My Weekly Tasks

It’s Wednesday. I’m rushed for time. Same old story as every Wednesday.

So since I haven’t been home and therefore haven’t made any progress, I thought I’d share my weekly tasks and how they’re working for me, all together in one post.

Here goes:

Monday – Laundry.

Tuesday – Bathrooms.

Wednesday – Out all day, but I do my grocery shopping on Wednesdays, so I consider that a big old necessary task.

Thursday – Mop the kitchen

Friday – Dust and Vacuum.

Saturday and Sunday – Not gonna happen.

So there you go.

If you’re not a slob, and there’s some huge and glaring omission from this list, please don’t tell me. I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually and blog about it. For now, I’m pretty pleased with myself.

So, how’s it going with all of these?

I started the weekly tasks about 2 months ago. For the first 6 months or so of the blog, I added a daily non-negotiable task almost every week. Those made a huge difference in our home. They were designed (by me, NOT an organizing expert) to help me build habits that I’ve never had. I did them to help me start to see things that had always escaped my selective slob-vision. Things like piles of shoes, newspapers (multiple weeks’ worth) on the kitchen floor, and bathroom counters covered in . . . . stuff.

The daily tasks made a huge difference, and they’re a great thing to refocus on when I feel things start to spiral. I attempt to do them everyday, but even if I only do 4 or 5 a day, and have one day a week when I do them all, the house mostly stays out of chaos.

I began the weekly tasks after I felt like I had the daily ones somewhat under control. I knew that my house not as much of a disaster, but I also knew that the real and basic cleaning, like the weekly tasks listed above, was still only getting done randomly. And for me “randomly” doesn’t mean as soon as I notice that the tub is getting a bit grimy, it means when I look down in the shower and happen to notice that there’s at least a month’s worth of grime built up under my feet.

The weekly tasks are making a big difference. I’ve been mostly consistent with them, and if I’m truly unable (meaning I have a really good excuse) to do them one week, I know that at least they’ll get done the next week. The only one that this really happens with is mopping. Every other Thursday, I have a morning activity, so I have been mopping every other week. When I compare that to my previous method of mopping every Christmas, I think it’s okay.

But the weekly tasks are a little tiresome. They do get easier the more times I do them, and they are much easier on the weeks when I’ve done my daily tasks consistently.

But . . . .

Honestly, they make me feel like I’m always running, and not getting as many big and showy decluttering projects done as I did last fall. I guess that’s how it’s actually supposed to be. If you are consistently doing the real (and necessary) cleaning every week, and your daily tasks everyday, you avoid the need to spend 4 days a week, every week, doing major decluttering.

And here’s the part I didn’t want to learn. Keeping a clean house is work. Normal people make it look easy, but it’s work. When I walk into someone’s home that always seems perfectly clean, I get jealous that it’s so easy for them. But it probably isn’t. They probably get down on their knees and scrub that corner behind the bathroom door where their hubby’s leg-hair collects. And they probably do it before they jump out of their skin thinking it’s some sort of breathing organism.

Their back hurts too from bending over the dishwasher and they probably don’t like the smell when they clean behind their little boy’s potty.

But they do it, because it’s what needs to be done to have a clean, welcoming, comfortable home.

I am enjoying my more-clean, more-welcoming, more-comfortable-than-it-used-to-be home. And although my eyes have been opened to the amount of work this requires, it is completely worth it.