This is the Way We Clean the House...

In my efforts to minimize and organize, I came across some notes from a BYU Education Week session by Marie Calder Ricks. When I attended her class, I was working full-time and pregnant. Her suggestions for home organization went largely over my head. It was perfect timing for me to find these notes now when I'm home with the girls. The main thing I've incorporated is the idea of having daily tasks and then adding one weekly task. Aside from cleaning the kitchen, making beds and straightening the bathrooms, I now add one item per day. Monday: Vacuum, sweep and mop floors Tuesday: Toilets Wednesday: Windex mirrors, windows and wipe out sinks Thursday: Bathtubs Friday: Laundry day Saturday: A monthly deep cleaning job such as washing the car or mending clothes As you may have guessed, I paired jobs by the day of the week that came closest in alliteration to help me remember. I've been doing this for a few weeks now and am a total believer in this system. The apartment never gets too out of control because it's always a little bit clean! The other day I put on some toddler music for the girls to listen to in the car when I was running errands. The song This is the Way We Clean the House came on and I realized it's really the same principle! Here are some other suggestions Ricks makes:

• If you don't like a particular cleaning job, you should probably be doing it more frequently. Case in point: I really hate cleaning toilets and used to put it off. Now that I do it once a week, it's not such a dreaded task.


• In your marriage, do the job most important to your spouse just before he comes home and he will perceive it is done perpetually. No matter how crazy my day has been, I can manage to make the bed in the master bedroom before he comes home. It's an inviting sight for him which he lets me know he appreciates.


• Ask yourself, "Is this a friend or a freeloader?" If you clean it more than you use it, it's a freeloader. If you know me at all, you know I'm toss-happy. If we aren't going to use it this very second, it's in the trash or donation bin.


• Useful and needed? Keep. Useful but not needed? Give away. Not useful and not needed? Discard. In terms of donating things we aren't using, my sister pointed out there's probably someone out there who really wants and/or needs it. By keeping it, I could be depriving them of it.

Should you be interested in some more of her suggestions, she has a website. Someday I'll be organized enough to do her Master Meal Planning... but not yet :)