Schedule Schmedule

Weekly Homemaking Schedule... works for me, doesn't work for me, works for me... okay, so it does work - I just rebel against it.
I remember a time in my life, 6 years ago, when I was following flylady properly and as a result, there was next to nothing that needed doing around the house. Bliss.

I'm not knee high in junk or anything (that was my teenage years!) but I am sick of not knowing where to begin, or seriously thinking nothing needs doing and then waking up the next morning and remembering that the ironing was desperate, the milk needed to be made up and I forgot to bake the bread - or whatever... just things that demonstrated that the evening off caused more problems than joy!!

For the last 6 months I've nutted out a schedule and I think this week I have hit on one that will work for us - when I make it work of course, that's the key :o) It's working because I started in the right place

Where to begin in making a schedule?
First I needed to identify what in life was important for us. Until I did that, no schedule was going to fit. By important, I don't mean which things need to be clean for my sanity. I mean the big rocks, life changing stuff. The big one for us was keeping the Sabbath. Once I knew that, a whole bunch of other things fell into place.

To keep our Sabbath (Sunday), it automatically means I need to prepare a meal the day before. So that went onto the weekly schedule . I want the house clean for the Sabbath, so that also went on the schedule for Saturday. I call it a weekly home blessing, a flylady term :o)

I also want cleaning to be as simple as possible. That means it needs to be done regularly so it's not a huge chore. And often enough that if it needs to be skipped on the odd occasion, that we're not going to be living in filth. And thus a 2nd weekly home blessing was introduced, with a slightly different cleaning list but much the same. Some tasks were split between the 2 lists, some beds on one WHB, other beds on the other WHB list. Because I need to clean on Saturday in preparation for the Sabbath, I've then put the 2nd WHB on Tuesday

Then I thought what I want the house to look like the rest of the time and I figured my floors need mopping an extra couple of times a week, so I added that in. And then the house was done. On paper of course. And as I type this, it is time for my Tuesday WHB lol

Other things we do that help us work out our schedule... Wednesday's: raw milk must be collected in the afternoon, so this is also a good time to go to the library or the supermarket. The market is also open on a Wednesday, so if I am good, we'll go to the market, then the library or park and then on to collect the milk and home again. I'm going to need a bit of practice on that one.

Here's what I have on paper
Daily: Load of washing: including fold and put away
Saturday: WHB 1 hour, cook Sunday's meal
Sunday: Evening - sweep, mop, bake bread and cake
Monday: Sweep, Ironing
Tuesday: WHB 1 hour, bake bread
Wednesday: Sweep & Mop in the evening
Thursday: Sweep
Friday: Bake bread, sweep & mop in the morning

Yes, there's a lot of sweeping and mopping around here, but we all live here, all the time and so it's needed. The children help with tidying and half of the tasks above

There's no huge secret to it other than this: You just have to do it! Tweak it some, then do it again and again, tweaking as needed!! You will enjoy your home and life so much more!

(I have a house cleaning theory that I'll share another day. It's for those that think they're too busy or whatever to keep a clean home, all the time)