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I am looking for a housekeeping organizer


Scarlett
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The only ones I’ve seen have the individually named tasks printed in, and I can’t get on board with that. 
Im not going to clean out my fridge on a Tuesday if my garbage day is Friday, and I’m not going to refill a cluttered and dirty fridge. (Just as 1 example.)

They’re also not specific to my home. It always drive me crazy to have garage cleaning scheduled when I didn’t have a garage. And stuff like that.

I know it’s more set up work, but it just makes sense to write out all the things that apply to YOUR home and schedule them according to YOUR schedule.

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11 minutes ago, Carrie12345 said:

The only ones I’ve seen have the individually named tasks printed in, and I can’t get on board with that. 
Im not going to clean out my fridge on a Tuesday if my garbage day is Friday, and I’m not going to refill a cluttered and dirty fridge. (Just as 1 example.)

They’re also not specific to my home. It always drive me crazy to have garage cleaning scheduled when I didn’t have a garage. And stuff like that.

I know it’s more set up work, but it just makes sense to write out all the things that apply to YOUR home and schedule them according to YOUR schedule.

I agree. I tried many over the years. Some are customizable but if I'm going to do all the work of changing the customizable schedule I might as well make my own to start with. And that's what I eventually ended up doing.

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3 minutes ago, Lady Florida. said:

I agree. I tried many over the years. Some are customizable but if I'm going to do all the work of changing the customizable schedule I might as well make my own to start with. And that's what I eventually ended up doing.

It’s been years since I looked, but I like the methods of SHE (Sidetracked Home Executives). 

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49 minutes ago, Grace Hopper said:

It’s been years since I looked, but I like the methods of SHE (Sidetracked Home Executives). 

IIRC, it’s customized and on individual cards so that you can add/remove cards for frequency and make notes, etc.

I should try to find the book again from the library. I bet my kids would use parts. 

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26 minutes ago, Scarlett said:

I have a decent handle on my daily and weekly…….I need more help with monthly and also with some purging. 

Is it easier to set goals that incorporate a need to clean, or to separate cleaning out? I am not motivated to clean for its own sake, though I can make myself do it. It’s more satisfying to think something like, “Let’s sort, condense, or purge that set of stuff so I have room for xyz.”

I tend to tie less frequent tasks to seasonal stuff such as washing windows to decorating for the holidays (we put paper snowflakes in the windows).

If you will “obey” your lists regardless of motivation, then I bet any list that is relevant will work for you.

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Rabbit Trail:  I love watching Youtubes for motivation . . . but in reality I just focus on the WORST area of the house, not a schedule.

Fly Lady has all those cycles divided into a workable way.
Also Secret Slob on youtube has a great daily chart for adapted Fly Lady chores.

 

Edited by Beth S
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17 hours ago, Kassia said:

I like Flylady Zones for this.  Like you, I'm good with daily and weekly but not good with anything beyond that.  The zones should be in her book Sink Reflections.  http://www.flylady.net/d/br/2017/06/11/please-explain-the-zones-6/

Ok I gave this a look this morning and I think I will try it starting this week, since the first is tomorrow.  I like her concepts but I was looking for a pretty book, which is just dumb probably.  Thank you for reminding me that I already DO flylady for my daily and weekly and I have for years.

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Since I have more time now I'm trying to get more into the nitty gritty things. Previously I liked the Motivated Moms calendar so I bought that $20 for the year. You get a yearly cleaning calendar and the app. The calendar is printable in lots of formats and has daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, and yearly tasks scheduled throughout. The app is the same thing it just shows you the tasks by the day for you to check off. 

So, prior to using that I downloaded the free app TODY. I really like this but you have to set it up yourself. You pick a room and then you can either chose from their task library (pretty large) or chose your own. It asks how often you want to clean it and the current state and then it adds it to your list. 

The problem was with you having to add your own tasks to TODY I knew I was forgetting those things that were less frequent. That is why I downloaded the Motivated Moms app as it had all that pre-programmed. But the problems of course with Motivated Moms is the app is very glitchy.  I've also noticed Motivated Moms breaks things into to small tasks-- like you end up cleaning out the frig once a month as a day each week you clean one shelf. But for me I'd rather do it at one go. I also noticed in the app if I didn't get things done one day it wouldn't carry it forward to the next day and it wasn't so easy to see upcoming tasks for each room. That's a plus of Tody is that it will carry things over if I don't finish them in a day and I can click on each room and see upcoming tasks. So sometimes I will miss a task-- either not enough time or I don't think it will need to be done but other days I do extra if I have time. I especially do this by areas. Like I'm cleaning in the bathroom and I see dusting or mopping is coming up and I have extra time so I go ahead and do those so if I happen to have less time in the next few days when that would have popped up that's ok I've already got it done.

What I currently settled on is going through the Motivated Moms calendar and adding in monthly, seasonal, yearly chores from there to the TODY app. I'm still in the midst of setting it up and working out the kinks. 

I liked it as an app as I can set it to notify me in the am so it is harder to ignore but of course one could put the tasks into their calendar. I think I'll look for SHE from the library to see if there is anything else to glean from their system. 

I think it is helpful to look at a lot of different systems and pick and choose from those what works for you but at the end of the day of course not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Doing some system half way is better than nothing.

specifically on the decluttering-- I don't know how SHE handles that so can't speak to that.

With Motivated Moms there is a (I think weekly) task to handle a cluttered area for 30 min. 

Fly lady of course does zones-- one week focus on this area etc.

What has worked for me has been to do a massive go through every room in the house usually at least twice a year. I do this on school breaks, that way things never get too bad and it makes cleaning doing the weeks easier. But I missed my spring cleaning due to the wreck and all that crazyness, then my summer we had a 3 week vaca and I was crazy busy, then my fall break dh took off and we worked on the shop. Needless to say I'm behind there. I've been tackling rooms/areas bit by bit as I have time. Last week we did the bathrooms one day. My bathrooms are small so this wasn't too intensive. This weekend I did my homeschool bookshelf. I'm just picking what is bothering me the most and what I have time for and going down the list.  

It is so much like organization in other areas of life. Do you like doing  several things bit by bit or do you like to tackle one big thing at a time? Set up your schedule accordingly. 

RElated to that I really love how on the MOtivated Moms they break chores down by daily, weekly, monthly. On the calendar they have a section on the side with all the daily chores and 7 check boxes so you aren't just writing it out every day but can check it off each day. If your are writing it by hand that is a big time saver and it works well for my brain to think of it like that.

 

 

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11 hours ago, Scarlett said:

Ok I gave this a look this morning and I think I will try it starting this week, since the first is tomorrow.  I like her concepts but I was looking for a pretty book, which is just dumb probably.  Thank you for reminding me that I already DO flylady for my daily and weekly and I have for years.

If it helps, my Sidetracked Home Executive index cards are in a pretty box. 🤣 It keeps me away from screens and on task. It’s easy to swap a cleaning day with a day off because you just physically move the cards. They help me with scheduling because you time yourself the first few times you do the task and write how long it takes on the card. This way you’re dealing with reality and not magical thinking. I really work best when my phone is out of reach so I tend to charge it in my bedroom while I’m cleaning. 

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