How to Create a Cleaning Schedule That Works for You All Year

Keeping our homes clean can feel like a never-ending task sometimes, can’t it? Some weeks everything runs smoothly, and others not so much. If you have ever found yourself struggling to stay on top of it all, you are not alone.

For a long time, cleaning was my nemesis. Between undiagnosed ADHD, perfectionism, and not knowing how to organize my home in a way that worked for my family, I could never seem to find a rhythm. What finally helped was realizing that routines are not meant to stay the same forever.

Life changes. New homes, jobs, health challenges, kids growing up, and everything in between can change the way we need to manage our home. Our cleaning routines need to change right along with us.

Over the years I have tried countless systems, schedules, and planners. I took little pieces from each and built a routine that actually fits our life. In this post, I will walk you through how to build a cleaning schedule that works for you, share my printable cleaning pages, and offer some helpful tips to make your routine stick.

Ready to get started? Let us make cleaning a little easier, one step at a time.

Cleaning Is My Nemesis

My relationship with cleaning my home has been a struggle for me for a long time. Part of my earlier struggles were from my undiagnosed ADHD. The things that worked for everyone else in my life did not work for me. Perfectionism played its part as well. So to did not understanding how to organize my home for how my family used it certainly didn’t help.

But the missing piece that really brought it all together for me was learning and accepting that we cannot create and follow only one routine for our whole lives. New homes, new life stages, changing jobs, health issues, all of these things impact our routines. Changes to our time, energy, and abilities mean we need to adapt our routines to fit.

Over the years I’ve used many resources in my quest to find a cleaning routine that fit me and my family. I may not follow their schedules or systems, but bits and pieces of my cleaning routine are based on what I learned from them. You’ll see this as I walk you through how to build a your own cleaning schedule.

How to Build Your Own Cleaning Schedule

I know “Annual Cleaning Schedule” sounds overwhelming. Honestly, I didn’t really think much about it when I made mine. I just needed to get everything down on paper and organized into a schedule of some kind. Looking at those lists I realized that I also didn’t want to start from scratch like this again.

So yes, we’re going to create a cleaning schedule for the whole year – on paper! Implementing that schedule is a little different. You don’t have to start it all at once. In fact, I suggest breaking it down into stages so that you can customize and tweak each stage so that it becomes a strong routine.

Each of the stages or routines in this post have a page (or pages) in the cleaning planner. I’m sharing them in order of how I, personally, implement the routine. Feel free to skip the steps you don’t need.

The description of the planner page for each on is right beside it’s photo, so you can easily see what the page is and how to use it.

Daily Cleaning

A daily cleaning routine is the foundation for a solid cleaning system. This is the routine that will keep your home clean and tidy on the regular. The tasks in this routine should, but don’t have to, include the things that happen daily or often. Washing dishes, emptying the dishwasher, laundry, sweeping/vacuuming, whatever tasks help you keep your home feeling cleaning and tidy on the regular.

If it helps, think of your daily cleaning routine as the things you do when you’re going through the motions. Or of the things you’d do if you were in survival mode. Out of all the cleaning routines, I think the daily one is the most important. So that’s where I start.

Creating that daily foundation for a clean home was a concept I was introduced to through FlyLady’s system. Her start where you are approach makes it easy to just simply begin. I remember feeling overwhelmed and like an utter failure because I couldn’t seem to figure out this basic life skill. Then I learned all about shining my sink and swishing and swiping my bathroom and over a few months I started seeing real changes.

If you’re struggling like I was, and truthfully still do at times, considering popping over to the FlyLady site to check it out. You don’t have to follow the whole system, but it might give you a good place to start.

Weekly Cleaning

Weekly cleaning is where we add on things that are also important to helping us maintain our homes. These tasks are still part of the foundation, but not as crucial as daily tasks. These are things we could skip if need be and are often tasks that get set aside during survival mode.

This page not only has room for your routine cleaning tasks, but it also has space for zone cleaning tasks. Zone cleaning is typically monthly (or ever two months) cleaning tasks group by room or zone of the home. The idea is that you assign each week of the month a zone and spread the deeper cleaning tasks throughout the week which is I included it on the weekly page.

Zone cleaning isn’t for everyone, so alternatively you could use this section for extra cleanings tasks each week. Instead of Zones, you could label them as Week 1, Week 2, etc… or just put the date range on the label line.

My weekly cleaning routine is heavily influenced by the Clean Mama cleaning schedule. I love how Becky breaks up weekly cleaning and distributes it throughout the week. The goal is to spend around 30 minutes each day to tackle those weekly tasks.

I really like this system because it allows me to maintain my home in way that is realistic without spending a whole day cleaning.

Zone Cleaning (AKA Monthly Cleaning)

Monthly cleaning tasks are usually consider deep cleaning tasks. Things you might not need or want to do more often, like washing baseboards, vacuuming under furniture, dusting books etc… These tasks are often made easier by having a strong foundation routine in place.

Zone cleaning is a concept I first heard about from Marla AKA the FlyLady. In her cleaning system the home is divided into five zones and each zone has its own list of cleaning tasks that need to be done. Each week you work on zone assigned to it, and repeat after week five.

For me, zone cleaning is a way to organize the monthly and bimonthly tasks in my brain and the ability to schedule them into my weekly cleaning to limit overwhelm. It’s also a great tool to help me figure out what I can delegate to other members of the family.

If zone cleaning isn’t for you, you could also use these pages for different rooms in your home. You need to print a few extra. Alternatively, you could use them for each person in your home, to assign monthly cleaning tasks that way. Or you can skip them! That totally works too.

