About Cleaning Focus, One Area at a Time

[Harriet]

Here in the first several "stickied" threads of this forum is a reference section for Cleaning Focus.

* This "About" thread explains the Focus concept of cleaning rounds and maintenance, written by Indiana, below.

* The Calendar for the current year references "where" others may be cleaning. Jump in any time.

* The next "Clickable" thread has a Table of Contents of links to 11 rooms/areas of rotation (customize to your home).

* The last thread has another Table of Contents of links to 5 posts of maintenance during November and December.

originally posted by Indiana

The FOCUS thread for cleaning has been ongoing for a few years now.

Instead of doing a fall cleaning, spring cleaning or cleaning right before the holidays our homes are maintained throughout the year.

Each area is worked 4 times a year. The last area is finished well before Thanksgiving and then maintenance of the areas begins with time available for holiday preparation.
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FOCUS cleaning is worked in with other cleaning routines. There are daily routines which include AM, PM and sometimes noon routines. Then there are weekly, monthly, quarterly, seasonal, and annual routines. There are other non-cleaning routines. We are only concentrating on cleaning in FOCUS.

It sounds like a lot of routines but they all fit together and work together. The routines don’t take long. They get easier and take a shorter time the more they are done. Then they become a habit and are just done without thinking.

The key to routines is to make them work for us not against us. They are to make life flow smoothly not to put us under stress.

When I do something I think it through from end to beginning. How do I want my home to look? How can I maintain it? Working backward what things are done yearly, then by season, quarterly, monthly and weekly. Not everything obviously needs to be done daily, etc. I didn’t want to spend 4 hours on Saturday doing weekly routines so for me it works better to break them up over 4 days with Friday being just a little item. The same thing with daily routines. For me the most important one is the evening routine because I set everything up for the next morning. Mornings are a breeze.

No one set of routines works for everyone. We each need to make them our own. We each work differently and are motivated differently.

BUT even though we can’t all work the same routine, SHARING our routines is great to see how we each tweak routines to give each other ideas. There may be some – “oh I didn’t think about doing it then” or “have you thought about switching X routine with Y routine”?

Enjoy tweaking your routines.