My simple house cleaning tips should make the job of keeping a clean house a little easier. Don’t we wish that we had a fairy godmother that could wave her wand and make all the messies disappear at the end of the day?

Sometimes the life of a homeschool mom can become an endless rut of teaching, cooking, cleaning and running errands. Added to that, we normally have a good few children to help with the messy making part and they are not to keen to help with the cleaning up part. At this point you have two divergent paths to take –

Path one – Do the job yourself

For those who can only do it themselves because your children are too young to help (be sure about this – it’s my opinion that even toddlers can be trained to clean up after themselves) you will want to subscribe to the Flylady’s system – and she comes with a magic wand! (Well, it’s actually a Fly-fishing rod!)

Many mom’s do not like the emails that are associated with the Flylady’s system, but once you have gotten into the flow of it – they are simple reminders for you to get going with a small 15 minute job. This all adds up to a clutter free, clean and peaceful home. How do her house cleaning tips work?

She will send out approximately 9 emails a day with a short line like – tend to your hotspots (this means sort out a paper pile) or shine your sink (self explanatory...right?) or swish and swipe (run a cloth over your bathroom surfaces).

Why I love her system is the simple non fuss approach to cleaning house and being a homeschool mom. We are encouraged to only deal with 15 minutes of cleaning at a time.

She has other weekly zone missions that she will send out daily relating to the zone you are in for that week.

The emails I delete without even reading are the testimonials from other mom’s who have found how well the system works. As good as these testimonials are I do not have time to read them.

Path two – Take the longer route and train your children to help.

I would still advise you to sign up for the Flylady’s emails. But here are my house cleaning tips where you and your children working together as a team. In the long term this is so much more to your benefit, even though you can do the job normally in half the time. This goes for cooking too, especially when you have older children. From 5 years your children can help with all sorts of kitchen duties.

Step 1 –

Make a list of all the things that need to get done in your home.

Allocate the jobs to the youngest person capable of the task. So if you need your kitchen floor swept 3 times a day allocate this to the child who has the ability and maturity to complete the task.

If there are jobs that fall outside of the age limit of your children, they will automatically become your jobs.

Step 2 -

Print out a chore chart template for each of your children and add their chores to it.

Sit down with each of them and show them what you will be expecting from them.

Print out the detailed chore task lists which explain exactly how to do the job. These can be filed in a central file where everyone has access to the lists.

Print out the master plan for yourself which you can stick on your fridge or on a pinboard in your kitchen so that you can see at a glance who is to do what.

You will need Adobe Reader in order to open this master plan. You can get Adobe Reader here

Step 3 -

Set aside the time in your day to do your jobs. We like to start our school day off with a clean house and I like to end my day with a neat one.

It is often easier to break cleaning and chore times into smaller sections split throughout the day than trying to tackle a mammoth task once a day.

Find a way to make it fit into your lifestyle where it will not become all you do but just part of what you do to bless your family.

Other pages you may be interested in are:

Organize your home
Getting organized with laundry
Lifeskills books for Kids

For extra help and some ideas that really work...you can sign up for a series of organizational tips to help you take some steps to becomming a more organized mom! Sign up below.

Return to top of House cleaning tips