There is the old stereotype of the housewife who spends most of their waking life cooking and cleaning for their family.  Their routine was simple, have a set day for each room, e.g. Monday is bathroom, Tuesday is lounge etc.  But if you have had a busy day at work or have been spending it looking after the children the last thing you want to do is clean.  If you followed this routine you would feel as though you spent your whole week cleaning.

To avoid cleaning on your weekends and days off you will unfortunately need to do a certain amount of cleaning in the evenings but if you use your time wisely it won’t overlap into your free time too much.  I call these the quick clean days.

Instead of spending a day on each room you could spend between 10 and 30 minutes a day on the important rooms like the kitchen, bathroom and living room. To make sure you don’t spend too long on each room use a timer!  Yes, a timer.  Have a set time for each room / activity and stick to it, this will help you focus on what you are doing and make it a challenge. Try and beat your best time.

For example you could set yourself 8 minutes for the kitchen, no longer – wipe down the surfaces, cooker, sink, sweep the floor and once a week mop the floor. This assumes that you don’t have any washing up!

Which brings me nicely to my next point - involve the family, why should it be your responsibility to keep the house clean, get your family to do the washing up or unload the dishwasher. Make sure they know it is their responsibility to put their clothes in the wash basket and not yours.

Only certain rooms need daily attention and will be scheduled into your quick clean days e.g. kitchen, bathroom and living room.  The other rooms can be dusted and hovered a lot less often.  Every now and then you will need to assign some extra time to each room in the house (pulling out furniture to vacuum) but at least your house will be respectable and clean for any impromptu visitors and you don’t have that overwhelming feeling of failure.

Some other tips:

• Always make sure you make the bed before you leave the house in the morning, it is so welcoming when you go to bed.
• Always have a clean sink before you go to bed at night, it really makes a difference in the morning
• Set yourself goals and try to stay within your time limit, e.g. finish the ironing by the end of a TV programme.
• If you have your cleaning products organised in one bucket you will have all your tools ready to hand.
• When vacuuming on your quick clean days, only vacuum the centre of the rooms 

Unless you hire professionals there is no way to get around doing the cleaning, but keeping on top of it will go a long way to giving you back your days off and weekends.

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• Tidying up after your Children

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