For more details about FlyLady’s zone cleaning check out the post – FLYing Lessons: Zones.

Clean Mama has a different approach to this kind of cleaning. She does what she calls Rotating Deep Cleaning Tasks paired with a Monthly Focus. You can find out more about that in her post – Organize Your Home with a Monthly Focus

Quarterly and Seasonal Cleaning

Typically, quarterly and seasonal cleaning tasks are things that are either very quick to take care of or take a little extra effort. Generally though, they’re things we need to do to keep our home safe, efficient, and in good working order.

For my quarterly cleaning I combine cleaning and maintenance tasks. Things like cleaning behind my appliances, changing the furnace filters, deep cleaning my mattresses and rotating or flipping them, and so on. I like to spread my quarterly tasks out throughout the year. That way I only have one or two extra items to fit in each month.

Seasonal tasks are anything that didn’t fit into monthly or quarterly sections, or things that might not get done each month. For me these include cleaning all the light fixtures and heating vents, cleaning the top of the kitchen cabinets, swapping out seasonal clothing and outerwear, and also things like cleaning the window tracts and closets. Any monthly task I know I might put off doing if I’m short on time or energy.

Where I live we have long winters and dusty summers, so I actually love giving my whole home a good seasonal clean. I just don’t always have the time to do all the things. But I do follow Go Clean Co for seasonal cleaning tips and motivation. They run a spring and autumn cleaning challenge with prizes and all sorts of fun things.

Their YouTube channel has a ton of tutorials and cleaning tool tests and reviews. Sara, the founder is super friendly, and tries her best to offer real solutions for cleaning problems. And she shares her process and results in real time over on her Instagram if you ever want to check it out.

Annual Cleaning Schedule Printables

Now that I’ve shown you all the pages and talked a little about to use them, how about we jump straight to the good stuff! Below are the new Annual Cleaning Schedule sets. They contain all the pages you need for a whole year in one easy to find, easy to print package.

As always, just click or tap the image of the one you’d like. Download and print like normal. The half letter version is designed so that you can fold it half and make a booklet if that’s how you’d prefer to use it.

Tips to Help You Create a Cleaning Schedule That Works for You

Creating a cleaning schedule that works for you takes time, some trial and error, and a willingness to be flexible. While it can feel like a lot, there are some things I’ve learned over the years that help make it easier.

Tip 1 – Set Realistic Expectations

When you’re creating your cleaning schedule, make sure your expectations for what a clean home is are realistic. What you clean and how often is totally up to you, so make sure you’re planning for your life, time, and energy levels. Not all homes have the same needs and each of has our own standards. When you set realistic expectations based on your needs, your cleaning routines will fit your life better and be easier to maintain.

Tip 2 – Delegate or Hire Out

Get the whole family helping! Even little ones can help out. Again, this is a personal call and will differ from one person to the next. But when possible get others involved, everyone should get a chance to help care for the home.

If you want to or if you need to – hire out. There is no shame in hiring someone else to come cleaning your home. There are a lot of different services out there, from weekly cleaners to companies that just come in and do some deep cleaning a few times a year.

If you need the help – get the help. It will make the rest of your cleaning easier.

Tip 3 – Let Go of Perfection

If you ignore all my other advice, please don’t ignore this one. Striving for perfection will only add to the feeling of overwhelm. You don’t have to clean everything perfectly. Your home doesn’t need to be in perfect shape. Just start where you, do your best, and remember tip 1. If your expectation is perfection it’s not a realistic one.

Tip 4 – Don’t Be Afraid to Make Changes as You Go

If something isn’t working, change it! It’s that’s simple. Maybe getting the dishes done each night is a struggle but you naturally do them in the morning, so do them in the mornings. Or maybe zone cleaning doesn’t work best for you, but what does is deep cleaning one room each month. Use the zone pages for the rooms to create your task list – print extras if you need them.

Figuring out what works best for you and your family takes time and trial and error, but it’s worth it in the end.

Tip 5 – Make Time for Organizing

Cleaning and organizing are two different things but they go hand in hand. An organized space is easier to clean and a clean space is easier to organize. I struggled quite a bit with organizing my home. If this is something you struggle with too, a great place to start is over at Clutterbug. Trust me, taking the What Clutter Bug Are You? quiz will help you identify your natural organizing style and it will make a world of difference.

Cas has your back with lots of tips and suggestions for how to organize your home based on how you naturally organize. She even has fantastic resources for how to blend different organizing styles in your home.

I’m a Ladybug, which means I like my organization to be hidden and not too granular. Putting things away needs to be just as easy as taking them out. My ADHD brain needs a bit of Bee organizing to help me function. I need to see the stuff I need every day or I’ll forget them. For example, I love clean counters but I need to have my dish soap and drying rack on the counter to remind me to wash the dishes each day. If I hide them away, I’m more likely to forget about them.

So organizing isn’t just to make the house easier to clean, it also helps make the cleaning easier. If you don’t believe me, check out Cas’ YouTube channel where she talks about this and so much more.

In Conclusion

If there’s one thing I learned through working through all the challenges, is that having a foundation we can rely on and then being able to be flexible with the rest will serve us well year after year.

I hope that you found this post helpful. At the very least I hope you’ll enjoy using the new Annual Cleaning Schedule. If you have any questions or any tips of your own you’d like to share, I’d love it if you’d drop them in the comments below.

Until Next Time,

Happy Printing!