How to Get Help with a Daily Housecleaning Schedule for Kids

A Daily Housecleaning Schedule for Kids

How to Get Help with a Daily Housecleaning Schedule for Kids. Train your children, work with them, clean each day a little, together, and then enjoy your weekends! 

We had a daily cleaning routine, and the kids had a list of chores or jobs that they knew to do, so that by the end of the week the house was clean, and we were free to go and play as a family, especially if my husband had a notion to do something and, if we wanted to on the weekends!

We Made Housecleaning a School Subject

I made housecleaning a subject in our Homeschool, and we actually had a Life Skills Day once a week in the first years of Homeschooling when our oldest was in K-2nd grade. Mondays were our day to clean, declutter, and organize. 

I taught them how to clean. We did special projects like washing the outside of the kitchen cupboards as we did fall cleaning. Housecleaning teaches valuable skills for a child to learn–sorting, matching, organizing things, learning how to work, making decisions–all of which will help him succeed in all his schooling!

Our children learned organization, a good work ethic, and break a job down into bite-sized chunks to get it done. Because we worked together, it was fun, and not too much for any one person. Of course, when they were very young, I mostly did it all alone. 

I gave them small jobs at first, and taught them, year by year. They learned and took on more and more responsibility. They did a more thorough job over time, and could work harder and longer. We eventually became like a well-oiled machine, cranking out the work and could get the house picked up and cleaned fairly quickly. We knew what had to be done, and did it.  

We hosted many groups in our home, and when you do that, you don’t have time between company to let your house become a mess. That’s actually a good way to keep a clean house! 

When our children were 10-15 years old, we hosted young people and a few adults from other countries who came to the USA for Home Stays, usually for a week at a time. Another favorite activity we loved was to invite large families to our home, (as in 8-12 children:) When our children were in their teens, we did this often. 

And, then when our children were in their mid-to-late teens, we hosted a small group from our church (around 30 people) once a month for a service. We did that for I’m guessing around 7 years. A very fun event that we hosted in our home was a young couples group of around 30 people. This event included feeding them a meal once a month. This took place for 6 months, but our children were now adults, in their early 20’s, and still living at home. Our daughter was a HUGE help in preparing the food for that. 

When our children were around 24 and 27, and hadn’t bought their house or gotten married yet, there were two years in a row when we had literally hundreds of people come through our door over the course of a year. I happened to keep track, and we had over 400 people come through our door each of those two years.

We cooked for groups, had families stay with us for short periods, and could grab many ministry opportunities, even spur-of-the-moment ones, because our home was ready. We had just closed the door on one group, and it wouldn’t take much to prepare it for the next. I knew it would be totally clean by the end of the week, in any case. It was very transformational, to say the least, when I realized I didn’t have to clean the entire house, buy the groceries, and cook the meal all on the same day we had guests coming for dinner! The housecleaning doesn’t have to be done all in a day. 

Let me repeat: you can spread your housecleaning out over a week. If the dusting was done in the last few days or week, it’s good enough! If you work at keeping things decluttered and have a place to put things away, that is half the battle. You can cook some or all of the meal for guests the day before and touch up the bathrooms before the guests walk in the door (and pick up a little:)!

The kind of ministry I’ve described wouldn’t have been possible without the well-trained help of our children. I’m very grateful for their hard work and service during all those years! 

Your children are capable of more housecleaning

Children are capable of far more than we think. In the United States, we tend to underestimate what children can do at any given age and don’t expect as much as we should from them, in my opinion. (Please don’t suddenly expect your children, without warning, to clean your whole house! That is not what I’m saying!) You need to train them little by little, but start sooner and move more quickly through the process.

There’s a wonderful CD by S. M. Davis, called, “What to Expect of a 12-year-old.” Get it and listen to it, if you get the chance! In it he recites statistic after statistic of what children from times gone by accomplished in their teens, or even before they were in their teens. It is motivating and embarrassing at the same time, to listen to. I, at my age, am not attempting half of what others accomplished a hundred and fifty years or more ago, before they were 20.

“The way you keep your house, the way you organize your time, the care you take in your personal appearance, the things you spend your money on, all speak loudly about what you believe.” Elisabeth Elliot

Our Daily Routine in our cleaning schedule for kids

This is just one example of what we did, because we changed the schedule periodically, based on our needs, problems we needed to solve, if we had something that took us out of the home on a more heavy-duty cleaning day, and other reasons. We spent about 1-1/2 to 2 hours a day average, I’m guessing.

