August 21, 2014

How to Make a Cleaning Planner

If you want to figure out a way to keep your cleaning routine in order, you might want to put together a little cleaning planner – a place to plan your cleaning. This can be part of your homekeeping binder or notebook or you can create a stand-alone cleaning planner. If you’ve been working at keeping up with a cleaning routine or just starting out, what’s the best way to keep it that way? Work with your homekeeping style and find a way to keep track of what you have already done and what needs to be done. Need a little inspiration and some cuteness to kick your routine in gear? Put your planner together in a way that makes sense for your home, style, and budget – it might just get you excited enough to follow through this time!

1. Choose what size you’d like to use – my preference is a standard letter size (8 1/2 x 11),  but this would be great as a smaller planner as well! (Keep reading for helpful posts on reducing the sizes and printing 2 to a page.)
2. Once you’ve determined the size you’re going to use, you need decide what sections you need in your planner. Here are my sections:  cleaning planner, quick cleaning, cleaning checklists, monthly cleaning, cleaning recipes, cleaning remedies
   
3. Print. Print. Print. Decide what you’d like in your cleaning planner and print it out. I used my Everyday Cleaning Planner for this, but you may have cleaning printables that you’d like to use or you might want to use free printables to fill up your planner – here are my freebies.
4. Punch your pages – I used a discbound notebook and a discbound punch, you can also easily use a 3 ring binder and hole punch for this project as well.
5. Put pages in your planner and add any extras you may need – stickers, a plastic envelope, pens….
6. Put your cleaning planner where you’ll use it and USE it! The beauty of a cleaning planner is that you’ll be able to see what’s been cleaned, when it was cleaned, and keep on top of things a little better. I love a tidy home, but I don’t love spending a lot of time doing the homekeeping – my system does the trick!

This post exclusively uses the Clean Mama Everyday Cleaning Planner – sold here in my Etsy shop – this planner has pre-filled AND editable/fillable pages so you can customize your own cleaning planner.

I do have other cleaning kits in my shop that you might be interested in as well – The Streamlined Life Cleaning Kit, The Classic Cleaning Kit available in aqua + lime and brights.

A couple helpful printable posts you might be interested in:

• How to make a discbound planner
• How to combine your planner and homekeeping binder
• How to resize printables
• How to print 2+ PDFs on one page

I used the following products to create my cleaning planner  (all products were purchased with my own money and I love them – there are no affiliate links in these links):

• Staples ARC System Desktop Punch – this works great – I love that I can pop pages in and out with ease
• Martha Stewart Discbound Notebook – I used 9×12 in the pictures, but I also have the 6×9 size and I love that to! (aqua is sold out at this time, but black is a great option too! Staples also has an M by Staples ARC planner that works great. )
• Martha Stewart Discbound Accessories – I use the pockets and the dividers
• Staples Stickies 1″ Durable Tabs – I bought a two pack from the store.