Housekeeping Checklist

A housekeeping list can be very helpful when it comes to doing a thorough clean of your home. Cleaning can take you off on all sorts of tangents, and it’s challenging trying to keep track of which places in your home need to be cleaned daily, weekly, monthly, and so on. One of the best housekeeping tips for home owners is to create a checklist. It’ll help you maintain your focus, it will ensure you don’t forget to mop the kitchen floors, and it will enable you to split the tasks by giving you some extra time for self. So make yourself comfortable and check out these great examples of easy-to-follow housekeeping checklists:

A good idea is to work from room to room. Tick off cleaning tasks on your checklist as you finish the jobs for each room. This also makes it easier to delegate tasks to family members – you could give each person the responsibility of cleaning one room to get your checklist done quicker!

Daily Housekeeping Checklist

Sometimes, it may seem like you do nothing but clean your home, but there’s actually very little that absolutely needs to be done every single day. Daily tasks should include general maintenance to keep your home looking tidy, along with cleaning areas that could pose a health risk, or encourage the growth of mould, mildew, or bacteria. Here’s what you should be doing on a daily basis:

1) Make the Beds

It takes no more than a couple of minutes to straighten the beds in your home each morning. You don’t need to do a full change of the bed sheets – all you need to do is place the pillows at the head of the bed, smooth out the bottom sheet, and drape the blanket or duvet on top. You’ll be surprised at what a big difference this makes to the look of your bedroom.

2) Sort the Dishes

If you’ve got a dishwasher, empty it of the clean dishes so that it’s ready to be filled with today’s dishes – this means you have no excuse for leaving dirty dishes around the home. If you wash dishes by hand, wash up anything from the night before so that your sink is completely empty, and use a good quality dishwashing liquid or bar like Vim Liquid Lemon. Read the instructions on any product labels, and act fast: leaving dirty dishes lingering for too long can encourage mould growth.

3) Sweep the Kitchen

Kitchen floors are epic breeding grounds for germs and bacteria. Small pieces of food accidentally get dropped without you noticing. Each morning, grab a brush and just give the floor a quick once over to remove anything that shouldn’t be there – it’ll take two minutes at the most.

4) Wipe Kitchen Worktops

Yes, this is something we should all do after dinner each night, but it’s so hard to tidy up when your belly is full of delicious food! Whether you’ve spilled anything on the work surface the night before or not, it’s always worth wiping down the surfaces to remove any drips, spills, or sticky residue. Again, this takes no time at all – just follow the directions on the label of your cleaning product and test it in a small area first.

5) Put Clothes Away

It’s so easy to take clothes off of the washing line or drying rack and say ‘I’ll put those away tomorrow’ – and then it never happens, and before you know it, you’ve got a pretty impressive heap of clean items to put away! It’s so much quicker to put clothes away as and when they’re dry, and it keeps the messy piles to a minimum.

6) Wipe Bathroom Surfaces

Do this in the exact same way as you wiped down the kitchen surfaces – just use a multipurpose cleaning product like Cif Cream Lemon Surface Cleaner (make sure to read the label and test it on a small area first) and wipe down any surfaces in the bathroom to prevent mould growth. Mould grows quickly in bathrooms as they’re warm and damp, so keeping on top of this is vital – mould can cause all sorts of health problems.

7) Vacuum Common Areas

You don’t need to vacuum every room every day, but what you should do is vacuum the areas you spend the most time in, such as the living room, and any areas where you eat, like the kitchen or dining room (or bedroom if you’re partial to a little breakfast in bed). Keeping your carpets clean is especially important if you’ve got babies or young children whose hands are going to be all over the floor.

Weekly Housekeeping Checklist

Weekly tasks tend to be a little more time consuming and involved, but they only need doing once a week, so we can’t complain too much. It’s well worth assigning each of these tasks to a different day of the week, so you’re not doing everything at once.

1) Vacuum All Areas

This is such an easy task, but it can take a bit of time. A thorough vacuum should involve all carpet floors (and wooden floors if you have a soft brush attachment), any rugs, including the underside of the rug, and your curtains. Vacuuming curtains may sound strange, but by regularly removing dust and dirt, you can reduce the regularity with which you need to wash them – just make sure to use the appropriate attachment on your vacuum cleaner for the curtains.

2) Clean the Toilet

Not the most pleasant of jobs, but certainly one of the easiest. Apply a powerful cleaner like Domex Toilet Cleaner to the bowl, including the sides and under the rim, and leave for the time instructed on the label. Flush, and use a toilet brush to remove any stubborn stains. Finally, use a clean cloth or sponge to clean the outside of the toilet (remembering to never reuse cleaning tools that you have used on the toilet in other areas of the bathroom or home).

3) Clean the Bath & Shower

Cleaning your bath and shower regularly can help reduce dirty marks created by soap residue that has been allowed to dry. For showers, rinse the curtain or glass door whilst you’re showering to remove any soap or shampoo, and wipe the glass with a suitable cleaning product or vinegar when you’re finished removing any smears and smudges.

4) Do the Laundry

If you’ve got kids at home, you may be thinking ‘laundry just once a week – you’ve got to be joking!’ The truth is, you should launder as and when necessary, but at the very least you should launder once a week so that your dirty undies don’t start walking to the washing machine by themselves! Leaving dirty clothes for long periods can attract moths that will actually eat their way through the fibres.

5) Empty the Fridge

Just before you do your weekly grocery shop, spend 5 minutes looking through your fridge and throwing out anything that’s past its ‘use by’ date, anything that’s starting to get mouldy, anything that smells bad, or anything that’s unidentifiable. Not only will this protect your health, but it’ll also make more room in the fridge for your new groceries.

Using a housekeeping checklist to keep track of what you’ve already done, and what’s left to do, is a great way of keeping on top of your cleaning schedule. It allows you to divide your time between household chores and relaxation and helps keep your home healthy, fresh, and hygienic, protecting your and your family’s health.

Key Steps:

• Make your cleaning checklist interactive! Set up an Excel spreadsheet or Google Drive document to track cleaning tasks and share with other members of your household. Alternatively, there are a variety of apps available to download to help you manage your housekeeping checklist.

• Make sure your cleaning cupboard is stocked up with good quality cleaning products such as Domex, Cif, and Surf excel. Just be sure to follow the instructions on any cleaning product’s label.