How to Find Time to Clean Your House When You're Busy

Okay, here’s the deal:

I know cleaning everything in your house can be a LOT of work. I know you probably don’t think you have time to doitall… and you’re probably right. But, if you’re willing to wiggle a few things around on your daily, weekly, and monthly to-do lists you’ll be able to create space to clean allthethings that need to be cleaned in your house. (I KNOW it sounds like a lot of work, but hang with me.)

A common concern of many people’s is not having enough time to get everything done. And, the first thing that is often to get pushed aside when we run out of time is our cleaning tasks.

But what we need to realize is that when we push our cleaning tasks aside we’re actually creating more work for ourselves in the long haul (and yes, the long haul does matter right now).

Trust me, I GET it. I used to be the person who would “forget” (ignore) cleaning tasks because I just had so much other stuff going on, and my days were so hectic that there was no way I was getting everything done.

I’ve been there, asking myself – and Google – the questions, “I have no time to clean, what should I do?” “I can’t keep my house clean, what’s wrong with me?!” “How to keep a clean house while working full time?”

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Over the years, if I’ve learned anything, it’s that if I don’t have a routine or a schedule, nothing’s gonna get done.

If I don’t have a meal plan, most nights dinner isn’t going to get made. If I don’t have a to-do list, my daily tasks are going to get “forgotten about”. If I don’t have a cleaning schedule, our house is going to become a disaster.

How to find time to clean your house when you’re busy

The best way that I have found to find time to clean our house even when I have no time is to follow a daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning schedule.

Using a schedule for your cleaning will help you be sure you can complete every cleaning task, every day. When you can quickly glance at your cleaning schedule first thing in the morning (instead of having to wrack your brain to try and remember what all needs to get done today), you’ll be able to fit the cleaning tasks into your day seamlessly – without having to set apart too much time for cleaning (if any).

When I decided to start following a cleaning schedule – which has been one of the best decisions I’ve made for our house – I searched the web to find one that I liked. I ended up finding hundreds upon hundreds of different schedules, but none of them had everything on the schedule that I wanted.

And some of them had too much stuff on the schedule. So, I went ahead and created my own cleaning schedule to follow, and I want to share it with you.

Using this cleaning schedule every day, week, and month is exactly how I’m able to keep our home looking professionally cleaned WITHOUT spending hours of time cleaning. (I can usually get everything done in less than half an hour a day.)

The first trick to spending less than half an hour cleaning a day –

The trick to spending less than half an hour cleaning a day while still getting everything done is to fit your daily cleaning tasks (which we’ll go over right away) INTO your day. Don’t set time apart to complete all the tasks, simply complete them as you go through your day.

For example, making your bed is one of the tasks. Rather than getting out of bed and coming back to the bedroom later in the day to make the bed, I make the bed first thing in the morning – as soon as I get out of it.

Instead of setting 2 minutes apart in your day just to bring the trash out, take it out when you’re already planning on going outside (if you’re going for a walk or heading out the door to run some errands).

Being smart about your time will help you cut the amount of time you spend cleaning down SIGNIFICANTLY, and it’ll free up a lot more time for you to spend with your family. (Because no one should have to spend over an hour each day cleaning. That’s just not right.)

The second trick –

Another trick to cut down how much time you spend cleaning is to split the weekly cleaning schedule up over the days of the week.

While most people dedicate one day a week to cleaning everything in their house, I like to split my tasks up over different days, so I don’t have to spend an entire day cleaning, because that would be… NOT fun.

But a couple things a lot of people forget about when they split their cleaning up over different days of the week is to plan for busy days and to clean the house from top to bottom.

If you have a day that is particularly busy during the week, don’t plan your big cleaning tasks for that day (like vacuuming and mopping the floors). Instead, plan a lighter workload for that day like changing the bedding or cleaning the bathrooms.

You also want to remember to always always always clean your house from top to bottom. I’m sure you know that already, but it’s easy to forget about when you spread the workload out over a few days.

If you clean everything on the same day, it’s easy to remember that you’ll want to dust before you wash the floors. But, if you’ve got a few days between tasks, it can be easy to put cleaning floors before dusting. Which you shouldn’t do.

Always remember to clean your house from top to bottom.

The third trick –

The last trick to clean your house in less time is to be intentional with your time. Time management is everything, people! If you don’t know how to properly manage your time, you’re going to spend hours doing something that should only take you 15 minutes to complete.

If you need some help with proper time management (and other household management tasks), I talk all about how to become an effective homemaker in my free 30 Day Home Management Boot Camp, which you can sign up for here.

The cleaning schedule that I use to keep our house clean in no time

If you’re still wondering how to find time to clean your house, let’s go over the exact cleaning schedule I use to ensure everything in our house gets cleaned on a regular basis.

Even if you’re not someone who likes to follow schedules, I want to strongly encourage you to give this cleaning schedule a try. Using a cleaning schedule (whether it’s this one or any other one) will help you get everything done without forgetting about or neglecting a task for too long.

Again, when I started looking for cleaning schedules I couldn’t find one that I loved, so I made my own. I would love if my cleaning schedule worked for you, but I completely understand that everyone’s lives are different, and you may have to add or take away some things on this schedule for it to be relevant to you.

