If you can’t find the time to clean and organize your home during the week, what you need is a daily cleaning checklist. Its purpose is to make you plan everything out in advance, so you won’t have to think it through. If you already know you must do it, you will have no time for second-guessing or forgetting.

Plus, if you make cleaning a daily habit, you won’t need to spend your weekend or your day off cleaning for hours and hours because there won’t be that much to clean in the first place!

These tasks are thought of as part of day-to-day home maintenance: some light, fast organizing and cleansing for your surfaces, living spaces, and everyday equipment. Let’s go!

Is daily cleaning too much cleaning?

The short answer is no.

The long answer is: you might think it’s too much because you’re thinking of “cleaning” as a hard, time and energy demanding task that can last for hours.

If you do it every day, you won’t need to put that much hard work into it! It’ll be over before you notice it because you won’t need more than 20 or 30 minutes a day. And if you’re up to the challenge, you will probably be able to find 20 minutes a day once you start to see the benefits.

Let’s make a checklist for keeping your home clean every day and get to the weekend with a tidy house before realizing it! Here’s a rule of thumb: you can split your cleaning routines for even and odd days. Most things around home won’t need to be cleaned every day, but every other day seems more of a reasonable time.

You also want to vary your tasks: here are six rooms in total, feel free to adapt them. They are set this way so as to mix easy light tasks with harder, more demanding ones. You can tackle them solo, or you can invite your family as well! Make sure you assign them tasks that are age-appropriate. Here are your guidelines for each room:

Kitchen

• Grab your clean dishes and place them back into your cabinets and drawers.
• Do the dishes, whether it’s by hand or loading the dishwasher.
• Clean your surfaces quickly! Check these all-purpose homemade cleaning solutions.

Bathroom

• Scrub your sink and rinse with water.
• Add some cleaning solution in your toilet, let sit a few minutes and scrub.
• If your trash can is full, take the trash out.

Living area

• Set your cushions and blankets in the right place.
• Sweep your living room floors.
• Grab misplaced items you find along the way and put them back in place.

Bedroom

• Grab your misplaced clothing and place them back in your closet or in the laundry room.
• Sweep your bedroom floors.
• Make your bed.

Office / Study

• Grab your misplaced office supplies and books and put them back inside the drawers and bookshelves.
• Wipe your working surface as well as your keyboard and monitor (if you own a desktop computer or laptop).
• Wash and rinse your windows quickly so the room is always nice and bright.

Patio / Balcony

• Do a quick sweep of your outdoor floors (if your patio is too large, you might want to leave this for the weekend).
• Mown the lawn. Same as above, make sure you have enough time or just leave it for the weekend.
• Water your plants if necessary.

Make sure you print this daily cleaning checklist and put it in your fridge! No more excuses for anyone not to do their required task for the day.

You can place your name’s initials next to the task to sort them out by family member. You can even take turns, so it won’t get too repetitive.

Conclusion

It’s not easy to keep up with cleaning. Life can get crazy sometimes and it’s okay if you don’t have the time for it. Give it a try and if your home is still messy at the end of the week, you can hire some help to take care of it for you.

Take a mental note of every space in your home and just keep rotating them during your week. You can use the daily cleaning checklist as a mere guideline if you want to! Adapt it to your home and your timetable as much as you want to.

Make sure you don’t go all-in with your cleaning routine. Use a timer so you won’t take any more time than absolutely necessary. This is key for avoiding burnout and make cleaning something you find relaxing and joyful.