It’s Not A Cleaning Schedule, It’s A Reward Schedule!

Thanks for Sharing!

New Year.  Fresh Start.  Clean Slate.  Ya da ya da.  The truth is, it’s just no fun to work on some of our resolutions!  For example, my pledge to have a clean house on a regular basis.  Problem is, I hate cleaning.  I would rather have a root canal.  Every week.  Unfortunately for my family, I take it out on them.  About twice a month when it’s time to clean (I’m fessing up here…there is no reality in which I’ve cleaned my house every single week), I put on my grubby clothes, corral my husband and kids and start barking out orders.  No one is happy, least of all me, as I go from room to room stepping on Legos and picking up errant socks before I can even start with the Enddust.  The whole time, I’m feeling so bitter about using up our precious weekend with this drugery. Basically, I ruin everyone’s Saturday or Sunday, and sometimes both.  So my New Year’s Resolution is to free us from the dreaded Weekends Of Maniacal Cleaning by…well…not ever cleaning on a weekend ever again.  Instead, I’m going to adopt another popular strategy which is to clean a little bit every day during the week.  Ok, this idea may sound a bit disappointing after the big build up, but for me, it’s radical.  Since I hate cleaning so much, its seems completely counterintuitive to now clean 4 or 5 days a week.  But my reward will be weekends that I can once again look forward to, and possibly even enjoy a cup of tea and a magazine in my clean living room on a lazy Sunday afternoon. 

You can click on the image to get your printable

Karen and I were talking about this whole thing recently (she already does her cleaning during the week and never on weekends) and we realized that having little rewards would be a great way to stay motivated with a daily cleaning schedule.  For our printable this month, we’ve decided to encourage you to actually write down your rewards for the week right next to your chores so you can plainly see the payoffs.  We think it might be doubly helpful if your rewards are linked to a particular task.  For example, why not reward yourself with fresh flowers for your living room after you’ve dusted downstairs?  Or light a scented candle, just for yourself and not for guests, after scrubbing the bathroom?  Time to clean the kitchen?  You can look forward to a delicious scone on one of your China plates that you haven’t used since you got married!  Whatever small favor you can do for yourself might just be the trick to staying motivated.  For me, I’m looking forward to my first weekend in my clean home with absolutely no chores that need to be done.  

If you’d like to see more of how we live with style and substance, please visit us at Little Yellow Couch.