This post is a chapter of the book It Ain’t Gonna Lick Itself: Creating and Maintaining Living Spaces That Make Your Life Better (In Spite Of Everything) by Hanne Blank Boyd.
Click here for the full table of contents.
I believe in schedules. I do not necessarily believe in the kind of schedule you might be thinking of when I use that word. I am a creature of habit, yes, but I’m not a person who likes having to obey a strict timetable. Days when I have to be here at such-and-such time and then there two hours later and then am obligated to show up for something else at seven-thirty make me cranky, twitchy, and other things that end in -itchy.
Many books and advice columns about housekeeping recommend precisely the kind of scheduling I loathe. Laundry on Sunday! Clean your kitchen on Monday after work! Sweep the floors before bed every night! Change your bedsheets every Saturday as soon as you get up! If you are the kind of person who really benefits from that flavor of predictability and known timing, then you are in luck. I absolutely hope you’ll use it to your advantage and plan the everloving fuck out of your household labor and breathe a huge sigh of contentment and relief every time you tackle your task schedule and everything’s done exactly when it is supposed to be. I want you to have “sweep kitchen floor” and “clean bathroom” in your planner at given times on particular days and I want that to be an excellent thing that keeps your life running smoothly. It can definitely do this for the people who are geared to it and if that’s you: give it a try because it just might be a game-changer.
I am not one of those people, but even for me it’s been helpful to have this as an option. There have been times where my life has been such that being absolutely ironclad about some things, like refusing to schedule anything on a Thursday evening because that was when I got the laundry done, was a huge help. (I believe in doing what works, and it did at that time in my life.)
The kind of task schedule I tend to work best with is something that could maybe more accurately be called a frequency list. This is simply a list of jobs and the approximate frequency with which they typically need to be done in a household. A list like that makes no assumptions about when you’ll do them or in what order, which makes it all feel more flexible.
You can take a frequency list and turn it into a very precise schedule, slotting the various tasks into your planner at specific times on particular days. Or you can just give yourself the list and work your way through it over the course of the week, or the two weeks, or however that works for you. Some people I’ve worked with prefer to make it more specific rather than less specific because they know themselves well enough to know that they won’t do it if there’s not a deadline. I know that I will do it without one and will be happier without one as well, so I leave it more open.
You can find frequency lists in lots of books and other resources about housekeeping. The secret lurking in the heart of every single one? They all make assumptions about what kinds of maintenance your household will need. Some of those assumptions will be accurate: if you have a living space and you spend any time in it at all, there are some basic things like sweeping the floor or cleaning the bathroom that will need to be done regularly.
But the number of people and other creatures in your living space and what you all get up to while you’re there also affect the levels of chaos and dirt and clutter and mess that show up. Things can also look very different if you’re rarely home versus if you’re there almost all the time. I’ve known a handful of sophisticated urbanites who never used their kitchens for anything more involved than making a cup of coffee or microwaving leftover takeout. Unlike me, they really didn’t ever need to clean the oven.
One of the best times to use a frequency list is when you’re early in the process of building or rebuilding housekeeping habits.
