Inside: Want a clean home but hate to clean? Here’s the best stay at home mom cleaning schedule. You can make the biggest impact with the least amount of time.
When I became a stay-at-home mom, I was a mess. Dog fur rolled across the floor like tumbleweeds in the Wild West. Dirty dishes filled up the kitchen counter and sink, and it took over an hour to clear out the sink, wash a pot and cook a simple dinner like spaghetti.
It looked like everyone kept a clean house, cooked from scratch every night, and I was still trying to figure out how to remember to move the wet laundry to the dryer before it smelled moldy.
I felt like a failure — like everyone had it all figured out except for me. “What is wrong with you? 😡 Why are you so lazy?” my inner monologue berated.
You know what was wrong with me? Absolutely nothing. I hadn’t yet learned the habits necessary to keep a clean house.
If you struggle to follow a stay at home mom cleaning schedule, don’t get down on yourself. There is nothing wrong with you.
Having a messy house doesn’t mean you’re lazy or that you don’t care. A messy house is just that — a house that is messy.
Learning how to keep a clean house is all about cultivating the habits to make that possible.
If you've failed before, it's not your fault.
Please note: This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you click a link and make a purchase, I will get a commission at no extra charge for you. I only recommend products I use and love.
The problem with most stay at home mom cleaning schedules
What I’m about to say is controversial but 100% true:
⚠️The problem with most stay at home mom cleaning schedules is that they are made by people who love to clean and love to have an extremely clean home.
One quick look at stay at home mom cleaning schedules on Pinterest or Google can leave you feeling overwhelmed and stressed out. Many tell you to clean the bathroom, sweep the kitchen floor or do a load of laundry…every. single. day.
The list of daily tasks often adds up to two or more hours of work. And don’t forget about the weekly or monthly tasks, which tack on another couple of hours each week.
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Odds are, if you’re here, it’s because you don’t want to spend two of your precious hours every day cleaning. You’d rather spend half an hour getting the basics done, like dishes and laundry, and spend the rest of your time playing with your kids or working on a project for yourself.
What do you do if you want to keep a decently clean home but don’t want to spend hours every day cleaning? That’s what I’m going to teach you in this post. It starts with knowing what you would do with a tidy home.
Determine your desired result.
Before you can figure out how much time you should spend cleaning every day, you have to determine your desired result.
What would you do with a tidy and organized home? Would you bake cookies with your kids? Maybe you would go for a run or take your kids to a new activity.
Deciding what you would do with a clean house can help you determine how clean your house needs to be.
When I searched for stay at home mom cleaning schedules to decrease the overwhelm and chaos in my life, I was frustrated when nearly all of them told me to dust the blinds or wipe out the windowsills.
“Y’all. I’m over here drowning in mismatched socks and you’re going to tell me to dust my blinds?!”
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The problem with those schedules is that the person who created them probably gains personal satisfaction and value from having a super clean home.
I, however, do not. I wanted to know the bare minimum I needed to do on a daily basis to keep a decently clean home. My goal was to have a home that was easy to maintain and freed up time to spend on things I love doing, like snuggling and reading with my kids.
There’s a concept in business called the Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, which states that 80% of your results are accomplished with 20% of your time. The reverse is true: it can take you 80% of your time to achieve that last 20%.
Another way to look at this is to consider a to-do list with 10 tasks on it. Most times, if you accomplish the two tasks that matter the most, you can make more of an impact than the other eight tasks combined. That’s huge!
We can apply this concept to cleaning by determining which tasks make the biggest impact with the smallest amount of time.
Getting the clutter off your kitchen table? Yes. Washing the dirty dishes and clearing off the kitchen counter? Yes. Dusting the baseboards? No. 🥱
When we look at a cleaning schedule that asks us to wipe down the mirrors and bathroom counter every day, it’s asking us to spend time doing something that will not produce a huge result. I’d wager to guess that the difference between wiping once a day and once a week is not all that big.
With this knowledge, I created a stay at home mom cleaning schedule that covers the tasks that make the most amount of impact with the least amount of effort.
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The tasks that are important to me might be different from those that are important to you and your family. And that’s okay. Different things work for different people.
Listed below are the chores that I complete on a weekly basis to keep the house up and running. The goal is to spend the least amount of time cleaning so that I can go do all the fun things of being a stay at home mom.
Stay at Home Mom Cleaning Schedule (For a Mom Who Hates to Clean!)
Monday:
- Clothes (wash, dry, fold, put away)
- Vacuum living room, front room, and playroom
- 15 minutes(ish) of dishes
- Quick tidy up (5 minutes or less)
Tuesday:
- Brush dogs
- Brush dogs’ teeth
- 15 minutes of dishes
- Quick tidy up (5 minutes or less)
If you've failed before, it's not your fault.
