How to Use a Weekly Planner to Customize a Household Cleaning System

Spring is in the air. Well, where I live, that’s the pollen I’m smelling and sneezing. 😊 Seriously, though, this is the time of year that we start to think about doing some spring cleaning to get our homes in tip top shape.

Spring cleaning is a little like New Year’s resolutions. Since we live in a modern society, there’s no longer anything special about this time of year that should have us going into a crazy cleaning frenzy.

In other words, assigning the spring as our time to do deep cleaning is as arbitrary as setting goals in January. But, it’s a tradition, so plenty of folks feel that it’s as good a time as any to do it.

I am not as keen on spring cleaning. We have a decently large house and I have never had a housekeeper. So, in the past, I’ve found myself cleaning like a madwoman before company comes and at other times, I’ve just let the house go as I’ve had to focus on things like work, volunteering, and well, breastfeeding.

What I have learned is that deep cleaning my house is not something I can do all at once. Even if I could take a week off of work and devote it entirely to cleaning (not my idea of a fun stay-cation), I find that I get tired easily when I clean.

I have to break up my cleaning sessions or else I get burned out and lose steam before a quarter of the house is in shape. This is why spring cleaning just doesn’t work for me.

I have used lots of different cleaning systems in the past, including the FlyLady system, Real Simple Magazine’s suggestions, chore charts from Pinterest and other blogs, and even Stephanie O’Dea’s “Totally Together: Shortcuts to an Organized Life.” (#Ad below). This book is basically an undated home chore planner, but I have used it to get ideas for what and when to clean.

I really loved elements of each one, but after a while, I would realize that the routine they suggested became overwhelming or just didn’t fit my schedule. I work full time during the week, so that means I don’t have time to do big cleaning jobs on weekdays. But, each workday is different, so I might have more time on some days to get things done than on others.

This is where I decided to take what I learned from all of these systems and just use a planner to assign myself some chores. I wrote about this over a year ago in an article where I encourage folks to “Ditch the Chore Chart.”

In my original system, I figured out which were “my chores” to complete during the week (while making sure my kids and husband have their own chores). Those were added to my weekly schedule based on each days’ time. Since it’s not a preset system, I can tailor each day to what I have planned (for example, moving heavier cleaning chores to days I know I won’t be working late or have events at my kids’ schools).

While I have used that system for almost 2 years and created a great weekly chore system, I found I wasn’t getting to do the deep cleaning and decluttering that’s necessary to keep our homes truly clean and orderly. In other words, I was finding myself in need of something akin to spring cleaning- but scheduled in a more regular, spread out, and simpler way.

So, I’ve expanded beyond the weekly layout and have used other parts of my planner to help me keep track of everything from home projects to monthly and seasonal cleaning tasks. I’m still tweaking as I go, but this has been a game changer.

Below, you’ll get some tips for putting together your own task lists; learn how to use the weekly, monthly, and yearly overview layouts of any planner to create a system that works for your home; and read a quick review of the latest 18-month classic vertical Happy Planner that I’m using for 2021-2022 for my home planner.

Tips for Planning Household Cleaning and Task Lists

There is no right or wrong way to arrange your house-cleaning schedule. If you have a system that works for you and you’re just interested in how to use a planner for that purpose, feel free to skip to the next section. However, if you’d like some ideas for how to come up with the tasks to place in a planner, check out these suggestions.

Are you cleaning, deep cleaning, or decluttering?

Getting started is difficult to do if you do not have a handle on what stage of cleanliness your home or certain rooms are. If your entire house is completely orderly and uncluttered, you may just want to arrange your schedule to cover basic cleaning.

However, if your house, or some of the rooms require more work, you may need to assign and plan for more deep-cleaning tasks for those areas. Moreover, clutter (things that you aren’t using or enjoying in your house and are just taking up space), has to be removed before you can really think about how best to clean.

The first step, then, is to decide on what is the priority for each room in your house. Go through it with a list in hand and for each room, write down what needs to be done to make it look clean and company-ready.

If all you need is to dust surfaces and vacuum, that is an easy chore to add to your weekly list. However, if the room has areas that require deep cleaning or contains a lot of items that need a new home (preferably outside of yours), it may need extra attention.

Breaking up your home into different areas or Zones

I used the FlyLady home cleaning system for many years. When it was just me and my husband, it helped to keep our apartment tidy. It kept us on track after my son was born when we lived in a little starter home. However, when we moved into a larger home for our growing family, I found we could not keep up with the FlyLady system.

However, I learned a lot from that system and took some key lessons that I have morphed to work for me and my family. The first was to divide the house into “Zones,” which is a few rooms that are worked on for each week during the month. 

