Coming up with a routine for chores and sticking to it is difficult. You can feel behind very quickly if you miss off a few tasks from the list.

Routines have been better for me since I’ve been listening to Dana K White’s 2 books: How to Manage your Home without losing your mind and Decluttering at the Speed of Life. She suggests just introducing a few routines and sticking to them every day, which seems to be working. I’m mainly sticking to the visible clutter areas.

Completely separate to that, I’ve got into the habit of logging what I’m doing every day in my family calendar. It has six columns but as there are only four of us, I devote the extra two column for chores and meal planning. Nothing fancy, I just write on there what’s been happening e.g. in the chores column for a Wednesday it could say hoovering and recycling, and in the menu column on a Friday it might say lasagne with garlic bread.

Having recorded the chores that I’ve done over the past couple of weeks, I can see patterns. This week I can see a routine forming but I’m not going to make it formal yet. I definitely won’t be getting stressed if I go through a whole weekend without cleaning the bathrooms. I’ll just whiz around with a cloth and spray on a Monday morning before work, and then try and fit in a more thorough clean mid week the following week.

Even my daughters’ rooms are looking better because they know that I’ll be nice and hoover their rooms if the floor is clear. I don’t even mind if they throw the stuff all on the bed or desk. Any stray items migrating off again, will at least fall onto a clean floor. I do like a clean floor.

Yesterday I quickly whizzed around upstairs with the hoover before work and it only took 15 mins! There was a time when just the thought of hoovering would make me not even want to start! My new(ish) hoover helps as it does such a good job of picking up the dirt with minimal effort.

Until next time…