Do you have a cleaning schedule?

via http://www.bloominghomestead.com/2010/10/weekly-cleaning-schedule.html

While looking up images related to "cleaning" for my Well and Cleanly Pinterest board, I came across a lot of cleaning schedules (I chose the most beautifully graphically designed one to use) and I thought huh, that's a thing that people do? And then I thought of that scene in The Help where Minny uses a cleaning schedule to clean Celia's house and Celia is shocked by this.

While a cleaning schedule seems very practical, it's never been something I'v ever even considered trying.  My cleaning pretty much always takes place on the weekends.  Usually Alex and I will end up cleaning the apartment on Saturday.  This Saturday it was Alex sweeping and mopping the floors and cleaning the bathroom and me doing laundry, putting away all of the piles that have accumulated throughout the week and dusting and vacuuming the couches.

Sunday will literally consist of me sitting on my couch at least once during the day, and looking around at my clean apartment and feeling happy.  I'm feeling happy just because my apartment is super clean.  It actually makes me feel happy.

Monday the house will look pretty similar to Sunday, and since I go to work late on Tuesday, I usually have time to keep piles from accumulating in the morning.  I'd say by about Wednesday, the cats have probably puked somewhere at least once and dirt's been tracked in from shoes.  I'll probably sweep on Wednesday and ignore the clothes piled up next to my bed and the film starting to form on the bathroom sink.

Thursday is a repeat of Wednesday with a little bit more grime everywhere, and by this time the hamper is probably starting to get full.  Friday rolls around and the house is a mess.  Hello Saturday morning, let's clean this place up.

It seems to be that the beauty of the cleaning schedule makes it so that you don't have to spend a good 4 hours of your Saturday cleaning the shit out of everything.  Floors, bathroom, dusting, clutter, vacuuming and laundry is kind of a tall order, that could technically be spread out along the week.  But I guess even though I'm a clean person and really a clean apartment is one of my favorite things in the world (I'm not kidding when I tell you that just sitting and looking around makes me feel genuinely happy when things are clean.  And genuinely stressed when they're not) I think I can't really bring myself to clean things up until they are visibly messy.  Why wipe down the sink every morning if there's not hair sticking to it yet? Why sweep the floor if you don't have kitty litter sticking to the bottom of your feet?

In the spirit of the Well and Cleanly series, I think I am going to try a cleaning schedule this week and then report back.  I'm really curious, how do you clean up? 4 hour stints of your Saturday or do you spread it all out with a very specific schedule?  I found the pdf of my customized schedule above here. Let me know if you end up trying it out too!