How many times have you scoured the internet, browsed Pinterest, or binged YouTube, looking for the next best tip or secret for a clean home? You want a clean home, fast, but no tips seem to work and no routines seem to stick. Oh, yeah, I’ve been there, done that.
Have you spent as much working any of those home cleaning tips as researching them?
Ouch. I know. But the truth is that any routine for a clean home will work if you do.
However, there’s a huge temptation we absolutely must resist. It is a plague for those of us who tend to be both overambitious and overwhelmed – at the same time. We can teeter-totter between having everything together and totally giving it all up as impossible. This is the dreaded boom and bust cycle.
The boom and bust cycle is hard on moms. It’s hard on families. It’s not a good cycle or a good plan.
Want a consistently clean home?
When we’re hunting for the just-right cleaning tip or printing off the best cleaning checklists, we’re really hunting for a consistently clean home. So why do we wind up in the boom and bust cycle where it’s super clean for a time and then, before we know it, utter chaos?
One mistake we make is not recognizing that cleaning is a process. Cleaning isn’t a once-and-done project. It’s something we have to stick with over the long haul. We never graduate from cleaning. Those who stick consistently to their cleaning process are those who have learned to enjoy the cleaning process itself.
End the boom and bust cycle with this one cleaning tip
The perfectionist, overambitious cleaning routine leads directly to boom and bust cycles. It stems from our attempt to start at the wrong end when trying to clean house.
We tend to choose or put together cleaning routines that promise the outcome we want: a clean house. Is it really the routine, the checklist, the arrangement that will allow us to wake up to a clean house? No.
If your home isn’t already clean, the particular checklist or arrangement isn’t going to get you very far. Tips and tricks can provide helpful efficiency tweaks for those who are already capably managing their homes. No premade checklist will move you from consistently messy to consistently clean.
We get it backwards when we look for the guru who has the end product we desire, then copy and paste her system.
We mistakenly think that our responsibility is to skip the process and go straight to results. Perhaps we even forget or never realized there’s a process to reclaiming order in the home. We just want the end result, right away, and think that’s what we’re supposed to achieve. Any plan that doesn’t deliver the end result immediately is discarded and replaced with a new one.
Enjoy the cleaning process itself.
The boom and bust cleaning pattern can only be overcome by gradual, incremental personal change – not a new checklist or routine. We fall prey to the boom and bust cycle because of our mindset and attitude about cleaning. Chores are not something to get over with as quickly as possible. Housework is not unimportant work that somebody has to do, and we drew the short stick. Cleaning house is not mindless and menial.
Housework is good work and requires our care and attention. We grow in care and attention gradually, incrementally, just like babies learn to walk after hundreds of clumsy falls and elementary students learn their multiplication tables after hundreds of practice problems.
We need patience in our housework, patience with the process of learning new skills, patience with replacing bad attitudes with truth in our own heads.
Clean house with minimum viable routines
So instead of looking for the total-home-clean, full-meal-deal cleaning routine that will make sure dust never accumulates behind your stove and spiders never live on the top of ceiling fans, start with a minimum viable cleaning routine.
Yes, this is about starting with baby steps in your homemaking, but it is also about identifying what makes the most difference and what needs to be repeated most for your own home and family.
Just like you learned what 3×3 was before 12×13 because one was more necessary to know than the other, so learning our core cleaning tasks and repeating those first and most will change your housekeeping faster than attempting to work a Martha Stewart Cleaning Schedule.
Everyone’s minimum viable routines are different, although there are some greatest hits, for sure. Dishes and laundry will certainly be covered one way or another – but the pattern will be affected by your situation: how many people are you feeding and clothing? how helpful are they? are you living a farm life or city life? do you have a dishwasher or not?
YOU – not anyone else – can determine what is needed in your particular family’s particular current situation. Starting there will yield the best growth and greatest results.
Stay tuned to the end because I have a short, free guide on how to create your own minimum viable plan for a clean home.
The home cleaning routine that works
How much work will we actually need to get our home to the level we want it to be?
If we’re starting from a place of chaos, clutter, and crumbs everywhere, cleaning the house is more than a weekend project. Promises of cleaning in one hour a week will not apply to our situation. Few of the moms inside Convivial Circle find that one hour of cleaning per week is enough to keep up with real life. Instead, we work through a 6-week process to find our own way toward a clean house in 60-90 minutes a day.
When I was deep in my messie tendencies, there was no way that a cleanie’s plan was going to work. I would chat with my friends who were naturally neat and tidy. They didn’t even realize they were cleaning when they were doing chores I disliked. So what they “counted” as cleaning was already above and beyond the effort I was putting in.
The power hour of cleaning will work if you have a base-level clean in your home that you want to maintain. If you do not have a large family where everyone is home all day every day, maybe it will work. Or, if you’re already doing daily houework that doesn’t even “count” to you, maybe you can work a cleaning power hour.
That’s not you? Then those plans for a clean home aren’t going to work for you. Figure out your own that will.
Your routines should fit your life.
This guide will help you set up housecleaning routines that work with your preferences, home, and schedule.
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