January 27, 2025
Hi there! I’m Ashley Qurollo. Welcome to my virtual home. For those of you who have supported my blog for years (and possibly even been in my real home), welcome back. For those of you who have never “met” me and have landed here from a popular Pinterest pin, welcome, too! I hope you feel comfortable and relaxed here. If I could, I’d make you a cup of coffee (or tea), and invite you to sit in my sometimes-tidy living room where real life and living happens.
If I had to guess, you are probably here for a reason. You might want some “answers” about how to keep your home clean and tidy, and you are hoping this blog post will give you some direction. Let me assure you that by the end of this blog post, my goal is for you to be encouraged about the care of your home. I hope to start a whole series on my concept of a “Cleaning Cycle” as there is no possible way I can fit all of the concepts into one blog post.
In case you are wondering, I have come up with this concept of a "Cleaning Cycle" all on my own. There may be a popular influencer out there who uses the same wordage and even teaches a similar concept. That’s fantastic! I have honestly not copied her or been influenced by her content. What I’m sharing with you today is what I have learned by the “school of hard knocks,” not by reading or watching content created by others.
What My Cleaning Cycle Is
Let’s start at the beginning: so what exactly is a cleaning cycle? I received a kind but honest question on my popular Pinterest pin, “What is the difference between a cleaning schedule and a cleaning cycle?” I believe that by answering this question, I can convey to you what I mean by a cleaning cycle.
A schedule implies something bound by time with a definite deadline. Cleaning schedules abound online, many of them with detailed lists for specific tasks to accomplish on specific days. Honestly and kindly, I’ve tried following some of those cleaning schedules, and I just cannot keep up with them. Due to many variables in my life (homeschooling, children, health, helping my husband, and other responsibilities), I inevitably cannot carry out the suggested tasks for each day. I quickly grew tired of feeling like a failure when I could not keep up with these schedules. By the end of the week, I was so far off schedule that I sometimes froze and did not even know where to pick up in my cleaning.
As someone who struggles with destructive perfectionism, I knew I needed to change my outlook on cleaning, particularly how I went about structuring the cleaning of my home. There were times I looked around my home and simply cried because I did not know where to start, and I simply could not maintain the rigorous schedules that “professionals” recommended in posts or videos.
There were times I looked around my home and simply cried because I did not know where to start, and I simply could not maintain the rigorous schedules that “professionals” recommended in posts or videos.
I finally learned to let go of other’s ideas about cleaning the home (many of which were excellent!) and come up with my own system that worked for me and made sense to me. My home may not be as clean or tidy as some popular influencers, but I am truly doing the very best I can in my home. I often put greater burdens on myself to keep my home than need to be there.
In slight contrast with a schedule, a cycle implies something that keeps going around or reoccurring but is not necessarily bound by time. For example, a bicycle tire keeps spinning around and around as long as a rider propels the pedal with his foot. A young toddler just beginning his cycling journey pedals slowly at first, the tires matching his slow movements. My oldest often self-identifies as “Speed Racer”, and as the name implies, she pedals quite quickly, tires spinning so fast that the spokes become a silver blur. The tires on both bicycles (or tricycle for the tot) spun around but at vastly different rates, yet both tires exemplified the concept of a cycle, a continues pattern of wheels gripping pavement.
A cleaning cycle implies a routine of cleaning in my home that continues in a systematic and ordered pattern. Let’s go back to our bicycle wheel analogy. Let’s pretend that I wrote numbers around the wheel of a bicycle to match the hour positions on a clock. If I slowly pedaled my tire on the pavement, those numbers would continuously “touch the pavement” in the exact same order. I could pedal fast and quickly move through a “cycle” of numbers, or I could pedal slowly through the “cycle” of numbers.
A cleaning cycle implies a routine of cleaning in my home that continues in a systematic and ordered pattern.
So how does the bicycle analogy help us understand the cleaning cycle? Think of the imaginary numbers on the bicycle wheel as a predetermined set of tasks that must be accomplished in my home. Just as the wheel of the bike spins over and over, so I work my way through the ordered set of tasks in my home. As the toddler pedaled slowly, sometimes I may move slowly through my cycle of cleaning, and at other times, I may “pedal with intensity” and quickly move through my cleaning cycle.
In upcoming blog posts, I hope to help you create a “wheel of tasks” that must be continuously “cycled” through in your home. I hope my analogy with the bicycle did not confuse you, and if it did, please give me honest feedback in the comment section of this post.
The main concept I’m trying to convey in this post is this: a cleaning cycle is a routine set of tasks that must be done in my home, and this cycle is not bound by time. Perhaps the biggest difference between a cleaning cycle and a cleaning schedule is the concept of a time boundary: a cleaning schedule implies a deadline, and a cleaning cycle has no deadline.
A cleaning cycle is a routine set of tasks that must be done in my home, and this cycle is not bound by time.
There will be busy times in life when I may need a month just to get through my cleaning cycle: illness, holidays, travelling, etc. There are times when I am feeling excellent in my health and other responsibilities are light, and I can quickly work my way through a cleaning cycle in a week (I always feel such accomplishment when that happens!). The main point is that my home is continuously cleaned, even if the cleaning takes a little while. It’s all okay. Perfection is not the goal. A reasonably clean home is my personal goal.
I hope this post helps you, and as stated earlier, the goal is to start a series on keeping the home using the doable, gentle concept of a cleaning cycle. I would love to hear your thoughts and get your feedback! If this post is helpful, let me know. If you are confused, don’t hesitate to let me know. I genuinely appreciate honest feedback.
Happy homemaking, friends!
-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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