made four on a page, printed them, cut them into cards and then laminated them so the jobs could be checked off with marker. Now that the girls are older they pretty much have the regular jobs memorized so they don't check off. For the monthly jobs we used to mark with stickers each job they have done, but now they write it all in a book.

So that's our method. What are some things that have worked for you in your house cleaning? If you'd like to share them, we'd love to hear :)

p.s. If anyone is interested in a copy of our job cards file, let me know what program you have (works, microsoft etc.) and I can email them to you.