March 11, 2024
If you know me personally, I value simplicity. One area that I desperately need simplicity is cleaning my home.
Cleaning can be so overwhelming, and I raise my hand to shedding tears over how to take care of this wonderful, messy gift called home.
To start let me encourage you that your house will NOT be perfectly clean if you
--have humans living in your house, especially the tiny variety
--let your kids actually have fun, build, play with multiple toys, and do messy stuff
--live in a fallen world that is in a constant state of entropy (ie deterioration)
--are the primary caregiver for your children and don’t have lots of outside help
--homeschool
Complex cleaning lists and routines overwhelm me, and inevitably I cannot get everything done that the list tells me to do (ahem, a list should not be bossing me around). I have a general cleaning cycle that I follow, working from the top of the house down, and this cycle takes me about 2 weeks to complete.
As a busy homeschool mom struggling with low energy, spending hours cleaning is not interesting or possible for me. I value working on my small business and spending meaningful time with my children (like snuggling with books on the couch) over perfection.
Yet cleaning and maintaining my home is extremely important to me. My mom instilled in me a strong desire to care for my home and she set an inimitable example of cleanliness. While my mom’s blitz weekend methods are not feasible for me physically, I have come to discover a little secret that I want to share with you today.
Are you ready for this? It must just blow you away…it’s so very simple.
Every week day I try to set aside 15 minutes for focused cleaning. And each day I try to include my children in these 15 minutes. We affectionately call this “chore time.”
By setting aside these 15 minutes each day I am
--caring for my home AND
--teaching my children the valuable skill of taking care of our home
I set my phone timer for 15 minutes, and we enjoy seeing how much we can accomplish in this manageable amount of time. More often than not, after my cell phone dings, I continue cleaning for another 10 or 15 minutes just because I want to.
You see, 15 minutes is not nearly as daunting as trying to clean the whole house at once!
15 minutes is doable.
Once I started to set aside 15 minutes each day for cleaning
--my house started to glow…in a nice, clean way from the inside out
--my kids started to learn home keeping
--I was seeing real progress in my home
The main key for me has been consistency, a little bit each day. If I can clean a little bit each day, then I can keep my home!
***Cleaning Confessions: In all honesty, I do clean more than 15 minutes each day. I have several daily habits that I do not include in this 15-minute sprint. Each day I try to do a light clean of the kitchen, walk the house and put things away, sweep visibly dirty floors, and wash a load of laundry. Also, I probably do official “chore time” with my kids 3 times a week. But hey, every bit helps!
What are your tips for home keeping?
-Ashley
Personal Disclosure
As the author of Ashley Qurollo Blog, all opinions are my own. Any possible applications are universal in nature, not directed at any one individual or people group. My sincere desire is to help others by sharing what I am learning. Nothing stated on this blog is ever intended to hurt others. Ashley Qurollo, owner of Ashley Qurollo Blog and Website, is not held liable in any way for any application of the ideas and thoughts stated here.
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Thanks for sharing this, Ashley!
What a great and simple method! I will just have to give this a try!
I love your ideas! I basically do what you do...the kids work on a task and I work on something in their proximity. My kids are still small enough that most of the time I'm just managing them, but we are all learning! Thank you so much for stopping by and commenting!
I love this idea Ashley. We probably need to do it at the end of the day for a pick up time. We finally got into a do-able routine this year too for housekeeping. Each day of the week is a specific chore that has to get done each week. Some are just for kids and I try to do a similar chore near that one. Monday: Bathrooms (I do the toilet, while they do the sink and mirror). Etc.