How to Catch Up When You Get Behind

As you can tell from my posts on homemaking, I try really hard to stick to a cleaning and laundry routine. Obviously, this is a perfect world scenario, which we all know, we don't live in a perfect world. Most of the time every week is different, a kid (or you) gets sick, there is an appointment or something that comes up that takes some part of your day away. Life is not perfect and we have to be ready to roll with it.

It took me a long time to figure that out. Everytime I would write a schedule or routine or chart for how I wanted to do things, inevitably I would kill myself to stick to it, and when it was impossible, I would want to throw the routine out. Now I have learned that it is good to have a plan, but it is even better to have a catch-up plan. Since I don't like to clean my house all in one day, I divide it into 3 or 4 days. This is a two-fold plan: 1) I don't have so much to do on one day and 2) if I get behind I can do the things from the day before on the day I didn't plan to do stuff. (ie I clean MWF, so if I miss a day, I would catch-up Tuesday or Thursday and even Saturday if I really had to).

That being said, if you need to catch up for a day or two or even the whole week, I am going to write the top things to do that will make your house clean without making you have to clean all day:

1) Straighten up - a house that is straightened looks cleaner than a house that isn't

2) Run a quick dust rag over key places (living room, office, bedroom)

3) Run a quick vacuum throughout the house (especially the key places)

4) Wipe down countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms (I use a Lysol wipe)

5) Swish the toilets with a brush and some cleaner

6) Take out all the trash

7) Put all laundry in piles to be laundered (some today, some another day - don't do laundry all day unless you must)

8) If you have time, you could mop and scrub bathtubs (if not, leave it for the next planned day to do those things as they take a lot more effort)

Hopefully this helped! I am off to catch up myself. :)