Do you feel like you’re too busy to clean your house? Listen or read these 7 tips to learn how you can make time to clean.

It can be challenging to find time to clean, especially when you’re occupied with other family or work responsibilities. But it is possible to schedule cleaning so your house is presentable and orderly.

In this House Gone Sane Podcast or Post #14, we discuss how you can incorporate cleaning into your schedule.

(Below you can read the post or play the podcast version- about 11.5 mins.)

QUICK DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: This post contains affiliate/referral links to products/services we use and/or trust, and we may get a commission/referral fee if you purchase/sign up through these links. All of our articles and podcasts are for informational purposes only, and we are not liable for anyone acting on or failing to act on anything on our website. For better reading, the written version of ‘Podcast or Post’ episodes are worded differently than the audio version, but the main points are the same. Read our full disclosure and disclaimer policies here on our Terms of Use page.

QUICK LINKS

(Keep scrolling to read the full post.)

✅Download our FREE Printable Sample Schedule Worksheets here. These will help you design a schedule that gives you adequate time to clean.

✅Bluetooth Wireless Earbuds on Amazon– These are the ones I use (mentioned in the Podcast or Post today.) I use these to talk on the phone & listen to books, podcasts, & music while I clean.

✅Sign up for Instacart here & get $10 off your first order through my referral link. I sometimes use Instacart to save time grocery shopping which gives me more time to take care of my home.

✅Download our free Flavorful Meal Plan Guide here. This will teach you how to find meals to plan that your family will actually enjoy. And it will help you save both time and money.

✅Get our free Daily Cleaning Roadmap here. This shows you what to clean/maintain on the days you clean & which order to do tasks in to save time.

✅Podcast or Post #1: My Story- How I Stopped Making the Cleaning Mistake that Kept My House Messy for Years

1.) Make home care a priority. (A messy house will cost you more time!)

Understand that as busy as you may be, you cannot afford NOT to clean.

It will actually take you longer to care for your home if you don’t maintain it. So in order to manage your time better at home, you have to be determined to prioritize cleaning even when you are busy.

And your house doesn’t have to be perfect, but you do at least it to be uncluttered, presentable, and livable.

I personally used to struggle for years with trying to manage my home. And I can tell you that I save time when I maintain my home and keep it clean. I used to spend just as much if not more time cleaning when my home looked messy and cluttered. 

And a messy home will affect your time in other areas of life too.

For instance, think about when your dishes are dirty and your kitchen counter is cluttered. 

What happens when it’s time to cook or prepare food? You need to make space on the counters. 
If the dishes, cutting board, or cooking utensils are dirty, you’ll need to wash them before you begin to cook or serve food.

Or what happens when your house is cluttered and you can’t find your keys or an important paper for an appointment? Or there’s something else you need to stop and look for?

Every time you have to stop what you’re doing to clean up or look for something, that‘s an interruption of your time and schedule.

Something else I realized that was a waste of my time when my house was a mess was “mentally cleaning.” 

I can’t count how many times I’d walk by a mess thinking how I needed to clean it. It was to the point where I was mentally cleaning more than physically cleaning. 

It also adds anxiety when you spend so much time thinking and stressing about the mess.

So the first step in making time to clean is a mindset adjustment. Understand that it will actually save you time and stress when you clean. And it will cost you time when you don’t. So you have to be serious about fitting it in, no matter how busy you are.

2.) Use a daily schedule for house cleaning & other regular tasks.

Now that you’ve realized you need to prioritize cleaning, you need to add it into your daily routine & schedule.

You can download our free Sample Schedule Worksheets. They are designed to help you make a daily & weekly schedule that you can customize to your personal circumstances. 

Personally, I try to schedule my daily cleaning routine in the mornings on the 6 days a week I clean. (I do the best with getting it done then.) I’m a stay at home, work at home mom, so mornings happen to work well for me. 

Others find it easier to clean up at the end of the day. It may be advantageous for busy parents to clean up once the kids are in bed. Or those who work outside the house may not really have a chance to clean up until after dinner.

Schedule Cleaning at a Realistic Time

I suggest putting cleaning in your schedule during a time that is both practical and when you’ll have the energy. Personally, I don’t do much at night besides a quick tidy up. I may start the dishwasher but I’m usually ready to crash by the end of the day. 

When I used to try to clean up at night I failed miserably. But I did fine once I switched to mornings because that’s when I personally am most productive. 

Your circumstances and responsibilities are different than mine. So make out your schedule in a way that is reasonable and practical for your circumstances. 

3.) Find ways to save time in other areas of your life.

Any time you do something, it means you aren’t doing something else. 

We all only have 24 hours in a day. And we want to use our time to do the things that are most important.

Now, I do, 100% think it’s important to make time to rest, for self-care, for recreation, and so on. 

But we also want to use our time efficiently so that we have enough time to take care of our home and family and so we have quality relaxation time.

And once you get into a good schedule and cleaning routine, it will actually help free up your time.

One way I’ve carved out time personally is by limiting things like watching television and social media. I can tell you that when I’m not sucked into TV shows, I don’t miss them.