1. Monday: Decluttering, Picking up, Getting everything put back to rights after the weekend. And, Weekly and Monthly Jobs.
2. Tuesday: Dusting and Glass Cleaning (ceramic lamps, glass in framed pictures, etc.), Laundry.
3. Wednesday: Meal Planning and Grocery Shopping: Children helped buy, bag, bring in, and put away the groceries.
4. Thursday: Bathrooms and Vacuuming.
5. Friday: Kitchen and Washing Floors.

Now, I may have forgotten something, and if I have, remind me in the comments or shoot me an email:) I feel like I’ve forgotten something! We had a dog for many years, and the care of the dog was also their responsibility. We have 2 children, so anything that had to be decided when they would do it, or get to do it, the even days fell to our son, and the odd days fell to our daughter.

“The discipline and order you bring to a physical area affects your mind and spirit, and the discipline you bring to your spiritual life affects all the other areas. And that is exponentially impactful!” Wendy Gunn 

Do you think of your housecleaning as stewardship and service to the LORD? Train your children to take good care of their belongings, to treasure them, and have deep gratitude for everything that the LORD has provided. “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.” (Colossians 3:23-24)

If a room is picked up and decluttered, it already looks pretty clean. It is not very much work to clean a decluttered room. So, teach and train your family and yourself, if need be, to pick up and put away minute by minute, day by day. Have a couple of times a day that you and your children stop and pick up. Then housecleaning isn’t very hard at all!

A place for everything makes it easy to declutter

If you know where something belongs, it’s easy to pick it up and put it away! It rarely takes me more than a half an hour to pick up the main part of our house. The hard part is deciding where something should go! The messy parts of the house are because I haven’t assigned a place for those things:/

Here is the thing. As a procrastinator and a bit of a perfectionist, I’ve had to learn–and obviously, keep learning–that the perfect place to put something away doesn’t exist! The perfect place to keep something can change. So, just decide for now! You can always change your mind! (Don’t change the place often, though, or you’ll drive your family crazy, and they’ll stop even trying to put things away!)

“The Perfect Storage Solution doesn’t exist, so just decide where you will put it away, and keep honing this skill of organization! Remember, you can always change your mind!”

Organization is a skill and your children need to learn it!

Do you realize how important the skills of organization and time management are?! They are worthy of at least a day in your Homeschool! In the workplace, an efficient, organized person with a good work ethic and a good attitude will be the one who gets the job! Train your children, by working alongside them, to work hard, how to do the various cleaning jobs in the home, and to do them with a good attitude!

How is that attitude of yours, mama?

When training, there is hardly anything more important than your own attitude and example, while working!

Read more on How to Have an Organized Life!

• A Proven Homeschool Schedule For Your Success(how to integrate life, housework, and Homeschooling!)
• 10 Wonderful Benefits of Your Organized Life
• How to Organize Your Kitchen to Save You Time (letting your children help, jobs they can do, having your mindset on the big picture, where to put things in your kitchen, how to get your kids to clean the kitchen the way you want it done, and more!)
• Deep Cleaning Your Heart, Soul, and Mind (a comparison of heart cleansing and spring cleaning, with lists!)
• 7 Crazy Easy Ways to Be Organized
• Significant Savings For Stay-at-home-moms (saving time and saving money are closely related)
• Be So Organized Next Year (how you can be ready for the holidays and other events that happen every year!)
• How to Make a Schedule that Plans For Interruptions (there will ALWAYS be interruptions and glitches in your plans! So plan on them! Plan, set goals, but be flexible! The LORD may want to teach you something!)

Train your own mindset to work enthusiastically, have systems and routines in place to make it easier, and be faithful day to day. Train your children in a good work ethic, because it’s a Godly characteristic, and it will take them far in life. Aim to hear from the LORD  as it says in Matthew 25:21, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord..”

An organized life requires work but is worth it

An organized life requires prayer, work, and patience, but it’s so worth it!

10 steps to a clean house

• What area bothers your spouse the most–start there to keep that clean.
• What area is really close to clean and good. Do that next.
• Establish systems for keeping the main area of the house neat and orderly.
• Do things as neatly as possible. Clean up as you go. 
• Put away one thing before you take out another.
• Leave a room, area, drawer, or space more orderly and clean than you found it.
• Work together. Many hands make light work.
• Do a little cleaning every day, and wipe down the sink and faucets every time you use the bathroom.
• Make your kids go back and pick up things they just lay down all over the house, and have an assigned place where everything goes (even if it isn’t perfect:)!

If you follow these 10 Steps, you will be well on your way to a clean home!

If you have a huge mess and don’t know where to begin, use the Steps in my guide, “How to Organize Your Kitchen to Save You Time” on how to clean a really messy kitchen, for how to clean the other rooms. Some things won’t apply, but many will!

Want consistent routines, an organized home, and an organized life? Get my Video Workshop, Busy Mom Organized Life for simple, sensational tips to begin today!