Cleaning Routine

With the move to the new house, Dylan and I had a discussion about chores and housekeeping and yard work.

With a bigger house and now a yard, we needed to arrange our cleaning routine. I did some research and looked into what other couples have for their routines as well as came across a couple lists on realsimple.com and thenest.com.

One of the biggest things is making cleaning part of our daily routine. I know that sounds like no fun, but it really is intended to limit our cleaning on the weekends so we don't have to spend half a day cleaning.

Here are a couple of our plans/goals for our keeping our house clean:

• Since we have the yard now, Dylan will be the main one taking care of it, doing the lawn mowing and trimming. In return I will take over the laundry instead of both of us doing it like we did before we moved. This actually makes a lot of sense since I am much better at doing laundry. I will still help out with the yard, like picking up the doggie messes and helping with the weeding.
• Be better about the cleaning the kitchen before bed. Dylan and I both decided to make this commitment and it has gone pretty well. We do much better than at our old house, but still room for improvement. We still need to work on wiping out the sink so that it stays shiny, but we'll need to invest in some barkeepers friend for that. Also, the floor. I am pretty good about ignoring the floor. With hardwood floors now though, we do need to be better about cleaning it.
• Clean the bathrooms on a more daily basis. Just wipe the sink and mirrors down at least in our bath room and try to be better about the guest bathroom.
• Vacuum. Right now this needs to be an almost daily routine with the dog shedding, but either way we should be doing it twice a week year round I think.
• General pick up. This is something I have been pretty good about. I am trying to not leave my stuff downstairs at all and just put it away when I get home, but it never goes as well as planned.
• Put away clothes/jewelry. I am good at this. Dylan has been better at the new house. 
• Making the bed every day. We make it about 5 days a week right now, but we are getting there!
• We do wipe the shower out with a dry towel everyday, but I need to be better about cleaning it every week (the floor mainly) and do the rest of the bathroom once a week.
• Truth be told I am a slacker on  washing sheets/towels, so I figured by doing it every week that will help. Following a post on thenest.com I really should clean our comforters more often too… This has been terrible recently since we have had so many guests at our house so I am washing the sheets all the time, but I like having guests so ah well, I guess it is worth it.

That is the plan, so we'll see how it goes. I just need to be home enough so that we can actually get a little bit of a routine going!