Welcome to Cleaning Class! My hope is that this session is going to come at a time when you need a little encouragement and a simple, do-able plan for your home. Sit back and see what the Clean Mama Routine is all about, jump all in and try the routine out for the week, or do a little bit of both. The Routine is intended to be implemented in the midst of a busy and full life, if you want to clean all day, it’s not the routine for you. If you want a clean house but aren’t sure how to keep it that way all week long, it’s THE routine for you!

What makes the Clean Mama Routine work? It takes the guesswork out of what to clean and when to clean it.

CLEANING CLASS is *free* and it happens here on the blog and on Instagram. I am so excited to bring this to you and to share that I also have a FREE nine-page printable Cleaning Class Guide to help take you through CLEANING CLASS. Complete with a quick start guide and darling checklists this kit is going to help you learn the 4 parts to the Clean Mama Routine AND successfully integrate it in your own home.

At the bottom of this page you’ll find link-ups to all the posts from this week as we go along!

FREE CLEANING CLASS GUIDE

READY? HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:

  1. GRAB YOUR FREE PRINTABLE CLEANING CLASS GUIDE and print it out or have it ready to access – there’s a great coupon code in the packet too! This guide is ONLY available through this week, it will not come back again until I do another Cleaning Class and I will not email you the download if you miss it (sorry). When you click that link you are heading to my FREE PRINTABLES PAGE – you only need to put your email address in ONE time and the password will be sent to your email address. Check your promotions and spam folders if you don’t see it right away.
  2. FOLLOW @CLEANMAMA ON INSTAGRAM – that’s where the majority of CLEANING CLASS will take place. Follow along and turn on your notifications so you don’t miss a thing. You’ll also see blog posts all week long detailing Cleaning Class.
  3. Share, share, share!  I’d love it if you shared CLEANING CLASS with your friends this week and asked them to join you. I’ll have images in Instagram this week for you to use – tag me!

I’ll be on Instagram quite a bit this week in Stories – make sure you’re following along over there too.

FRIDAY IS CATCH-ALL DAY

My secret to a clean house most of the time? I always incorporate and plan for a day to catch up every single week. I believe that this simple mind-shift is one of the secrets to a clean home and that is where the magic of Catch-All Day comes in.

What is Catch-All Day?

Catch-All Day is a day to catch up, get ahead, plan for the week ahead, relax, it’s what you need on any given Friday. Catch-All Day is how I integrate grace into the Clean Mama Routine. When you don’t get the bathrooms clean on Monday you KNOW that you have time on Friday to clean those bathrooms OR you can save them until the next week.

Here’s that shift: Build in a day that accounts for life’s surprises, because you know they’re going to happen. Someone will get sick, you’ll be needed somewhere else, or maybe you just won’t feel like cleaning bathrooms or vacuuming. It’s absolutely necessary to give yourself grace and plan for that list to have more on it than you can accomplish. If you didn’t complete everything this week or left something out, go back and finish it up.

One of my favorite little routines is that I empty and wipe out the refrigerator every Friday before grocery shopping. I might not completely clear everything out like this every week but I do clear and wipe off the shelves every single week. What’s the point of this? Isn’t this extra work?  Nope. This makes meal planning and prep easier, it keeps your refrigerator clean, and you know exactly how much food you have, and what you need to shop for.

Right now we’re doing grocery delivery every 10 days – 2 weeks with the goal being delivery on Friday so the routine stays the same.

DIY REFRIGERATOR CLEANING SOLUTION:

  • Mix up 1 teaspoon of dish soap, 1 teaspoon baking soda, and about 4-6 cups of warm water.
  • Wipe down the shelves with a well rung out BAR MOP TOWEL. Repeat until all shelves and drawers have been wiped clean. Dry if necessary.

Depending on the day and week, I use Fridays to get caught up on uncompleted tasks from the week. I also use Fridays to menu plan and grocery shop. I like going into the weekend with a clean house and a stocked fridge so I can soak up all the family time possible. When I was working outside the home I stopped at the grocery store on my way home, grabbed a rotisserie chicken or store-made pizza for an easy dinner and did my weekly grocery shopping. Now in the days of call-ahead and delivery groceries, that would be a little easier if that’s something you can utilize and/or have available.

I find that just this process of taking a visual inventory and clean out really helps me start my shopping list and menu plan for the week ahead – I keep it handy with my Homekeeping Planner and write down what I need as I’m quickly wiping down the fridge.

See my favorite weekly planning tools here.

Concentrate on what you can do today – even if you have 10-15 minutes, do something!

What happens if you don’t get to your tasks on Friday? 

Save it for the next week! Everything will still be waiting for you – think of every day as a fresh start and every week is one too.

I love Fridays for a lot of reasons but one is that I treat it as a day to get things done – I catch up on any Weekly Tasks, prep for the weekend and the week ahead, and I also tackle a Rotating Task or two.

Once you have the DAILY TASKS and WEEKLY TASKS down, you might want to add in the ROTATING TASKS. These tasks change MONTHLY and ensure that your home is clean all year long on a rotating schedule – some tasks repeat monthly, others are bi-monthly, quarterly, or bi-annually. I have figured out how to keep everything clean all year long and this is how I do that. Here are SOME of the ROTATING TASKS. I add the ROTATING TASKS to weekly tasks that make sense for our schedule. If Vacuum Baseboards is on the list, I attach those to Wednesday, Vacuuming Day.

Here’s where you can find the ROTATING TASKS:

Monthly Free Homekeeping Calendar 
Clean Mama’s Guide to a Clean Home printable kit
Cozi + Clean Mama app – Rotating Tasks are in Cozi Gold, all other tasks are free
Homekeeping Society Subscription – the annual sale is coming December 7th!
Homekeeping Planner
My books

The 4th component to the Clean Mama Routine is the MONTHLY FOCUS – this is organizational and a way to work on deep cleaning and organizing your home slowly and consistently all year long. December is OFFICE/PAPERWORK, January is DECLUTTER, February is the KITCHEN, March is SPRING CLEANING, April is BATHROOMS, etc.

Here’s where you can find the MONTHLY FOCUS:

Clean Mama’s Guide to a Clean Home printable kit
Homekeeping Society Subscription – the annual sale is coming December 7th!
Homekeeping Planner
My books – make sure you pre-order my latest book, Clean Mama’s Guide to a Peaceful Home – it comes out December 29th, 2020!

Now that you know what the four components are to the CLEAN MAMA ROUTINE, let’s get started! Make sure you have downloaded your FREE Cleaning Class Guide and that you’re following along on Instagram.

This post is part of Cleaning Class – I’ll be on Instagram quite a bit this week in Stories – make sure you’re following along over there too.

I’m linking up the days as we go this week – click below on any day to catch up!

NEW here? Start with this post —-> Start with the DAILY TASKS
Monday – BATHROOMS + daily tasks
Tuesday – DUSTING + daily tasks
Wednesday – VACUUMING + daily tasks
Thursday – FLOOR WASHING + daily tasks
Friday – CATCH-ALL DAY + daily tasks
Saturday – SHEETS + TOWELS + daily tasks