How To Not Spend the Rest of Your Life Cleaning

 So this one time at band camp, Brody and I cleaned our house top to bottom, inside and out. I mean we scrubbed walls, pulled weeds, cleaned windows, the whole nine yards. The place was like a Taj Mahal. On the reals. And a week later, it was still clean. So I through myself a party and it got messy again. It was a record in our house. For a whole week, we saw our bedroom floor, our kitchen counter tops were clear. And we could easily open and close the door to the laundry room because we didn't have 3 tons of laundry blocking it. 

But alas, all good things come to an end. As does the cleanliness of our humble abode. 

And I hate messes. I HATE them. But what I hate even more than messes, is cleaning. UGH! I can tell you 300 things I'd rather do than clean. But, since we don't have time for that I figured I would tell you the solution to my problem. 

Why do I hate cleaning? It's time consuming. It takes up my weekends and days off from work. It takes time away from watching my garbage reality shows and my magical Disney movie marathons. So this is what I figured out: when we actually do clean, it takes us 5 or 6 hours on a Saturday, with this new simple formula that I'm about to show you it would take me at most 3 hours a week. "WOAH," you say, "SHE CUT DOWN HER CLEANING TIME BY HALF." Yes I did folks, yes I did. 

So here is the thing, the trick to keeping a clean home is to not have to deep clean it all the time. By just maintaining it you'll actually spend less time cleaning and more time enjoying your clean home. I created this easy peasy Cleaning list to help me and all of you to stay on top of your cleaning tasks! Let's a-break it down shall we?

Daily Tasks:

This is where that "maintaining" trick comes in. Every night I want you to unload and reload your dishwasher. If it's full, run it. I run ours right before we go to sleep. You can run yours after dinner or whenever. Just make sure you empty it and fill it everyday! Keep those counters clear.

Speaking of counters. After loading your dishwasher, quickly wipe down your kitchen counters. Also wipe down your bathroom counter everyday. I wipe mine down while I brush my teeth in the morning. Doing this while I brush my teeth has taken about 10 minutes of cleaning my bathroom.

Make your bed. Ugh. I know. But it starts off your day with that productive feeling.

Make a basket run. I bought a basket that I leave right by my stairs. Every day as I go throughout my day if I come across something that doesn't belong, I throw it in the basket. At the end of the day I spend just 10 minutes putting everything in the basket away. Some nights I'm done in 3 minutes, some nights I take the full 10 and there's still stuff in the basket. I leave it for the next day. 

Weekly tasks:

Laundry: This is on here twice a week. This includes: washing, drying, folding and putting away. Wash it at night, in the morning put it in the dryer (or vice versa). 

Dusting: by breaking up the dusting, you aren't spending all day dusting your house. Make sure you get the blinds, moldings, and light fixtures. 

Cleaning Floors: the same concept as dusting. Break it up.

Wipe down kitchen appliances: I do this as I'm cleaning up dinner or putting away groceries. You don't need to deep clean or anything like that, remember we are trying to maintain cleanliness, if you are doing this once a week you shouldn't have to scrub. 

Clean showers, toilets and bathroom mirrors: wanna know a trick? If you are like me and use essential oils to clean (yay for no chemicals!!) take the spray bottle...ready for it...into the shower with you...WHAT?! YES! yeah when I heard this trick I was like OH HEYYYY! I mean if you clean with bleach then don't do it...we are trying to remove mildew from the shower, not flesh from our bodies. But if you use all natural cleaners then why not?! I put my conditioner in my hair and then spray down the shower while I'm letting it soak. People think I'm cray cray but I'm not on my hands and knees for 45 minutes cleaning my shower. It takes me 10 minutes, and because I do it once a week it's easy to maintain!

Feel free to print out this handy dandy printable! I hope it helps! 

What tips and tricks do you guys have when it comes to cleaning? What chores do you hate? Let me know in the comments!