Stay at Home Mom Cleaning Schedule

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to create a stay at home mom cleaning schedule that would actually keep my house under control. It never sticks. Usually not even for a few days.

I hoped having a cleaning schedule would turn cleaning tasks into habits that just came to me naturally.

Instead, the opposite happened.

What I realized is that having a regimented cleaning schedule actually made me hate cleaning more.

Every time I walked past my fridge that proudly displayed my cleaning schedule, I had this sense of guilt.

I felt lazy because I couldn’t stick to a cleaning schedule even though I was home all day.

How could I possibly be lazy when I hardly sat down all day long?

I fell into bed exhausted every single night while the house continued to fall apart around us.

Let me let you in on the secret stay at home mom cleaning schedule that changed everything.

The secret isn’t a schedule.

It’s a list.

Also read: How I Got My Disgusting House Under Control

Stay at Home Mom Cleaning Schedule for Moms That Hate to Clean

At the beginning of the week, I do this on Sunday nights, make a list of everything you want to accomplish that coming week.

Most weeks this is going to be a bunch of repeat tasks with a few extras.

For example, every week I want to mop our kitchen floors, wash the sliding glass door, scrub the toilets, and maybe just maybe wipe down the baseboards.

Every few weeks I want to vacuum our patio and maybe scrub the carpets.

Now here’s why this works:

Life doesn’t happen in a vacuum, so having a regimented cleaning schedule is just setting yourself up for failure.

I’ll do anything to avoid that pesky guilt that comes with breaking yet another schedule I wasted time to put together.

The beauty of a list instead of a schedule is that it allows life to happen.

If on a Monday you just have nothing left to give, but you’re faced with this daunting schedule that tells you you need to get down and wipe down your baseboards – how likely are you to keep going?

You’re not.

If instead, you have a long to do list, but you know you can muster wiping down the mirror in the bathroom after you shower – you get to be exhausted AND productive without feeling guilty.

Does this seem like something you can get on board with?

Here’s my list that repeats almost weekly:

Kitchen Cleaning Checklist

Wipe down counters
Wipe out kitchen sink
Vacuum floor
Mop floor
Wipe down the top of the oven
Check if microwave needs cleaned
Clean baseboards
Spot clean walls and outlets

Living Room Cleaning List

Remove anything that goes to another room (basket for this and I ask the kids to put it away)
Vacuum
Clean baseboards
Vacuum couches
Spot clean walls and outlets

Bathroom Cleaning Checklist

Wipe down the mirror (if you do this after a shower, no cleaner is required)
Clean the toilet
Mop the floor
Clear off the counters (usually just putting things under the sink in a basket)
Wipe down the sinks and counters
Spot clean walls, doors, and outlets
Spray down the shower with leave-on cleaner

(we have two bathrooms, so I just copy and paste this twice and reprint my list each week)

Bedroom Cleaning Checklist

Pick up all laundry and take to laundry room
Make bed (yep, we have a made bed about once a week and I’m fine with that)
Vacuum floor
Spot clean TV
Spot clean walls, doors, and outlets
Clean baseboards
Dust blinds

We cosleep, so we only have one bedroom on our checklist.

Playroom Cleaning Checklist

Our kids handle their playrooms.

At their age, this looks like them putting their toys into bins when I ask (six or seven times) so that one of my boys can vacuum the floor.

Daily Habits to Keep Your House Clean

There are very few cleaning tasks that have actually turned into habits, but there are a couple.

This is exactly what I do to keep our house under control with 4 kids under age 6.

Every day I aim to load the dishwasher and run it at night so I have clean dishes ready for breakfast.

When I’m cleaning up from breakfast, I put away the dishwasher. This takes 3 minutes – yes I timed myself.

My 6 year old has now started to help load the dishwasher now and then.

If he doesn’t do it, it takes me about 5 minutes.

I try to wash a load of laundry every day.

Some days it happens, some days it doesn’t.

I aim to put away laundry when it’s done, but more realistically, I’m putting away a bunch of laundry bins about once a week.

Yes, it looks like a lot and completely overwhelming when I start.

I put on music, have the kids help me with my “no fold systems” and it takes about a half hour.

Yes, seriously.

Daily Cleaning Habits Homeschool Mom

We homeschool, so we seem to have a never ending amount of homeschool stuff laying around.

This is tricky because I don’t want to put it away if we’re just going to use it again tomorrow.

It’s also the number one culprit of clutter on my counters.

I decided to just keep a homeschool basket of ongoing things in the corner by our couch.

