Sitting down to clean

This week I am tackling the cleaning of the lounge and dining room areas of the house. For most of the older South African homes, a small entrance hall leads from the front door into the lounge or dining room.  I would include this room in your cleaning schedule for the lounge and dining room.

When looking at a cleaning schedule for your front rooms/entertainment or family rooms, you need to make allowances for their usage, as well as what type of furniture there is and also, what type of flooring you have.

Your windows need to be washed every 3 months. This job I have given to the gardener. If you have a gardening service they might not be willing to do this. Someone else will need to this tiresome job.

Once I was pregnant with my 4^th child, and still working a full day, we did employ a second person and the tasks were split between the two ladies. I have an extremely large and full house and it would be unreasonable to expect 1 person to do all the work and still care for small children.

When drawing up a cleaning schedule for your house, you also need to take into account that the person doing the cleaning will need to take breaks during the day. Try not to schedule too many big jobs on one day. So, if Monday is the day you change the sheets and you have many beds, only schedule a quick task for that day.

Remember to plot these jobs onto a yearly calendar so that your dining room and kitchen cleaning are done just before Pesach. If you are kosher, the last thing you want is to find an old sandwich between the couch cushions the day before Pesach.

Plotting the tasks on the calendar also allows you to see that each room gets something done each month or, if you prefer, that each room is complete before moving to the next one.

If you get a carpet cleaning  company every year, they will do the whole house at once, but if you do it yourself, do it room by room so that it does not become too much to handle.

I would love to hear how this schedule is working for you. If you have your own cleaning schedule, why not share some tips.

Below is a schedule for the lounge and dining room that you can adapt for your home.

DAILY

• Sweep and or mop the floors.
• Give a quick wipe to dining room chairs, tables and couches to clean up spills and daily living that happens

WEEKLY

• Vacuum your carpets and, if you have fabric furniture, do the furniture as well
• Dust any pictures, paintings and mirrors, wall units and bookshelves you have in these rooms.
• Every 2 weeks polish your leather or wood furniture, polishing too often allows a buildup of oil on your furniture making it harder to clean off marks. Sometimes you will find black build up in the joints of wood furniture from polishing it too often.

MONTHLY

• Wipe down the TV screen and any computer screens.
• Clean the outside of your DVD player.

QUARTERLY

• Damp dust all the skirting boards
• Wash the windows
• Polish the silverware

BI ANUALLY

• Clean light switches, door handles and light covers
• Lift the couch cushions and deep clean. Also move the lounge suite and clean behind and under it

ANUALLY

• Wash the walls, doors and ceilings
• Clean the grouting between the tiles, if you have tiles, or wash the carpets.

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