Either way – whether you use this cleaning schedule or make your own – I really believe that using a cleaning schedule IS the best way how to find time to clean, even on the busiest of days.

Everyday

Make the bed
Empty the dishwasher
Clean dirty dishes
Wipe out the kitchen & bathroom sinks
Wipe the kitchen counter & table
Wipe the stovetop
Replace kitchen hand towels
Clean coffee maker
Sweep kitchen floor
Spot wash floor
Wipe bathroom mirror
Do a load of laundry (as needed)
Wipe out microwave
Take out the trash
Organize night table & dresser
Sort mail
10-minute clean up before bed

Don’t feel overwhelmed when you look at this daily cleaning list – I know it looks like a lot, but when you think about it, you can fit a lot of the tasks right into your day. Make your bed and organize the night table and dresser as soon as you wake up.

Put a load of laundry in first thing in the morning. Empty the dishwasher while you’re making breakfast, then load it right back up with the dirty dishes. Clean out the coffee pot as soon as you’re done with it. Wipe out the microwave after you use it. Take out the trash when you go outside. Sort through the mail as soon as you bring it home.

In the evening, do your quick 10-minute clean up with the whole family before going to bed. Give the sinks and bathroom mirror a quick wipe, and sweep and spot-wash the kitchen floor.

See? When you work these daily cleaning tasks into your day, it shouldn’t take you any extra time. It’s all about figuring out how to fit them into your day without setting time apart to do them.

Weekly

Dust surfaces
Clean bathrooms
Change bathroom towels
Vacuum & mop floors
Change bedding
Clean old food out of fridge (put food that is about to expire at the front, to be used up first)
Wipe down kitchen appliances
Quick declutter of the house

Compared to the daily cleaning schedule, the weekly cleaning schedule is a lot smaller. If you were to do all of these weekly cleaning tasks in one day, it would likely take you just about an entire day to complete, but if you split it up over the week you can easily do everything in less than half an hour per day.

Here’s how I split my cleaning schedule up:

Monday – Bathrooms

Clean mirror
Wipe countertops and sink
Clean toilet
Clean shower and tub
Change towels

Tuesday – Dusting

Dust window sills
Dust furniture
Dust appliances
Dust all surfaces

Wednesday – Floors

Vacuum all floors
Mop all floors

Thursday – Bedroom & Declutter

Change bedsheets
Tidy up bedroom
Quick declutter of the house

Friday – Kitchen

Clean old food out of fridge (arrange fridge so food that is about to expire is at the front to get eaten first)
Wipe down kitchen appliances
Organize the pantry

And then I take the weekend off. You can see that some of the day’s workloads are heavier than others. If I was busy on Wednesday one week, I would just switch Wednesday’s workload with another day that had a lighter workload so I don’t fall behind with my cleaning tasks.

Monthly

Vacuum furniture
Dust ceiling fan
Clean baseboards (with this)
Spot wash walls
Wipe door knobs & light switches
Deep clean microwave (with this)
Dust/vacuum vents
Dust blinds (using this)
Clean under & behind furniture & appliances
Polish stainless steel appliances (this oil and these rags work the best)

These monthly cleaning tasks can be completed whenever you have time throughout the month. Don’t worry about being too particular about these things. You don’t have to wash all the walls in your house – just gaze over them all and wipe down any trouble spots.

The same with the baseboards, don’t worry about scrubbing them clean – just wipe over them to get any marks and dust off of them. You can use this to make cleaning the baseboards easier on your back.

Deep cleaning the microwave is as simple as putting this inside it, turning it on, then wiping it out. There’s no need to scrub when you use this.

To polish your stainless steel appliances, a little trick I picked up when I was a housekeeper was to use this particular oil with a soft rag (these are what I use) to get rid of marks and polish them up. Using this oil helps them prevent getting marks on them again right away, too. I know it seems weird, but trust me when I tell you it WORKS!

This blind duster will help you dust your blinds quickly (because it IS a tedious job).

Every 3 – 6 months

Wash curtains
Dust & clean light fixtures
Deep clean the fridge
Clean range hood & filter (this takes grease right off the filter)
Wash shower curtain
Clean mattress
Wash pillows (You might also like: How to Wash Pillows & Get Rid of the Stink)
Wash blankets
Clean inside of oven
Wash windows inside & out
Condition leather furniture (if you don’t want to purchase expensive leather conditioner, this works just as well)
Vacuum fridge coils

These are cleaning tasks that should get done, but don’t need doing more than 2 – 4 times a year.

Cleaning the range hood filter above your oven can be a nightmare, but this is what I use to loosen the grease on the filter, and it wipes right off.

When it comes to conditioning leather, there are a lot of expensive leather conditioners you can purchase, but if you’re looking for something simple that gets the job done just as well, this is what we use to condition our leather (it’s WAY cheaper than leather conditioner, does the same job, and lasts us many, many years).

These are the best window washing rags I’ve found. They don’t leave streaks and take smudges off easily.

Now that we’ve gone over every single cleaning schedule from daily to every 3 – 6 months, you can click here to print them all off.

Following these cleaning schedules is how I keep our home looking professionally cleaned with minimal effort or time.

Now that you know how to find time to clean your house, are you READY?

Are you ready to tackle your house?

I’d love to hear some of your tips on how to find time to clean! What do you do to ensure you always have time to keep a clean house?