It looks decorative, and it fits all of our daily things (like our number rods, our base ten set, and our moveable alphabet) without us having to go dig them back out each morning.

Cleaning Essentials

There are only a couple of items that are must-haves in my cleaning arsenal.

We try to be as Montessori-minded as possible, so it’s very important to me that my kids can help me with cleaning chores around the house.

The first is a vacuum all of the kids can operate.

We’re incredibly tough on vacuums, but this is my current favorite.

I also always have stick vacuum on hand that my daughters (ages 22 months and 3) are able to operate to clean up small messes.

We’ve had this one since my boys were tiny and it’s still going strong.

Mopping is the number one job everyone fights me to be able to do. It’s a winning combo of playing with water and the spinning wringing function that ours has. I’ll never own another mop – this is the one our whole family loves.

Until they’re big enough to understand how much wringing is necessary to not flood the floor, we always have swiffers on hand.

I don’t buy the disposable cloths. Instead we use these microfiber cloths and I just wash them when they’re done cleaning.

I love this spray on shower spray for between scrubs.

I only use Murphy’s Oil soap on our floors because the smell is one of my favorite things ever.

For everything else, I almost always just use a combination of vinegar and baking soda, but this ECOS all purpose spray smells so good that I’m going through a bottle every pay period – so there’s that.

Oh and for your tiniest cleaners that are in the just watching phase, we have this Melissa and Doug set plus this little cleaning caddy.

It makes sure that everyone gets involved so someday my husband and I don’t have to do all of the cleaning on our own!

Weekly Cleaning Schedule

If your days are just too chaotic to even attempt to stick to a schedule, try to do things on a weekly basis instead.

Maybe every week your days look different, but you can still figure out the amount of time you have to clean in a day and use this to balance your weekly cleaning tasks with the more important things – like spending quality time with your young children.

What this looks like in practice is maybe you need to do 5 loads of laundry a week to keep piles of laundry from taking over. Maybe it’s okay with you if things get a little sticky for a few days because you know you have committed to mopping your kitchen floor one time before the week is over.

It’s important to create your own cleaning schedule that works for you because an easy cleaning schedule is an effective cleaning schedule.

Some things on your weekly cleaning schedule might look like:

Mop the kitchen floor
Scrub all toilets
Dust each floor for 10 minutes
Vacuum each room at least once

Weekly tasks like this should keep your home in working order without necessarily spending time deep cleaning. These aren’t things that happen on a daily basis, but instead are a great way to keep your house afloat without the pressure or commitment that a daily schedule entails.

Monthly Tasks

I highly recommend you have a few non-negotiables in your home that absolutely must happen each month – at least once. This is a great place to start getting family members involved in the household chores. The good news is some of these can be asked of even small children so they start to feel like part of the equation in keeping a tidy home. Giving age appropriate chores is a great way to help kids feel like the cleaning responsibilities in our house don’t fall on only me and their dad. The following tasks work great in our house on a monthly basis:

wipe down the baseboards
dust all corners for cobwebs
clean the blades on all ceiling fans
wipe down all light switches and plates
Spend 15 minutes spot cleaning all doors and walls

My three year old loves to help me wipe down baseboards and I can honestly say she’s even better at at than I am. Simple tasks like that need to be done anyway, are almost impossible to mess up, and actually really help me to keep our house feeling clean. Our older children are better at things like wiping down the spots that I’ve been purposely ignoring for days (weeks…who’s counting?).

I prefer to choose tasks based on how much time I have/want to spend cleaning that day.

Busy moms understand that when you get a few minutes of a break from the madness, you don’t necessarily want to pour it all into cleaning. I’ve spent much of my would-be cleaning time lately pouring over books on my phone instead of cleaning. My house has taken a little bit of a hit as a result, but the huge difference it’s had on my mental health is immense.

Cleaning for Overwhelmed Moms

If you have young kids like I do, let me give you some very important advice.

I want you to lay down the idea of a perfectly clean house or instagram-worthy toy rooms.

Instead, be the mom that plays with her kids, even if there are dirty dishes in the sink.

A million times a day I say to myself “what do you want them to remember.”

Let that be your barometer for what cleaning tasks need to be completed.

I truly don’t think you’ll ever look back and wish you spent more time cleaning.

I already know I’ll look back and regret the times I thought I was too busy to sit on the floor and play with my babies.

Keep perspective and just keep going. The best cleaning schedule is one that works for your family without making you feel like you’re lacking in some way.

Work your list and remember, the mess will still be there tomorrow!