The 10-minute-a-day home cleaning routine that will help you take your home from out of control to a peaceful haven!
Have you ever felt like your house is so dirty that it’s out of control? I know I have. When I was a young mother, with two small children, I was often overwhelmed by the amount of laundry and dishes in my home. I couldn’t keep up with everything! But then one day, after reading an article about The Fly Lady method, which advocates cleaning your home by dividing your home into zones — I decided to try that method at home. The Fly Lady approach worked wonders for me: It reduced my stress levels and gave me more time to relax instead of constantly worrying about what needed cleaning next.
I don’t follow the Fly Lady System to the T, but I wanted an efficient home management plan and I wanted to incorporate one task a day cleaning system that worked for me. I have incorporated some aspects of the Fly Lady System that I follow religiously. They are to create a morning and evening routine, doing a swish & swipe and follow a zone cleaning plan.
There are a few fundamental things that need to fall into place in order to make the 10-minute-a-day home cleaning routine work. They are:
Incorporate cleaning into your morning routine
One of the best things I’ve incorporated into my morning routine is emptying the dishwasher, putting on a load of laundry and doing a quick ‘swish & swipe’ before I start my day.
You’ll start your day with a clean kitchen, which means you’ll be able to start your day off right and stress-free. If you make time to put on a load of laundry or empty the dishwasher before leaving for work, it will give you some peace of mind knowing that these tasks are done when you get home.
My morning routine consists of:
- Making the bed
- Getting fully dressed
- Putting on make-up (if needed)
- Doing a quick ‘swish and swipe’
- Emptying the dishwasher
- Starting a load of laundry
What is the ‘Swish & Swipe”?
Swish & Swipe is a concept from the Fly Lady method where every day you do a quick and easy clean in one of your bathrooms. It should take you less than a minute to swipe the bathroom mirror and sink and swish the toilet. I keep a cleaning set in each bathroom for quick access. It’s a small container with bathroom cleaner, toilet bleach and a few cleaning cloths.
I have three bathrooms in my home and I clean two of them. Which means they will be cleaned every other day or so. And honestly, that is enough for my family. We try to keep things fairly clean in between and today there are only two of us plus an older teenager living at home (and they clean the third bathroom). Things don’t really get that messy anymore.
Doing the ‘Swish & Swipe’
I start by spraying the bathroom mirror and the sink. I take a pink (pink for the sink!) cleaning cloth and wipe down the mirror and the sink, the faucet and the soap dispenser. I then spray the toilet and take a blue (blue for the loo!) cleaning cloth and wipe the water tank, lid and seat. I then put bleach down the toilet and rub the inside with the toilet brush. And voila! Done!
The magic of an evening routine
After a long day, it’s so easy to let the little things slip. We’ve all been there. You’re exhausted, and you just want to eat your dinner and go to bed. You know you should clean up after dinner, hang up the laundry, and wipe down the kitchen sink—but it seems like so much work.
But what if I told you that there’s an easy way to get yourself motivated to do your chores? It’s called the pain/pleasure principle. The pain/pleasure principle, developed by Sigmund Freud, suggests that people make choices to avoid or decrease pain or make choices that create or increase pleasure. The pain/pleasure principle is the core of all the decisions we make.
When you think about how nice it will feel when you’re done and don’t have anything hanging over you in the morning (the pleasure). Think about how awful it will be if you don’t do anything and you’ll wake up to a dirty kitchen and smelly clothes in the machine (the pain). That way, when it’s time to do your chores, instead of being overwhelmed by the task before you, you’ll be motivated by the desire to avoid that pain.
My evening routine consists of:
- Putting away laundry
- Clearing and cleaning the sink
- Starting the dishwasher
- Planning the next day
- Selecting clothes for tomorrow
- Doing my skincare
if you have young children you might also want to add a quick pick-up and put-away to your evening routine. Just so that their toys or other things are put away every day.
When you spend time in your evening cleaning up after dinner, hanging up laundry, and cleaning your sink, it’s like you’re giving yourself a gift—a gift of pleasure and peace of mind!
Use a cleaning system
To make your cleaning plan more effective, you should use a system. This means using the same routine for each room and using the same supplies to clean all of your rooms. The Fly Lady Zone Cleaning System is perfect for this.
The traditional Fly Lady method divides your home into 5 different zones. Her zones will hit on all the major living areas but you can add or remove zones according to your own needs. You can review the Fly Lady zones here.
My Zones
I’ve found that I want to divide my home into 8 zones:
- Zone 1: Entrance & Staircase
- Zone 2: Living & Dining
- Zone 3: Kitchen
- Zone 4: Master bedroom & Ensuite
- Zone 5: Outside and Powder room
- Zone 6: Office, Guest bedroom & Family bathroom
- Zone 7: Garden & Shed
- Zone 8: Pantry
This is what works for my current home but is subject to change. It took me a while to find what works best for me. I have a checklist I keep in my diary where I check off all the tasks in each area. The goal here is to get all your cleaning done in just 10 minutes a day! In order to do that you need to use a system to your advantage.
