"Work Time" in the Grissom home

I have no original ideas but I did steal this idea of "work time" from some other large family along the way. "Work time" is set 30 minutes that we do each morning before school. It is the concept of deep cleaning One room for a whole week and then moving on to another room the next week. Everyone pitches in and does something to deep clean that room for 30 minutes. Well except the baby who gets to play in the playpen. By the end of the week your whole room is cleaned thoroughly top to bottom, and it only took you 30 minutes each day.

Now I have to say we don't catch everyday of the week, with my husbands schedule but we do this most days. Even 3-4 times a week and one room can be gone through well.

This week we are working in the kitchen, laundry room, and pantry, as these are all combined as one for us. So one of the kids cleaned the windows in the kitchen. Somebody scrubbed the wall right by the dishwasher that always seems to get dirty. My oldest daughter taught the two littlest ones to scrub the lower cabinets in the kitchen. One boy didn't do anything and got in trouble, and didn't get a treat afterwards. And I cleaned behind, under and on top of the microwave cart, dryer, and shelves in the pantry.

Tomorrow and throughout the week, we will pick other jobs, such as clean the ceiling fans, clean another wall, clean the rest of the cabinets outside, clean under appliances and on them, clean out the fridge, organize inside of cupboards and get rid of anything that is to much, and any number of things we can think of . You know what I mean, the stuff that we wouldn't normally get to except when we are deep cleaning.

Now my home is pretty little compared to some, so we have our weeks broke up into different rooms like this:

1. Kitchen, pantry, laundry room
2. Dining room
3. Living room
4. Bathrooms, towel/linen closet, or any other closet that needs a quick going over
5. Kids bedrooms
6. Backyard and front yard if the weather is nice

I don't have a garage to clean out, as it is converted into a living room and I don't have the kids clean my bedroom. I just spend 15 minutes in my own room each day if needed to keep up with it. But with our home broke up like this our house gets thoroughly cleaned every six weeks, and then we start again. It is amazing by the time I get back to that room again, yes it needs it all over again. And sometimes we didn't get every possible job done during that week, but I move on anyways and we catch that the next time. Bathrooms I more regularly do a "quick clean" on them whenever they look like they need it. But wait and do a huge cleaning on them until its their week.

I truly love this way of deep cleaning. It frees my mind to know, "we will get to that". It just may be a little bit. And I love knowing that we really cleaned things not to long ago. Hope this maybe helps your family.