The best way to keep your house tidy and clean is to do a little bit each day. Makes absolute sense right? But what if that doesn’t work for you? Methods like The Organised Mum are brilliant if you are able to find the time and motivation for daily cleaning, but it’s never caught on in this house for two reasons: my children tend to cause absolute chaos everyday so just to tidy up that days mess uses most of my energy and when it comes to the deep cleaning? The windows? Skirting? Or even cleaning the oven? Well my ADHD brain just doesn’t want to tackle a little bit of those each days. It’s more likely that I will spend an afternoon doing a major focused clean because I’m in rage at the mess. Or maybe I'll have an urgent piece of work that needs to be done so my brain suddenly decides that the shutters need dusting. I recognise the need to try and have a bit more balance and so I'm sharing the best way I've found to motivate me to get the basics done. This habit tracker gets results and sometimes it even works to magically get housework done without me lifting a finger!
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| Keeping on top of the housework can feel impossible when you have children |
Habit Trackers For Cleaning
They aren’t a guarantee of success, but at times I do really well with a habit tracker. The more beautiful or colourful it is the more likely I am to complete tasks because I love how it looks. Filling up those circles fills me with a dopamine reward that can otherwise be missing from putting clothes away.
I have most of my habit trackers in a notebook (for work etc), but there is an advantage to having a housework habit tracker on the fridge or somewhere everyone can see. Unless you live on your own you aren’t the only person responsible for making the mess so you really shouldn’t be the only one to do the tidying and cleaning.
Get everyone involved by allocating each person a different coloured pen and they mark off when they complete a task. This helps to play into a competitive spirit and ensures people get recognition for putting the effort in. Plus if the grid is just your purple pen at the end of the month it gives you excellent grounds for complaint.
Tasks To Add
Think realistically about what needs doing around the house and how often then list all the tasks you want to get done each day, week and month. I’m not including really deep cleaning tasks in this because to be honest if you are struggling with the basics and your children mess a room up 5 minutes after it’s been tidied, cleaning the oven is probably way down your list. I’ll cover the deep cleaning in a separate post. For now just focus on the tasks that really need to get done. Honestly if you only clean your skirting boards every 6 months it is unlikely anyone will notice.
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| Download a free copy of the Housework Habit tracker via the link below |
Here is what I have added:
Daily
- Washing (you might be able to do washing much less often, but in my house there is at least 5 wash loads a week to do so I aim to do a load each day).
- Put clothes away
- Wash dishes/ load dishwasher
- Put dishes away
- Wipe kitchen surfaces
- Tidy lounge
Weekly
- Vacuum lounge
- Vacuum stairs and landing
- Kitchen floor
- Bathroom floor
- Dining room floor
- Tidy children’s rooms
Monthly
- Dusting (you can list by room)
- Clean the bath/ shower/ sink
- Change sheets - I know plenty of people will say they need to be cleaned more often, and with bed wetting and other mishaps that normally does happen, but once a month is the absolute minimum and weekly feels a bit too often in my mind so this feels like the best category.
You can download a free high resolution blank copy of this habit tracker by clicking here (I’ve kept it plain so it prints clearly, but I recommend stickers or coloured paper to brighten it up).
