My Cleaning Philosophy

In the nearly three years I've been a stay-at-home-mom/house cleaner/cook/family organizer, I think I've finally found a system that works for me. I call it: Not Always Clean, Not Always Dirty. I was verbalizing it a few months ago with Adam and that's when it clicked. The convo went like this:

Me: "So, I have been doing my '6 Things A Day' thing for awhile (more on that later), and it's working really well for me. But I just read on a blog (more on that later) about a girl who, apart from her daily cleaning routine that is similar to mine, she has one big chore she does everyday. That way the little stuff gets done and then all the big stuff gets done over time. But that means your house is never clean all at the same time."

Adam: "Yeah, but it's also never dirty all at the same time, either."

BOOM. Cleaning philosophy born. Not Always Clean, Not Always Dirty.

So, here are the six things I do everyday (from here).

1. Make the bed
2. Manage clutter
3. Sort the mail
4. Clean as you cook
5. Wipe up spills while they are fresh
6. Sweep the kitchen floor

Correction, I don't do these all everyday. I TRY to do them all everyday. The last three are the most important, then one, then two, then three. That's my order of importance. The kitchen is the place where I spend the most time, so it's most important to me to keep that clean. If I do nothing else during the day, if I'm on top of the dishes, the counters are wiped, and the floor is swept, I'm a happy lady.

And what are the big chores to do every day? Mine are things like mopping the kitchen floor, mopping the bathroom floor, scrubbing the tub, cleaning the bathroom mirror and counter, vacuuming, sweeping and mopping the landing, cleaning the microwave, etc. Correction: I actually don't do one big chore a day. I TRY to do one big chore a day. But it more often happens that one day I get three done, and another day I do zero. The motivation to clean has to hit me, and then I just bust out as many big chores as possible. So, again, my house is never all clean at once, but it's never all dirty at once either. And, so, getting frustrated or angry is futile, because I never expected it to stay clean in the first place. Like Z's quote: "it was clean for 10 minutes..." .... and that, to me, is better than never having been clean. And I have hope that, after it is dirtied, it will one day be clean again! My heart is bursting with hope just thinking about it.

Now for some links that I love regarding cleaning:

...Nevermind, some of my links aren't working until the blogger I want to link to is done revamping her blog design. More on that later.

But here is the link to the girl who gave me the idea for one big chore a day, plus more details about her cleaning routine including a printable. Ooooh! Exciting!

What about ya'll? What works for you? What doesn't work for you?