Weekly Cleaning Checklist: No More Haphazard Cleaning! ⋆ Love Our Real Life

Do you struggle to keep your home clean? This has been a constant battle for me over the years! My weekly cleaning checklist can help! It won’t solve all of your busyness concerns, but it will give you a clear focus of what cleaning tasks are most pressing, so you can enjoy your home a little more!

That’s the goal, right?!

Get more cleaning ideas and home printables here!

Like many of you, I’m in the midst of running a busy family. My husband and I both work, plus our teen and pre-teen are involved in lots of activities. Sound familiar?

It is fun AND exhausting at the same time. As many tell me, someday I will miss it. This is likely true, however, too often I was finding my house looked like a tornado had just hit!

While your schedule and daily routine are going to vary from mine, I think I have found a system that can work for most households!

The key is to be willing to devote just minutes every single day.

As daunting as that sounds, I’m finding it reduces my overall stress and lets me enjoy my time at home even more.

Weekly Cleaning Checklist (Filled and Blank):

To help solve this problem, I created a weekly cleaning checklist to post on the refrigerator for the entire family to see! This added accountability and clear plan of action has helped all of us stay focused on what needs to be done.

Instead of randomly cleaning here and there, we are following this organized cleaning system to stay on top of messes.

Weekly cleaning checklist (filled tasks assigned each day as well as blank checklist).

Of course, this doesn’t solve the issue of actually getting the family to pitch in, but it helps! I’ll share more tips in just a bit on how my family divides the cleaning.

Cleaning schedule explained:

There are certain daily cleaning tasks that I felt were necessary. Just in case you find your daily tasks are wildly different than mine, you will get access to a blank and pre-filled weekly cleaning schedule!

Daily cleaning tasks included:

Sweeping the kitchen and entryway
Making our beds
Tidying the living room
Basic bathroom wipe down
Kitchen wipe down
1 load of laundry

Weekly cleaning tasks in checklist format.

With the daily tasks, there are often days when doing multiple loads of laundry are a must. If that’s the case, I jump in and do it!

But, by spreading things out a bit, it keeps life from causing that dreaded feeling of overwhelm!

The remaining checklist areas are assigned items that only need to be accomplished one time weekly or monthly.

This is adjustable each week, depending on the activities we have! Once I know my schedule for the week, I write in weekly cleaning tasks I know I’ll have time for.

Examples of weekly cleaning tasks:

Each of the below tasks are assigned to one day each week, unless specified otherwise.

Taking out the trash
Washing / changing bed sheets
Dust
Mop (I try to assign this to two different days each week)
Tidy mudroom / porch / patio
Vacuum (2 times weekly)
Deep clean bathroom

Swiffer to clean floors on daily cleaning schedule checklist.

There are still a few tasks that I add to the chart. These are typically bigger scale cleaning projects that only need to be done one time each month (or perhaps even less!).

Monthly Cleaning checklist:

Clean oven
Deep clean refrigerator
Yard work / garage tidy
Blinds
Ceiling fan
Baseboards
Spare bedroom(s)

How to get family involved with cleaning:

This will obviously depend on the ages of your children, but I will share what works in my home. I assure you, it is not a perfect system. But it certainly helps.

Oftentimes my kids have really busy days, too. It is important to help them realize they need to chip in to help the entire family. If we come together as a team, it takes the burden off of one single person.

Ahem. That’s usually mom. Amiright?!

1. Kids are responsible for their room / space.

My kids are required to make their own bed every day. If they don’t, privileges are taken away. My husband and I do not expect perfection, but we do expect it to be done.

They are also responsible for the bathroom they use. A general daily tidy is all we are shooting for. I end up going back and cleaning it a little more every now and then, but my hope is that I’m teaching them some life skills along the way.

The jury is still out on that one;-)

2. Other than their room / bathroom, the kids each take one daily task and are responsible for it the entire week.

Typically, I have them pick a task that won’t make me cringe if it isn’t done well. Sweeping the floor or picking up the living room seem to be good tasks for them to accomplish successfully.

Slowly, I think they are realizing if they put their items where they belong in the beginning, it saves them time in the long run.

3. My husband and I split the rest.

Obviously, your home life will look a little different than ours depending on time availability and capability of every family member.

My husband is in charge of making our bed every day. He is a champ at this! This task has been incorporated into his daily routine and he doesn’t miss, even when he’s busy.

By the way, if you haven’t watched the inspiring YouTube video clip, If You Want to Change the World, Start Off By Making Your Bed, do it now!

Jason also takes out our trash and recycling every week.

I’m responsible for the majority of the other daily / weekly cleaning items. This makes sense for our family, because my husband works more hours than I do a this point in time. I’m sure we’ll make adjustments down the road should our circumstances change.

But for now, this works!

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