My Morning and Before Bed Cleaning Routine

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One of my biggest challenges as a mom is trying to keep up with my house. I am one of those people that when my house is a mess, I am personally a HOT mess. I cannot function (at least nicely) if my house is a mess. I tend to lose my temper faster and then I end the day feeling like I sucked as a wife and mom. I also tend to hide away and be less productive (aka lazy). Who really wants to stare at their messy and overwhelming house, right? Oh and I hate cooking in a messy kitchen, so I generally talk myself into getting takeout for dinner and that’s just a budget killer! 2016 was a crazy year for me… I can’t really pinpoint what made it crazy for me. It was just a transitional year I guess. I totally dropped the ball around my house.

So, when 2017 rolled around I made the goal to be better about keeping up on the house! It’s only been 5 weeks, but I literally have noticed what a huge difference it’s made for me. Before I jump into my morning and before bed cleaning routine, I’d like to preface that what I’m talking about is pickup, not the deep cleaning. These are all things that just make my ability to function as a business owner, mom, wife, housekeeper, cook, and taxi driver smoother!

So, here is what I’ve implemented into my morning and before bed routines.

Morning:

• Start a load of laundry
  • Note: I do 100% of the laundry on Monday’s and then maintain Mon-Fri by doing a load per day. I take weekends off!
• What’s for dinner? If needed prep anything for dinner, get a crockpot going, etc.
• Set a timer for 15 mins.
  • In the 15 mins I:  make beds, unload the dishwasher, rinse breakfast dishes, wipe off kitchen and bathroom counters and pickup main living area.
  • Note: My older kids do have to have their rooms clean before going to school, so I generally just go in a fix a few things, grab laundry and double check it’s done.

I am not going to lie, I’m working in super speed mode during those 15 minutes. But, I’ve found that I can generally get everything done that I need to in those 15 minutes if the night before I did my before bed routine!

I thought it would be fun to quickly run through a morning with me, so you can see how it plays out:

7:00 – Get older boys up, fed, lunches packed, ready for school and take them to school.

8:15 – Start load of laundry, put workout clothes on (if I’m going to workout), get Dylan breakfast and start 15 minute pickup

8:45 – Workout

9:45 – Get showered and ready for the day

If I have a normal morning at home, I can have my house cleaned, have my workout done and be showered and ready by about 10:30 am.  If I have errands to run or stuff to do in the morning hours and I’m not going to workout, I’ll get up early to get showered and ready. That way I can generally be done with everything more around 8:30 or 9:00!

Before Bed:

My before bed routine generally takes more like 25+ minutes. I’ve got a whole day worth of life that I’m trying to clean up. I obviously try throughout the day to keep things picked up, but some days are busier than others and I’m not always perfect. My before bed routine is quite a bit more detailed then my morning routine.

• Clean the Kitchen
  • This means dishes done, stove wiped off, dishwasher started, counters and chairs wiped off, and floors swept! This usually takes around 10-15 minutes, depending on if our dinner dishes are still there or not.
• Pull any meat out of the freezer that is needed for tomorrow’s dinner
• Get boys backpacks ready, papers signed, etc
• Set a timer for 15 mins.
  • In the 15 mins I:  take any random items to their appropriate rooms, fold and put away any laundry, straighten living room and straighten bathrooms
• Go over tomorrow’s calendar

One thing that I do a few nights a week is set a timer as my boys are going to start their bedtime routine for 10 minutes and have them do a pickup! They run throughout the house and gather any items that belong to them, pickup their rooms, put away clean clothes, get their clothes ready for tomorrow, etc. That helps a TON and cuts down on my before bed routine a TON. However, we have a few nights each week with late Taekwondo and so this doesn’t happen every weeknight.

Keeping a simple schedule like this makes my home run 100 times smoother and makes me feel like I’m rocking this mom gig! And honestly, on average I’m probably only spending 45 minutes a day between the two routines. Which is nothing considering I keep my sanity!

What do you do that helps you keep a maintained house?

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