Zoned Out

Last week, the kids all voted on a new house-cleaning system. Our previous system has been 1) notice house is dirty - really dirty - 2) muster everyone (or at least everyone who is available at that moment) to clean house, 3) negotiate who's doing what, and 4) clean, then wait to repeat until the house is, again, really dirty.

Anna's been saying she wanted to try to the "jurisdictions" system a'la the Duggar family, but I wasn't sure it would work well, and we kept debating and debating the best method to use and, of course, nothing got settled. Finally I was thinking last week and it occurred to me that when I took over schooling the kids, I didn't research the best options for months before stepping in; there was a need, we started working on it, and we made adjustments - some minor, some major - as we went along.

But because we get compared to the Duggars enough, I decided we'd call our plan "Zones." And it sounds cooler. :)

Basically, each room in the first floor (we'll add the second story later) got zoned 1-4, and we created a list of "daily tasks" as well as a "weekly tasks". In other words, the floors have to get vacuumed each day, but the molding only needs to get dusted once a week. Everyone has to do their daily tasks every day - duh - but we have free reign over when to do our weekly tasks, which works well for everyone's crazy schedules - Lizzie can get all hers done on Monday morning, Allen can do one task per day all week, and I can super clean on the weekends when I'm home more.

It was kind of tough the first week because Anna was gone. We did really well the first few days, but everyone sort of slacked off toward the end of the week, myself included. I ended up cleaning the house myself on Saturday because I felt guilty over not having done my tasks at all for the last few days. However, I would definitely say that the cleanliness of the house has improved somewhat. I think it will be easier with Anna home, as she's also our cheerleader as well as another pair of hands. I'm also determined to be super-diligent this week and set a good example, even though I'm sort of struggling with tiredness lately... I think it's a combination of the heat,the fact that the later sunsets makes it hard for me to fall asleep as early as I would like to, and that I've been swimming almost every day.

This week I drew Zone 4 - the mudroom/back entrance. My only daily task is vacuuming - but trust me, this room gets dirty twice as fast as any other room in the house, lol - but it does have a lot of weekly tasks, so I got a head start on those today.

Anyone else have a good house-cleaning system?