Have you ever walked into someone’s house that just feels clean?
The toys are put away, everything seems to have a place, and the kitchen isn’t overflowing with dishes, and you can’t find piles of laundry anywhere you look.
It feels peaceful, calm, and just plain nice, right?
But… it also can also feel a little unfair. I mean, you work so hard to clean your house, but no one would know that if they came over without giving you plenty of notice.
What gives?!
Do they know something that you don’t? Is there some sort of secret, or is it just that they got lucky with an easy-to-clean house and kids that pick up after themselves? Maybe they are in some sort of time warp and have more hours in their day than you do?
Well, as someone who manages to keep my house clean almost all the time while running a business for 40-50 hours a week with a two-year-old and a five-year-old at home with me full time, I going to spill the beans for you!
And in case you were wondering, it has nothing to do with having lots of extra time on my hands or being so bored at home with my kids that I can’t think of anything else to do all day but clean (just thought I’d clear that up since I’ve been asked those questions many times before by people who are curious how I keep my house so clean!)
I’m able to keep my house clean because I know 7 Secrets that make it Easy for me to keep my home neat and tidy.
7 Secrets of People Who Have Clean Houses
Before we get started, I just wanted to clarify that the real secret to all of this is in the power of easy, small habits that make keeping the house clean a simple part of my daily and weekly rhythm.
And if you put these habits into practice, I promise that your house will be clean all the time too!
1) They Make Their Beds Every Day
I know it seems simple. But let me tell you, it makes a huge difference.
Making your bed in the morning makes your room feel so much cleaner, makes it less likely that you will pile things on your bed through the day, teaches your kids to make their beds, and helps you check something off your list as soon as you get up!
Making my bed is the one part of My Morning Routine that I do every. single. day… even on the weekends or days that I sleep in a little longer… because I love the way that it makes my room feel.
If you aren’t in the habit of making your bed every day, give try it out and see if it makes a difference in making your house feel cleaner.
If you want to see how to create effective morning and evening routines for yourself and your children, check out this post!
2) They Stay On Top Of the Laundry
People who have clean houses all the time have a simple, predictable laundry routine.
Whether the piles of clothes in your house are dirty, clean, or folded and waiting to be put away… it adds to the clutter in your home.
Keeping your laundry under control will make a huge difference in how clean your house feels.
The biggest thing to remember when you are setting up your laundry routine is to do one load, from start to completely finished, every day instead of trying to do all of your laundry on one day each week.
When you do all of your laundry on the same day, the dirty pile of clothes just morphs into a clean pile of clothes waiting to be folded.
But when you do one smaller load every day, it is a much more manageable amount of laundry to fold and you are much more likely to complete the task instead of just leaving the mountain of clean laundry sitting there for everyone to search through all week long.
If you want to have a house that feels clean whenever you walk into it, keep your kitchen clean!
Nothing else can make your house look dirtier than a kitchen that is out of control… and nothing else is more visible to other people if they come over.
Keeping your kitchen clean doesn’t mean that you just clean up the kitchen at the end of the day, it means keeping the kitchen clean after every meal.
People who have clean houses all the time, don’t actually clean their house every single day.
But they also don’t just clean their house once a week and expect it to stay clean the rest of the time.
Instead, they have a simple weekly cleaning routine that allows them to chip away at their weekly cleaning tasks all through the week… while spending the least amount of time possible actually cleaning.
5) They Make Time for Cleaning In Their Daily Schedule
Setting aside a small amount of time to clean every day will make sure that everything gets clean every week… without having to clean all the time.
The best way to be sure that you set aside time for your weekly cleaning tasks is to create a Daily Block Schedule and have a specific block that you get your cleaning done in.
Since I am a Work-at-Home mom, I use my morning block to get my daily cleaning done.
If you work outside the home, you may need to either get up early if you want to get your cleaning done in the morning, or you may need to do your cleaning routine in your evening or nighttime block.
Figure out what will work best for your family and your lifestyle as you set a predictable time every day to clean.
One of the fastest ways to make your house dirty again after you clean it is to not put things back where they belong.
Putting things back where they go immediately when you are done with them will save you time and energy when it’s time to clean.
Bonus Tip! They Don’t Do It Alone
People who have clean houses all the time enlist the help of everyone else in their house to help it stay clean too… at least if they don’t want to go crazy trying to do it all themselves.
Trying to keep your house clean when everyone else is messing it up will only make you… and everyone else… really frustrated.
Teach everyone in your house to put things back when they are finished with them and your house will instantly feel cleaner!
Ready to Start Easily Managing Your Home?
If you are ready to get organized and make a plan that will help you run your home without stress, check out my course Put Your Home on Autopilot!
This course walks you through the steps to get your home practically running itself!
In Put Your Home on Autopilot, you will learn how to set up effective cleaning systems, set up your day for success, and start making time for the things that matter most.
In just one month you will go from feeling overwhelmed to in control. And if you have any questions along the way, I’m only an email away!
What? It’s not your favorite thing in the whole wide world? Oh sorry, I must have been thinking about something else.
Here’s the thing: I truly believe we aren’t enjoying this piece of our lives because we aren’t doing it correctly.