Do I still watch things? Sure. And sometimes I’ll even listen to things while I’m cleaning. But I don’t spend hours sitting down in front of a screen.

And I am on some social media, but honestly, it is mostly for my business. When I communicate with friends and family, I like to try to call or message them personally. 

Sometimes I call friends using my wireless Bluetooth earbuds while I’m doing my cleaning routine. I use them almost every day to talk to people, listen to books, podcasts, videos, and music, etc. while I clean. (Cleaning is less of a chore this way for me. And I don’t have to choose between keeping in touch with friends and caring for my house.)

Something else that helps me save time is meal planning. This saves me time shopping and preparing meals.

I’ve also at times used food delivery services such as Instacart.

If you want to try it out, you can get $10 off on your first Instacart order, if you sign up here through my referral link.

You can also download our free Flavorful Meal Plan guide which gives other tips for saving time and money meal planning. And it gives suggestions on how to find flavorful meals.

4.) Be consistent & use a daily cleaning routine. 

The most important thing I did to save time cleaning was to be consistent with a daily cleaning routine & checklist.

Personally, I clean about 6 days a week currently. (Our family rests on the 7th day.) And those 6 days I go through my cleaning routine.

I do the same things in order on my cleaning checklist, for each task that needs to be done.

I do recommend using a checklist & routine because the order you clean will make a difference both in how much time you spend cleaning and how well you maintain your home. 

You can grab our free Daily Cleaning Roadmap here. It shows you what things to clean/maintain daily in your home, the best order to do them in, and shares tips for success.

If you want to listen to or read my story about how I got into a cleaning routine while my house was still a mess, you can check out my first Podcast or Post about How I Stopped Making the Mistake that Kept My House Messy for Years.

5.) Use a countdown timer to make time to clean.

I like using a countdown timer for cleaning in general. And I talk about this a lot, because I’ve found it helps me to be more efficient and stay focused. 

But this is also an excellent tool when you want to make time to clean. You can set it for the exact amount of time you have. This way you don’t go beyond what you have time for in your schedule.

6.) Make time for self-care, rest, and recreation. 

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, when you don’t take time for breaks, self-care and rest, you‘ll find it harder to manage your time well. And you’ll wear yourself out.

Before I started my cleaning routine, I was cleaning 7 days a week, and my house was a mess. (Although I was cleaning daily, it was not in a logical way that actually kept my house looking decent.)

Once I got into my cleaning routine using a checklist & doing tasks in a certain order, my house looked under control and I felt less stressed. But it was too much for me to clean literally every day.

Although it was for spiritual reasons our family began resting on the 7th day each week, I will say that it has helped me so much in a practical way to be able to feel refreshed for each new week. 

I used to feel exhausted and burnt out by the end of each weekend just with normal day-to-day things. 

But now that I only aim to clean/work 6 days a week max, I am getting the rest I need. I’m able to spend more time with my family, and surprisingly the house looks better at the start of each week than it did when I was trying to clean literally every day.

In addition to taking one day off each week, I also try to carve out some time to take care of myself daily to do something I enjoy and relax. It’s important you take time for yourself too.

It doesn’t have to be anything time-consuming or fancy. Personally I enjoy simple things like reading a book, playing a game, taking a long bubble bath, learning to dance (in the privacy of my home,) or sipping a warm drink I like.

7.) Accept help when you can.

If you have others living with you, allow your family to help you clean.

Do you have kids? Even toddlers can be taught to help clean up.

If you have friends or relatives who offer to help you when your home needs help, accept it. You don’t have to do it all alone if there are others who are willing and able to assist you.

Now, of course, I’m not encouraging anyone to take advantage of anyone else. We don’t want to load the housework onto someone else in an unfair way.

But we all need help with something from time to time. And sometimes accepting imperfect help available to us can get our home back under control. 

One time when I was pregnant and having a lot of back pain, a couple of women from my congregation had come over to help me out with the house. I was embarrassed, but I accepted the help because I needed it.

And as people who care about others, we try to help our friends and family when they need it. So likewise it’s a beautiful thing to graciously receive help from loved ones when we need it.

Sometimes help from someone else can get your home under control to where you can maintain it. (It will take much longer to get your house out of ‘disaster mode’ than it will to maintain a home after it’s completely clean.)

So those are 7 tips for making time to clean. By managing your time wisely and being consistent, you’ll be able to schedule time to clean and actually save time. 

Before you go, don’t forget to download our Sample Schedule Worksheets. These will help you organize your day & week so you have time for cleaning and for other important things you need to do. 

If you stay subscribed to our emails, we’ll also send you some of our other free resources. And we’ll notify you of new Podcast or Post episodes after they’re published.

In the next House Gone Sane Podcast or Post, we talk about the order to clean your house. Believe it or not, this is actually really important, because doing cleaning tasks in the wrong order will waste your time and can cause you to have to re-clean things. So we’re going to talk about a logical order for doing cleaning tasks so you save time and your home looks clean. 

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

RELATED PODCASTS OR POSTS

How to Make an Adaptable Daily & Weekly Schedule (Podcast or Post #4)

How to Stay Motivated to Clean the House (Podcast or Post #5)

How to Make Time to Clean When You’re Busy