Routines, schedules, and plans can save you the mental exertion of having to figure out what to do and when to do it. While this gives you freedom to devote your brainpower to deeper contemplation, it’s still worthwhile to re-evaluate the systems you have in place every once in a while. A little reflection and reset can shift your perspective on the routines that make up a significant portion of your day.
For example, you can breathe new life into an often-tedious task by re-assessing how you approach your cleaning responsibilities. A new routine could make them more efficient and thorough and may even sprinkle well-worn paths with a bit of fun. As with so much of what you confront in life, a new perspective opens up a whole new world of effects.
Many people like to divvy up their cleaning tasks so they get lots of small, routine tasks done on certain days of the week. If that’s you, you might find it refreshing to think bigger: for a change: Why not create your own cleaning “theme days”?
Why You Should Try “Theme Day” Cleaning
Thinking larger and broader can build a cleaning schedule that not only makes your cleaning time more efficient and thorough, but also makes you feel like you accomplished more. You get to approach as many cleaning tasks as time allows in a given day according to each day’s theme.
Here are some cleaning theme day examples:
1. Zone-Based Themes: Bedroom Day, Kitchen Day, Home Office Day
Breaking up your cleaning tasks by zone not only tells you exactly where you’ll be cleaning on any given day, but also gives you one really clean area every day and cycles through these regularly. If you keep up, you’ll feel like your home is perpetually clean.
Some zones you might have are the common areas zone, bedrooms zone, small zones like desks and the mudroom, the kitchen and eating zone, the outside zone, and the bathrooms zone. On the day you do a particular zone, you do all the tasks related to that area. For instance, in the bedrooms you’d dust dressers, wash bedding, and vacuum floors all in the same day. On bathroom zone day, you’d clean all the bathrooms.
One option with zone-based cleaning is designating certain more detailed tasks to a once-a-month deep cleaning week. On deep cleaning week, for instance, you’d empty out and wipe down the fridge interior on kitchen zone day.
2. Task-Basked Themes: Dusting Day, Decluttering Day, Floors Day
Another way to construct a theme cleaning schedule is to break down chores according to task. Choosing this tactic will enable one component of your home to be clean every day.
Some tasks you could use to dictate your cleaning chores for the day include dusting, floors, upholstery, decluttering, or surfaces. On floors day, you’d clean all the floors throughout the house. You’d vacuum carpets and hard floors, and then follow, where relevant, with mopping. Again, you could add a deep cleaning component to the theme where you’d, for instance, dust the baseboards once a month.
Testing out a new way to break down your cleaning duties can help you take control of your routine or reinvigorate a tired approach. And little changes and tweaks in our schedule are part the variety that’s the spice of life, even if they’re with something as practical as cleaning.