For each zone, you have 10 minutes per day. That gives you a total of 70 minutes a week to clean each zone. I give myself 40 minutes in four days to do these tasks so that I have one day for my Weekly Reset Cleaning. This week, for example, I’m working on living and dining rooms. The chores for those rooms are to dust sills, doors, baseboards and furniture, Wipe all tables and shelves, straighten pillows, blankets and decorations, clean windows and the french door in the dining room, hoover and mop the floors.
Divided by the 4 days of the week it would look like this:
- Monday: Dust sills, doors, baseboards, and furniture
- Tuesday: Wipe all tables and shelves
- Wednesday: Clean windows and the french door in the dining room
- Thursday: Hoover and mop the floors
As you can see I prefer to keep my cleaning to the weekdays to have my weekends off. However, I do incorporate some cleaning into my Sunday Reset. Starting the week in a clean and tidy home helps put my mind at ease because it is one less thing to worry about.
I have a 10-minute cleaning checklist in my diary so I can tick things off as I go.
Do it every day
The key to making this work is to do it every day. The goal isn’t to spend hours on end cleaning your home, but rather to keep the task from becoming overwhelming. If you try to clean the entire house in one day, you’ll probably get overwhelmed by all the things that need doing and end up giving up halfway through. Or worse, totally wipe yourself out and then not do any cleaning for a while. Instead, think of your cleaning plan as a series of 10-minute tasks that can be done throughout each day—and even multiple times per day if necessary.
The other thing worth stressing is that even though these “10-minute cleaning plans” are designed for quick execution and easy follow-through, they should still be thorough enough that they leave behind a cleaner space than when they started (or else what’s the point?).
Clean as you go
I can not stress enough how important this particular part is. Cleaning as you go means that you pick up toys and dirty clothes immediately after they are dropped off. It means doing the dishes after every meal so that the dishes don’t pile up in the kitchen. This prevents clutter from building up over time, and it keeps your home looking clean for much longer.
What about the weekly cleaning?
Your daily habits and zone cleaning will definitely keep you on top of things but things like changing the sheets, cleaning the shower and mopping the floor are things that have to be done on a regular basis. I personally, prefer not to do this in one go, I’d rather divide these tasks between different days. So on Sundays, we wash the bedding, and on Mondays, I clean the shower. Tuesdays are bin days so on that day I mop the downstairs floors after my partner takes out the bin bags.
You can have a clean home, even on busy days
The truth is, you can’t have a clean home if you don’t start with a clean slate. But how do you do that? It’s easy! Clean as you go and keep a routine.
The kind of cleaning we usually think about is the big stuff: vacuuming floors, wiping down countertops and sinks, and dusting ceilings and windowsills. Those are all important tasks—but they take time to complete when left undone for too long. That’s why it’s so important to get into the habit of doing small tasks throughout your day: cleaning up after meals; putting away laundry; picking up toys or clothes from the floor (or wherever).
It only takes a few minutes to sweep up crumbs from a breakfast cereal or wipe down your kitchen sink after dinner! And this kind of housekeeping makes daily life easier because there won’t be so much clutter lying around causing stress later on in the week when you have more time on your hands but less energy due to fatigue from work/school commitments.
My (not so) dirty little secret
It’s no secret, I don’t particularly like cleaning, hence I try to spend as little time doing it as possible. Cutting corners wherever I can! I have invested in God’s greatest gift to busy people. An automatic hoover robot. And let me tell you! The amount of time saved is incredible. I have one downstairs on the bottom floor. And one in our master bedroom on the top floor. No more carrying a hoover up two flights of stairs each time I need to hoover. My little friends hoover the floor every other day and I don’t really have to do anything but empty the hoover and sometimes rescue it when it decides to get stuck in a corner.
That’s it! Between my morning routine, my evening routine, my weekly reset, and 10 minute-a-day cleaning routine my home is kept clean and tidy. And my two lovely little robot friends keep it even simpler.
You now have a 10-minute cleaning plan to follow, no matter how busy you are. These quick and easy tips will help you get your house in order fast—and keep it there!
No one is perfect
Please remember that no one is perfect and nothing is set in stone. I have a great cleaning plan but sometimes even I don’t follow it myself. Sometimes life’s too busy and sometimes I’m just too tired or too unmotivated. However, having the plan in place means that I at least have some consistency and I don’t have that much to catch up on if I fall off track. I just pick up where I left off and carry on. So never give yourself a hard time if you fall off track with your cleaning.
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