Wednesday:
- Sheets (wash, dry, make beds)
- 15 minutes of dishes
- Quick tidy up (5 minutes or less)
Thursday:
- Clothes (wash, dry, fold, put away)
- Brush dogs
- Brush dogs’ teeth
- 15 minutes of dishes
- Quick tidy up (5 minutes or less)
Friday:
- Husband’s work clothes (wash, dry, fold, put away)
- Heavies — towels, sweatshirts, etc. (wash, dry, fold, put away)
- 15 minutes of dishes
- Quick tidy up (5 minutes or less)
Saturday:
- Cut dogs’ nails
- Brush dogs
- Brush dogs’ teeth
- 15 minutes of dishes
- Quick tidy up (5 minutes or less)
Sunday:
- 15 minutes of dishes
- Quick tidy up (5 minutes or less)
Other chores
You might be wondering, “Okay, so when do you clean the toilets or mop the kitchen?”
The answer is when necessary. I used to schedule in daily, weekly and monthly tasks until I realized it was unnecessary.
I clean the toilet when I notice it looks dirty. I sweep and mop the bathroom and kitchen floors when I notice they have fur, leaves or dirt rolling around.
Here are some of the chores I do on an as-needed basis:
- Mop kitchen, bathroom, and entryway.
- Wash dogs.
- Vacuum bedrooms.
- Clean toilets.
- Wipe down bathrooms.
- Scrub away that weird ring that keeps showing up on our tub. 🛁
- Take out the trash.
- Clean microwave.
- Deep clean carpets.
We only do these chores when they become an issue. It makes no sense to clean something based on the calendar when messes don’t happen at any scheduled time.
We clean the toilets more frequently in months when accidents happen. More accidents = more mess = more cleaning. We vacuum more when the dogs are shedding and we clean the kitchen floor more when my one-year-old throws food on it (although let’s be honest, the dogs mostly take care of that! 😂)
Remember the 80/20 rule we talked about earlier? It stated that you can get 80% of the results by only doing 20% of the work.
Let’s break that down into real numbers. Earlier, I mentioned that many stay at home moms spend 3 hours daily on housework. That’s 21 hours spent on housework every week.
If you've failed before, it's not your fault.
If we break it down according to the 80/20 rule, it takes 4 hours per week to do big impact tasks like washing laundry and doing dishes. It takes a whopping 17 hours per week doing small level tasks like wiping bathroom counters daily or mopping the kitchen floor every day.
Even if the ratio is 50/50 instead of 80/20, it still makes a huge difference. Would you rather get a mostly clean house by cleaning 11 hours per week or an impeccably clean house with 21 hours per week?
It’s not about the hours. It’s what you do with those hours.
I get pretty fired up when talking about time management for moms. Does that make me a nerd? Probably. 🤓
Here’s the reason I get so emotional when talking about how we spend our time: These babies of ours will only be babies for a short amount of time. As Gretchen Rubin says, “The days are long but the years are short.”
In the blink of an eye, these precious little human beings will be out of the house and we’ll long for the chaos and craziness of these days we’re in right now.
So, let me ask you, how do you want to spend these precious hours? Do you want to spend them cleaning your home to perfection? Or do you want to do the 20% that truly makes a difference and spend the rest of the time having fun with your kids?
Bonding with them. Going to the playground. Teaching them to ride a bike or tie their shoes.
The choice is up to you. You can strive for perfection and always come up short. Perfection is a myth; it doesn’t exist.
Or you can develop a stay at home mom cleaning schedule that clears the way for fun to happen. You’re not just wiping the kitchen table, you’re making space for art crafts. Instead of scrubbing the tub until it sparkles, you wipe off 80% of it and make way for splashes and water fights.
If you've failed before, it's not your fault.
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- Kitchen Cleaning Checklist (with printable!)
4 Comments on Hate to Clean? This is the Best Stay at Home Mom Cleaning Schedule!
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Very helpful!!! I love how you keep the house running while focusing most of your energy on the kids. How/when do you keep toilets clean?
Hi Sarah, thanks for your comment! Great question! Honestly, I don’t clean the toilets very often. Maybe every few months. I focus on doing the things that need to be done on a weekly basis or else chaos breaks loose (mainly dishes and laundry). For the non-essentials, I clean them when they start to look dirty or if I have a particularly slow week and want to get ahead. Hope that helps! Feel free to ask any other questions!
Thank you for this post, I’m really glad I stumbled across it. Love from a fellow mama drowning in expectation xx
Kate, you got this! What are some things you could cut (you know…the things you “should” do…even if they don’t make a huge difference) that would make your cleaning easier?