How To Deep Clean Your House in 15 Minutes a Day!

With homeschooling, homesteading, and cattle ranching there is just so much to do in a day. Who has time to clean their house? Let alone deep clean it!

I always seemed to keep up with the normal household cleaning: the dusting of the furniture, cleaning the bathrooms, and even the floors (on a good week!). But it was the deep clean of the house that I was missing.

I felt like I had good time management skills. Our girls had their chores around the house and ranch which helped a ton!

However, there never seemed to be a day that I could dedicate the entire day to get every nook and crevice of my home.

And then one day it hit me.

With the ages of my girls it was a waste of time to deep clean my house all in one day. It seemed whenever I did get a nice pretty house, it only lasted 30 minutes at best.

After all a house is to be lived in, not just looked at.

So instead of feeling frustrated that I wasted hours cleaning a house that wouldn’t stay cleaned, I decided to try a new strategy.

I introduced room chores to deep clean my house, which changed everything.

When I decided that it was time to throw away the idea that I was going to have the whole house cleaned in one day, the idea of deep cleaning didn’t seem so daunting.

You see anything is manageable when given in bite size pieces.

How our room chore works is we take one room a day and focus on cleaning that room only. This means that between the girls and I we deep clean 1 room a day for 15 minutes. It’s that simple.

Here’s how our room chore schedule looks:

• Mondays: Bedrooms (we only have two so it is manageable in 15 minutes a day, if you have more you may need to adjust)
• Tuesdays: Living Room
• Wednesdays: Kitchen/Dining Room
• Thursdays: School Room/Mudroom
• Fridays: Bathrooms

We have a pretty tiny house so combining the kitchen/dining room and the school room/mud room works for us to get the job accomplished in 5 days. This leaves our weekends free for family time.

The trick to a successful deep clean of rooms.

The trick to a successful room chore is letting the room chore work for you within your schedule. We usually do our room chore right after breakfast and before we start school.

When you schedule in your room chore, the time of day is important to ensure it gets done. I put it after breakfast and before school on purpose. This way we have everyone together at the same time. If I had put it anywhere else in the schedule, it would likely get skipped as the busy day unfolds.

Having it first thing before we start anything else, ensures those 15 minutes are working for us and not against us.

What happens if something unexpected comes up and you miss a room for the week.

The beauty of cleaning your house in sections is if something gets missed, you will be back in that room next week.

Don’t stress about it! If you have to skip a room for the week, DON’T add it to the next day. It will be too hard to fall into that 15 minute deep clean window and then the task seems too large.

Simply put it in your mind that you will be cleaning that room next week. Forget about it and enjoy the other parts of your home that you did get deep cleaned.

Once you have been doing a room chore for a month, every room has been deep cleaned for 4 weeks straight. So when/if you have to miss a room for a week, it’s ok because you know it was deep cleaned just 7 days prior.

How to know what to do when you get to the room.

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Before I started this, I wrote out everything that needed to be done to get a room deep cleaned, on a piece of paper.

I took that list and looked at what items didn’t need to be done every single week but bi-weekly, like baseboards and fans. I also pulled out anything that needed to be done monthly, like cleaning the oven.

Now I was ready to make a sheet for everyone to follow!

In Microsoft Word, I made sheets that were titled with the room we were working on and then a bullet list of what needed to be done in that room. In parenthesis I wrote what weeks it needed to be done, or if it was monthly.

I stuck all my pages in sheet protectors and stored them in a 1/2″ binder that I keep on my desk. I just pull the binder out every morning and turn to the room we are working on. That way we can all reference it!

See the example below.

What about the little ones.

With the ages of my girls we are at a stage where they can help so much. Sometimes we can bust out a deep clean on a room in less then 15 minutes!

But I remember the years of having super little ones. Where is feels easier to just do it yourself. Don’t be discouraged! This can work for you too!

Some of the items that I want done during our room chore is wiping walls, wiping light switches, wiping baseboards, and chairs (for the kitchen and school room).

Those are all things that even your littlest helper can do! Simply give them a wet rag and let them go to town wiping. The goal here is to not look for perfection but to start showing them now how to help.

The littler ones are usually a lot more eager to help! So if you cater to that desire to help when they are young, they will become great helpers when they are older.

Having a schedule or a rhythm for your day helps to keep your room chore.

If you homeschool some form of schedule or rhythm for your day is essential. This doesn’t mean you have to be so scheduled you have no time for any spontaneous fun.

I would argue to say that when you have a rhythm or schedule you have more time for fun!

However, knowing how your day is going to flow helps to maximize your time and it’s simple to stick to a 15 minute a day room chore schedule. Without a schedule it is incredibly hard to stick with a room chore and you likely won’t do it.

First, create a schedule and then create a room chore list. Now you can sit back and enjoy having a deep cleaned house all the time and never having to set aside specific days for “spring cleaning”.

Happy Cleaning!