Deep-Clean With 1 Chore a Day (FREE Printable)

Tired of feeling overwhelmed by house cleaning? Wanting to give your home a good deep-clean but can’t seem to find the time and energy to do all the work? Get started with just 1 chore a day and see your home transform!

True story, I am a messy person.

Cleaning has never been one of my strong suits. And especially not cleaning up after a house full of people! If I could, I would absolutely hire a cleaning person to just live in my house. In fact, I have actually tried to justify having a cleaning person back when we only made $17,000 a year! Absolutely ridiculous, I know. But that’s how much I hate cleaning!

Since then, I have just acknowledged that keeping my house clean is going to be a challenge, but it’s going to be something going to have to do. 

And staying on top of things is a big challenge for me. That was why coming up with a schedule for when I will be deep cleaning is so important. I love schedules and I really love to actually see a to-do list. (Yes, I know, I’m one of those people.) But you know what, it has really worked for me!

Chores aren’t fun for anyone, I know. But having a disaster zone for a house and not being able to have anybody over without allotting at least an entire 24 hours just to cleaning is even less fun.

It took a long time for me to get into the swing of things. But once I got into the habit of sticking to the schedule, everything started to go quicker and quicker because it changed from being deep cleaning to just being maintenance.

You can deep clean your house with just one chore a day.

Yes, it’s possible to deep-clean with 1 chore a day! You have to still stay on top of your daily chores, (the dishes, taking out the trash, wiping up the table, picking up toys, etc.) but by focusing all of your attention on one big chore every single day, it really helps to stay on top of the deep cleaning in your house.

Why do I love my schedule?

Because it only takes 20 or 30 minutes to finish the chore. And even more awesome: Saturday and Sunday are free days!

Monday

Ok, so I do 2 chores on Monday. But they’re easy chores!

Laundry day

I love laundry day! Mostly because I love my washing machine and dryer. Can we just for a second appreciate the washer and dryer? Where would we be without them!

Anyway, always keep the washing machine going! From the minute that you wake up to the minute that you’re ready to go to bed, have your washing machine and dryer going. I have Monday set aside for the day when all bed sheets, couch cushions, towels, and everything else that doesn’t normally get washed in a week needs to get washed today.

I do regular laundry throughout the rest of the week. But Monday is the day when all of the big stuff gets washed.

Vacuuming the downstairs

I vacuum a lot more than normal people; I have 3 cats and a dog on top of the 5 people that live here! (Yes, I know I’m crazy.) On Mondays, I vacuum everything in my downstairs. On top of my normal daily vacuuming of my living room, I vacuum the landing at the bottom of my stairs, the dining room, and make sure to get up anywhere that I might have missed in my normal daily vacuuming.

Tuesday

Surfaces

Anything that can be dusted, polished, disinfected, swept, or mopped gets done today. This deep-clean day might take a little longer than the other days just because of how many things there might be in your house to keep up on like this, but it’s really important.

You’ll still need to wipe down surfaces, like your kitchen counter and dining room table, every day. This is a day specifically for deep cleaning. I don’t dust every day so I rely on Tuesdays as my dusting day.

Wednesday

Declutter

I don’t know about you but it feels like I am constantly in a battle with clutter. Whether it’s the mail that accumulates sometimes in the middle of my dining room table or if it is toys that somehow keep accumulating in a corner, there’s clutter somewhere.

When it comes to a good deep-clean chore for the day, I use Wednesday as the day to sort and toss everything in my house. The paper piles in my kitchen are sorted and tossed. Any toys that are not being used or are just piling up, I sort them and put them where they belong or are you don’t eat them. Clothes that don’t fit anymore get put away on Wednesdays. Any kind of organizing that you can do to make your life easier, do it on Wednesday.

Thursday

Bathrooms

Clean everything from top to bottom! Assign this day to deep-clean your bathrooms. Scrub the floors, clean the sink, change the trash can, scrub the toilet, scrub the tub and shower combo clean the mirror, check the toilet paper supply, and anything else that you need to do in the bathroom, do it on Thursdays!

Friday

I know, you’re thinking “another day with 2 chores?!” But I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and I can easily deep clean the kitchen while I can’t leave the 5-foot radius around my stove when I’m making dinner.

Kitchen

Deep-clean and disinfect all of the surfaces and appliances. Wipe down all of your appliances so that they’re clean and shiny as you go into the weekend. Wipe down the cabinets, since they can really get dingy and greasy over time and you want to make sure you can stay on top of that! Clean out the fridge; make sure that there’s nothing gross lingering in the back corners of the fridge.

This way you’re all set for the weekend!

Vacuum the upstairs

Vacuum the stairs as you go up them, the hallway, all the bedrooms, and anywhere else in the upstairs that needs to be vacuumed.

Daily chores

Tidy up

Don’t leave a room empty-handed! If you are going into the laundry room, pick up the folded basket of clothes and take them to the rooms. When you have to use the bathroom, check and make sure that the trash can is empty. If you see something on the floor that needs to go upstairs, put it in a basket specifically for each person in your house and either have them take it upstairs or you can do it yourself.

Tidy up the main room

Whether you all spend your time in the living room or in the dining room or in the kitchen, clean it up. Vacuum every day, put away anything that has been taken out, wipe down the surfaces, anything else that is out of place before you go to bed, make it so that the room looks like you weren’t even in it.

The kitchen

All the dishes need to go in the dishwasher, the countertops are cleared off, the stove has to be wiped down after dinner, all the pots and pans are put away, and anything else in the kitchen that will keep it looking clean and tidy for the next morning.

Pro tips:

Pick a time of day that works for you.

If you would prefer to clean the house before the kids get up in the morning, awesome! If you would find it easier to clean up after they’ve gone to bed, go for it! Everything about cleaning is really up to your schedule! There’s no pressure for you to conform to what works for me!

Stick with it or it might not work.

It’s very important for you to stay on top of whatever schedule you decide to stick with. If you are only doing a little each day to deep-clean it’s very easy to stay on top of, but if you fall behind, it’s just as easy to get off track. The longer you stay on schedule, the easier the chores will be! I’d bet that after a month of doing your cleaning schedule, you could bang out cleaning up your kitchen in 10 minutes or less!

Make it a family event!

It took 5 people to make the mess in my house, don’t you think it’s a little unfair to ask that one person clean it all up?

Here’s my thing that I always say to my kids: “if you make a mess you clean it up.” I really try to maintain this mentality for them in everything they do around the house. They know that their job at the end of the day is to clean up their toys. They also know that they help wipe down the table after dinner, put their dishes into the dishwasher, and to unload the dishwasher when it’s clean. My kids even like to help vacuum! What 5-year-old boy likes to help vacuum?! But that’s what they’ve been used to since they were born!

By getting their help around the house early in their lives, they know that they have a role to play to help clean the house, too.

So there you have it – a plan that will help you deep clean your house without feeling overwhelmed, so just remember to take it one day at a time, and before you know it, your house will be sparkling! This deep-clean with 1 chore a day schedule has really worked for me. It has really worked for my whole family, too! It gives us the time to enjoy our lives without worrying about the state of our house!

 

What chores do you do daily?