Even if you’re a neat person, you’ve likely been surprised by how often your home needs cleaning. Perhaps you tidied a week ago and now you’re looking around at the layer of dust collecting on your furniture saying to yourself, “Didn’t I just clean?” 

Having a cleaning schedule will help you stay on track and put you in the right headspace. When you clean in a regular, predictable way, you’re mentally prepared for the work ahead. 

A regular schedule goes beyond a basic daily cleaning house checklist. It’s a comprehensive weekly cleaning schedule that helps you tackle all of the problem areas of your home in an organized and controlled way. You might even prevent some tedious deep cleaning if you keep up with this weekly model. 

Once you make a cleaning schedule for your home, you’ll realize that upkeep isn’t so bad. Perhaps it will even feel rewarding. Who doesn’t love the feel of a clean home?

How to make a cleaning schedule

Be consistent 

Pick a day, any day, and stick to it. 

Establish expectations for yourself by setting up a monthly cleaning schedule and designating a certain day of the week for these tasks. For the first month or so, keep yourself on track. Even if you want to skip a clean, try not to. This will help you establish a cleaning routine and achieve consistency over time.  

If you have a huge space to clean or don’t have much time on one given day of the week, you can split the work over two days. As we mentioned above, when you mentally prepare for an upcoming cleaning session, you won’t be surprised by doing this chore. 

Make a plan 

Big projects are daunting simply because we don’t have a plan. Once we chart out the steps to follow, an insurmountable task becomes more approachable. 

In any cleaning schedule template, first divide the work by room. You may not need to clean every corner of your home once a week. For example, if you have a guest room or extra bathroom that no one uses frequently, you can probably skip these in your weekly cleans. 

However, rooms like the kitchen and living room are musts, as are any bedrooms or bathrooms you use regularly. We’ll give you permission to skip the hall closet or the laundry room; save those for your spring cleaning. 

Once you’ve determined the rooms you have to tidy, make a cleaning checklist of the tasks that need to be done in each. It helps to physically enter each room and take stock of the space. This way, you won’t accidentally leave a task off your list. 

When we say “make a plan,” we mean generating a document. You can write out your list by hand or use a printable template. Just don’t rely on your memory alone—at least not at first. Plus, when you have a physical checklist, you get the satisfaction of ticking off tasks as you complete them.

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Gather your cleaning supplies 

There are two good ways of taking on a house cleaning project. You can move room to room, completing all cleaning tasks in one space before progressing to another, or you can do the same task in each space. For example, you can dust in every room and then mop the floors of your entire home. 

We recommend a hybrid model. Tasks like dusting or mopping are easy to complete in an organized way even if you’re jumping from room to room. But it’s best to tidy the whole kitchen, for example, in one shot. Wash and dry and dirty dishes, put them away, wipe down and declutter countertops, and leave the kitchen floors for the end, when you’re doing the rest in your home. 

Regardless of how you choose to work, gather your supplies before you begin. It’s tiring to stop mid-clean and look for a scrub brush or the bathroom cleaning spray (especially if you have a two-story space and will need to go up and down the stairs for items). 

Set a time limit 

Each day has limited hours, and you can only spend so many cleaning. Be realistic about how much time you can dedicate to this project. If it’s two hours, set a timer for that period, and when the alarm goes off, stop. 

If it helps you to stay on track, divide the time up by room. Kitchens and bathrooms will likely take longer than bedrooms, and we recommend starting with the tough and time-consuming tasks and leaving the easier ones for last. This method gets the least fun parts of cleaning out of the way first and reserves the tidier spaces for the end.

If your timer goes off and you didn’t get to fluff the pillows in the bedroom, this omission will be far less obvious than, say, leaving a pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

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Give yourself a break

Once you’ve become a pro at your cleaning schedule, feel free to take a breather from time to time. Don’t force yourself to tidy up on your birthday just because it lands on the day of the week you’ve set aside for cleaning. Or, if you’ve had a particularly busy week, consider doing a perfunctory job or morphing your normal plan into a weekend house cleaning schedule instead. 

Good habits are hard to make, but they are also hard to break, so if you must prioritize another activity over cleaning from time to time, we doubt this will affect your consistency. 

When starting out, think of your plan as an example cleaning schedule. Then, as you learn what works, make changes. Add tasks you may have initially forgotten and remove ones that don’t actually need to be done every week. The secret to cleaning your house regularly and well is finding the right rhythm and method for you. 

Missing a few cleaning supplies? Not a problem: Gopuff is here to help. You can order everything you need in seconds and have it at your door in a matter of minutes. Start mapping out your cleaning schedule now because it’s time to start a great new habit.