So, the way I grew up I'm actually shockingly good at deep cleaning

[conuly]

I'm even not bad at decluttering, so long as it's okay to literally throw everything out. (They'll sooner or later send another copy of that late bill, don't worry! And you can always order another birth certificate, probably.)

But I'm not so good at routine maintenance. Does anybody have any already set up daily/weekly/monthly/periodically checklists for various areas of the house that they can recommend?

Comments

[fred_mouse]

I'm just going to share the washing set up, because it might be useful as an example, and it is the one I can articulate. We don't have a dryer, and we have an outside wash line, mostly under cover, that holds 2 loads of the largest volume domestic machine we could get (10kg). We are a household of four adults, but Youngest generates nearly the same amount of clothing as the rest, as they have work and training clothes that have to be washed every time, while I wear the same trousers to work for a week, barring accidents.

We have allocated a specific wash task to six of the days of the week: underwear, kids bedding, parents bedding, lights, darks, towels. these are written on post-it notes on the laundry door, so we can reference if needed. Bedding are done on separate days because neither the line nor the machine can handle both at once; we fill the load up with whatever. These are not prescriptive, these are the back up options if we can't do the decision making. It is facilitated by having a (home built) four bag wash sorter that does delicates (washed whenever we are caught up on another category, which happens), underwear, lights, darks. Towels and bedding should never be in the laundry long enough to need a place that isn't 'in the machine'.

This has the flow on effect that the kids change their sheets on Sunday, because they know the wash day is Monday; likewise our bed gets changed on Tuesday. Towels (including kitchen towels and cleaning cloths) get changed on Friday.

There are some additional wrinkles on this, in that the first towel load of the month contains the towels that get used 1-2 days a week and the bathmats.

I personally find the 'first weekend of the month' approach to lower frequency tasks, because then they are Done for the month; last weekend of the month is stressful.

This came about because I'm not a one and done person, and multiple loads on a day are not doable.