When I was looking to streamline my cleaning process, I searched Pinterest faithfully, read every infographic studiously, and blog hopped religiously for a few weeks before I realized that none of the ideas were even close to practical for me.
Everything I read not only had a very long list of daily duties but also required deep cleaning a different area of the house every day in addition to decluttering for 15 minutes a day. I just don’t have time to clean all day every day with two young kiddos.
And, maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t really want to.
I actually read one schedule that claimed you needed to clean every window in your house. Every. Single. Week. Am I the only one who doesn’t have time for that?
Next, I tried to do all my cleaning one day each week. I started doing this on Friday, but the cleaning in addition to making our special Friday night meal usually left me feeling edgy. I tried moving the cleaning day to Thursday (leftover night at our house,) but I was usually frustrated when the house didn’t *feel* clean for the weekend.
Then came my *ah-ha moment* when I was working on creating my weekly schedule: The house will be clean if each area that needs attention is cleaned once each week… even if it isn’t all on the same day.
Let’s get into how I built a cleaning schedule that I not only love but is so easy to stick to because it saves you time and energy.
And if you prefer to watch instead of read, here is the video that goes with this post:
How to Create a Weekly Cleaning Schedule
1) Make a List
Grab a pen and a notebook, or my Printable Workbook and make a list of everything you feel needs to be done each week. This list will be different for everyone. Only write the things you really think need to be done every week (no matter what anyone else says!)
When I did this, I listed each item out individually. For example, instead of writing “bathrooms,” I listed each bathroom separately.
Then I could decide later it if made more sense to do my bathrooms on the same day or if it worked better to split it up.
If your upcoming week is more (or less!) busy than normal, don’t use that to create your cleaning routine.
You want to base your cleaning routine off of a typical week for your family.
We had a week not long ago in which one of my daughters celebrated a birthday, we went to the museum with friends, I had to stake-up and transplant a ridiculous amount of tomato plants (it’s a long story,) my sister came to visit, and my parents came to visit. I didn’t have a single free day.
Was I able to get my daily cleaning done? Nope. Did it stress me out? Not even a little bit.
Why? Because I know my house gets cleaned consistently. No one is going to know if the floors were vacuumed that morning or six days earlier (I have the type of carpet that gets messed up as soon as someone walks across it.) As long as the toys are picked up, which the girls do before every nap and bedtime, the house will be clean enough.
Your schedule works for you, not the other way around. If you make your schedule something you can stick with the majority of the time, it isn’t going to matter if you miss a day here or there.
There is freedom in consistency, my friend!
3) Pick Your Cleaning Days
Next you will want to decide which days you want to clean on. I prefer to do a little every day and take Saturday off.
If cleaning on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday works best with your weekly schedule, then do that. Don’t try to cram cleaning into an already stressful or overbooked day. It will only make you want to give up on your new schedule.
Set yourself up for success and be realistic.
4) Divide and Conquer
Divide your list of everything that needs cleaned in a week among the days that you are cleaning. Be strategic here and work with your weekly schedule instead of against it.
For example: if you only have a small amount of time on one of your cleaning days, decide to clean one bathroom and nothing more. Don’t over-commit yourself.
If you try to cram too much into a small amount of time, you will only become frustrated when you realize that you can’t clean three bathrooms in 10 minutes.
Sunday’s are always a bit of a wildcard at our house. Sometimes we are home all day hanging out, but other times we are barely at the house between all of our adventures. This means I have very little predictable time to get anything accomplished.
Often once we get to Sunday night there are remnants of our weekend happenings all over the place. So my only job on Sunday, according to my cleaning schedule, is to tidy the house.
That’s it.
It’s a little like hitting the reset button before Monday and it gives me a good outlook for the week ahead.
5) Gut Check
Evaluate your schedule. How do you feel about it? Does it seem doable? Will your house be clean when it needs to be?
We like to have friends over on Friday evenings for supper or for after church lunches on Saturday; so I like to ensure that my downstairs *feels* clean on Friday. I vacuum the floors and clean the small downstairs bathroom.
Easy, right? But my company doesn’t have to know how easy it was🤫. If you like to have people over on Wednesday evening, maybe clean your guest bathroom on Tuesday or Wednesday.
If something doesn’t feel right or seem doable, now is the time to change it. Go with your gut!
Move things around until you are happy with it. Sometimes it takes trying it out for a week before you realize you need to switch a day. As soon as you realize it, make the change!
If you feel overwhelmed when you look at it, see if you can drop anything. Do you really need to clean your oven every single week?
Could you rotate a couple of items bi-weekly? Maybe you could alternate cleaning your bathrooms so each bathroom gets cleaned every other week.
You can keep testing and keep working your routine until you have a cleaning schedule that you can rock every week, while still enjoying some downtime.
If you are struggling to find time in your day to get your cleaning done, I highly recommend creating a Simple Daily Block Schedule.
3) You have a clutter problem.
If you have your laundry, kitchen, and daily routines in place, and you’ve implemented your new cleaning schedule, but your house still feels dirty… you don’t have a cleaning problem.
You have a clutter problem.
And the great news about having a clutter problem is: you can fix it!
