Everyone wants to keep their home clean and inviting, but often times our busy schedules prevent us from keeping our homes as clean as they should be. Let’s face it, we’re all busier today than ever before, and sometimes the house cleaning tasks simply get pushed further back in the weekly schedule. If you’ve had enough of the mess and are ready to keep your home in tip-top shape, then you need some tips to help you get started. Keeping a home clean and tidy is easier than you might think when you keep a few key steps in mind.

House Cleaning Checklists

Have a Plan

Any job worth doing is worth planning out in detail. Too many people decide to “clean house” and end up doing a little of this and a little of that. At the end of the day, this haphazard approach leads to little getting done. Start off with a plan. Do a quick walk-through of your home and write down the cleaning tasks that need to be done in each room. Don’t take too much time on this part; just walk into the room and quickly determine what must be done to keep that room looking clean and organized. Then move on to the other rooms and write down the tasks for each of them.

Schedule Time

Once you have your master list of tasks to be done, it’s time to come up with a schedule. You shouldn’t have to dedicate hours each day to cleaning, just a half hour, here and there, can make a huge difference in the cleanliness of your home. Carve out ½ hour blocks in your schedule to take care of specific tasks that must be done weekly or bi-weekly. Write them into yous schedule using graph paper or a spreadsheet. With 7 days in a week and with just a ½ hour block for each day, you will have 3.5 hours available each week to clean. That should be enough time to really keep your home looking great.

Act on Your Plan & Schedule

When the first ½ hour block comes up, do your task from the schedule. Set aside all distractions and get down to the task at hand. Don’t answer the phone, don’t take time for small talk; just do your job. You’ll be surprised at how much you can get done in that ½ hour. For example, if vacuuming the floors is your job for the day, you should easily be able to vacuum most of the rooms in your home in that ½ hour, if you focus and work quickly.

The rest of your week will be about chipping away at the big picture, one task at a time. Before you know it, you’ll be on a regular scheduled routine to keep your house looking great. The key is to not get overwhelmed by trying to clean  the whole house. Instead break it down into small, doable tasks and attack those tasks regularly. You’ll have a cleaner, more organized home. And you won’t have to kill yourself with hard work, or marathon sessions to get it done.