FlyLady had zones that she recommended for everyone and would send out emailed cleaning reminders each day. I have found that how we define our zones depends on the size and amount of things in those spaces.

You can focus on one Zone per month, for deep cleaning and decluttering purposes, or one zone per week if your home is already tidy and decluttered.

Here are some ideas for rooms in your house that can be stand-alone zones or ones that can be combined with others, depending on how big the room is:

Remember that decluttering will allow you to more quickly clean. The less stuff you have sitting on surfaces or the floor, the easier it will be to dust or clean those areas.

5-6 Zones Per Month

If your home is not in need of truly deep cleaning or decluttering, you can probably make your way around the house each month. Combine cleaning areas into 5-6 Zones and devote one week on your calendar to each (noting that there will be the occasional 6-week month, and you can divide up smaller tasks on those shorter weeks). Try to keep the larger areas for the weeks on your calendar that are full weeks. Smaller, less work-intensive areas can be scheduled for shorter weeks on your calendar.

So, for example, if the month starts on a Wednesday and ends on a Tuesday, schedule your lighter cleaning zones (laundry room, front stoop, dining room) for the beginning and end of the month and make sure your more intense cleaning zones (kitchen and bathrooms) are set for the full weeks.

1 Zone Per Month

If your zones need more work, you can always assign one zone to an entire month. This would mean that you are giving yourself an additional zone task a few days a week to make sure you tackle the whole room by the end of the month.

I am trying to deep clean and further declutter all of my rooms and am trying this method this year. What it means is that I have a monthly home focus. Last month, I worked on the living room. In February, I tackled the kitchen. This month is the foyer and hallway.

To keep things simple and not fill all my free time each day with chores, I assign myself 1-2 days a week of a special chore from this zone. By the end of the month, the room looks better, and that’s all that matters.

Brainstorming chores for each area of your home

After you have determined your zones and which areas need more attention, it’s time to figure out how to best spend your time. Again, there’s no right or wrong way as long as it works for you. Here are some ideas for brainstorming the areas to clean in your home:

Everyday Chores

These are tasks that need to be done daily to keep a home healthy and tidy. It’s not a big deal if you miss one day with these, but it’s best they get done most of the time. Once you have made a habit of these, you won’t need to keep them on a chore list. They should be as natural as brushing your teeth and only take a couple of minutes to do as you walk around your home.

Weekly Chores

These tasks don’t need to be done as frequently, but it’s important they get done at least once a week. I find it’s best to schedule them throughout my week according to which days I have time to get them done. I sometimes have to move them around depending on my schedule.

You’ll note that I added vacuuming and dusting to this list. I understand that some folks feel the need to do that every day. If you have time to make it a daily chore, go for it. If you’re struggling to get it done at all, at least try to make it a weekly task.

Monthly Chores

These are chores that you can slowly start to incorporate into your routine to really get your home clean and tidy. Again, some folks may do these more often, but if you can get around to them about once a month, I say you’re doing just fine.

Seasonal/Yearly Chores

These are going to vary according to everything from where you live to the type of home you own. But, I am hoping this list will give you an idea of the kinds of chores you may need to add to your list to get done on a yearly or seasonal basis.

The chores on these lists have to get done and some are just a matter of scheduling someone to drop by and do some maintenance. But, they’re ones that we often don’t remember to do unless we write them down and add them to our schedules. Planners are so helpful for these!

Using A Planner for a Home Chore System

It is not that hard to customize your own home chore system. It may seem daunting at first, but there is nothing more satisfying than having a house cleaning system that is tailored to your life, your home’s needs, and your schedule.

While I use a Happy Planner Vertical Weekly for my house cleaning system, any weekly planner will do. The reason for this is that a weekly planner will provide you with a monthly calendar and weekly layouts.

I also recommend you use a planner that includes some form of a yearly overview. These come in many forms. Just make sure there are two or four pages where you have all the months of the year and some space to write in tasks for each month.

What is helpful is that as long as you have your lists of daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal/yearly chores, you can fit them into your schedule week by week or month by month.

Here are some tips to get you started:

• Go slowly. Start with just doing a daily routine until those become habits. Next, add your weekly chores (no more than 2 per day) until you are able to get each done in a few minutes). Once those are working for you, you can add a monthly, seasonal, or yearly chore to your list. Developing one habit at a time will help you set up a routine that sticks.
• Give yourself days off. Notice in my monthly planner example (below) that I do not have a monthly or seasonal chore set for every day of the week. And, some days at the end of the month, I’ve reserved as catch up days. Building a little grace into your schedule will make it more likely that you’ll complete your tasks and feel like you’ve accomplished your house-cleaning goals for the month.
• Ask for help. I do not do every weekly chore by myself. If I lived in a small house all by myself, that might be doable, but I don’t. Our house isn’t a mansion but, four people live here and create a lot of mess and work. So, as I mentioned in that last article about ditching the chore chart, I have delegated some of the chores to other members of my family. My son mainly handles vacuuming while my daughter does the dusting in all but the master bedroom. The kids also deal with trash, recycling, watering plants, and they now clean a bathroom and do their own laundry.
• Do not spend all day cleaning. Most of these chores take only a few minutes to complete. Only a few are deep cleaning tasks. Otherwise, do as much as you can each time and move on. If you need to set a timer to stop yourself from going overboard with cleaning, do so. I try to spend less than 30 minutes a day maximum doing my chores.

Here is how I have set up the household chores in my planner:

Yearly overview. The yearly overview is where you can plan out those annual and seasonal chores and tasks. Simply decide the time of year that a particular task makes sense to schedule it (e.g., power-washing after the spring pollen makes sense, just like having the chimney checked in the fall before you’ll be using it for the winter). Here is where I add tasks such as replacing air filters and reminders for scheduling service calls for our HVAC unit. Each month, as I set up the monthly layout on my calendar, I check to see if anything needs to be included from the yearly overview for that month.

Monthly calendar. This section has been a game changer. Each month, I list out some common monthly tasks, set the home focus room or zone I’m concentrating on, and include yearly and seasonal reminders. I write it out by comparing it to my personal planner and make sure not to add any extra chores to days that I am scheduled to be working late or might be out of town. This way, I don’t sabotage my home system by giving myself a chore on a day I’m guaranteed not to do it. I use the side bar to remind myself of the home focus for the month and will include any reminders there.

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Weekly layout. My Happy Planner is a classic vertical, which means I have three vertical boxes per day to fill with whatever I have to get done that day. Some folks use these for morning, afternoon, and evening obligations. Others assign it different categories. I purchased this planner to be my “home planner,” as I found that my main personal planner was so filled with work obligations and appointments, I didn’t have the space to include lists of things I needed to do for myself and my home. At one point, I kept my kids’ to do’s in this planner, but I’ve since changed it for the following three categories: home, self-care, and fitness. The home section is where I list my chores for the day. I have some chores that are assigned to each day and only change when my schedule won’t allow for me to get them done. They will also include a monthly, seasonal, or home-focus chore also depending on my schedule. I set this up at the beginning of each week.

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A Peek at My New 18-Month Beauty in Florals Happy Planner!

For the upcoming year, I have once again chosen a classic-sized vertical planner. I find that the size is just right for scheduling everything I need for my home and my personal time (7.75” x 9.75”). It is an arc-disc binding system, which means that I can easily add and remove pages.

As a vertical layout planner, each day, weekends included, have three vertical boxes and a sidebar for notes. Because it is an 18-month planner, I can do long-term planning as the planner runs from July 2021 to December 2022.

Although I loved the Boho Stargazer vertical weekly I purchased for 2020-2021, I found that one drawback was the color scheme. Each month had either a peach or blue-colored alternating theme with what looks like a watercolor cloud running down the spine of the weekly layouts and across the top of the monthly layouts. As I started decorating my planner this year, I found it constraining to work with the colors and the pre-printed designs on the monthly and weekly spreads.

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The Beauty in Florals planner has a minimal design. The month, numbers, and days of the week are in simple, black classic font. There is no design in the spine and the boxes are entirely in black and white. The sidebar for both the monthly and weekly layouts is a black and white dot grid design. Because of this, I feel I’ll have more options for decorating my pages and keeping them looking simple and clean when I don’t feel like adding decorations.

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The monthly dividers are simply beautiful, with dark floral designs and simple but classic lettered phrases that are, as with all Happy Planners, really encouraging. Above are a few of the 18 dividers in this planner.

These are the main differences between my new Happy Planner and last year’s model that I’m still in and very much enjoying. If you’d like more information about these 18-month planners, be sure to check out the review I provided in this article.

If you haven’t found a home-cleaning system that works for your life and schedule, it may be time to customize your own. I hope the lists and tips provided here give you the confidence to try putting together a weekly and monthly calendar schedule that will have your home looking tidy in just 30 minutes a day.

If you have questions or suggestions, please leave a comment below- I’d love to hear from you!

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** Images on graphics, courtesy of Canva.com Images of spray bottle and cleaning supplies found on Unsplash. Image of floor sweeper found on Pixabay.

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