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The FlyLady Weekly Home Blessing makes it so easy to keep my home clean! Try this cleaning routine schedule out for yourself, and your home will practically keep itself clean.
7 Steps To The Flylady’s Weekly Home Blessing Hour
- Take out the trash.
- Wash doors and light switches.
- Cull paper clutter.
- Change bed sheets.
- Dust and wipe down surfaces.
- Vacuum.
- Mop.
How This Cleaning Routine Works
Don’t you wish that once we finally got our homes clean that they would just stay that way? Sometimes it feels like I spend so much time cleaning the house only to turn around and have to clean up the messes again.
Well, unfortunately, our homes won’t clean themselves, so we’re going to have to come up with a plan to not only clean our homes but maintain that clean and tidy feeling all week. This is where the Weekly Home Blessing from the FlyLady system can really help us achieve the clean homes we all want.
The FlyLady Weekly Home Blessing consists of 7 cleaning tasks done on a weekly basis. Before you jump right in and begin cleaning, take a minute to decide what day to designate as the day you will bless your home. I do my Weekly Home Blessing on Saturday mornings so that my whole family is home and can help.
Table of Contents
What if I don’t have the time to do all of the tasks on the same day?
Do you have limited time for cleaning because of work, young kids in the house, or other obligations? That’s okay! You can definitely still bless your home, and it doesn’t all have to be done on the same day. If you need to, break up the tasks throughout the week. Here’s an example of a Weekly Home Blessing done throughout one week:
Monday: Take out the trash.
Tuesday: Wash doors.
Wednesday: Cull paper clutter.
Thursday: Change bed sheets.
Friday: Dust.
Saturday: Vacuum and mop
Sunday: Enjoy your clean home!
Whether you follow this cleaning routine done all together once weekly or spread it out to save time, you will see a difference in your home. If you’re still having trouble fitting everything in on a weekly basis, consider setting a timer. Set the timer for ten minutes for each task. At the end of the ten minutes, you might not have gotten the whole job done, but you will have made progress.
Let’s get started clearing the mess and taming the chaos!
Step #1: Take out the trash.
This step is so simple. Grab a trash bag and walk through your entire house. Toss any trash you see. Every time I do this, I’m always a little surprised at how much trash we have in our house! We do our best to throw away snack wrappers and soda cans, but we’re only human. There is almost always a good handful of food wrappers or water bottles scattered around the house (side-eyeing my teenager and his messy habits. . .)
This is the time to empty out any waste bins you keep in bathrooms and bedrooms. My kitchen trash cans gets emptied and taken out every day, but the waste bin in my bathroom gets emptied during my weekly home blessing.
Use this time to declutter any items that are broken and unable to be donated. Broken crayons, shoes with holes, board games with missing pieces all can be tossed during this step.
Step #2: Wash doors and light switches.
Doors, door knobs, and light switches get touched a million times a day in our homes, and they need to be cleaned to keep germs at bay.
I mix a wash tub of Dawn dish soap and hot water and use a kitchen rag to wipe down both sides of any doors in my main living space including my front and back doors. I take extra care to scrub any scuff marks or stains.
Using the same rag and hot soapy water, I wipe down the door knobs and any light switches in the main living area. Next, I grab a spray can of Lysol disinfectant and spray the door knobs and light switches. Now, they are clean and germ free!
Step #3: Cull paper clutter.
Paper clutter is something we all have to deal with, and if we take care of it weekly, it won’t turn into a mountain of clutter.
What is paper clutter? Junk mail, old bills you’ve already paid, old magazines, school papers and art projects your kids don’t want or need anymore are all good examples of paper clutter. In step 3 of the weekly home blessing, we are going to quickly gather the paper clutter laying around our main living space, and into the recycling bin or shredder it goes! Purge magazines that are still in good shape by bringing them to doctor’s offices or your local library.
Step #4: Change the bed sheets.
Nothing is better than clean bed sheets! Fresh sheets make for a bed that is cozy and relaxing. Strip the sheets from each of the beds in your home. If you have another set of sheets for each bed, throw these dirty sheets in the laundry hamper to be washed. If you do not have another set, wash and dry the sheets before making the bed again.
All of the Weekly Home Blessing steps can be done by members of your family, but this step is especially good to have family members help change sheets. Everyone can be responsible for their own bed sheets.
Step #5: Dust and wipe down surfaces.
Just in the main living area – the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, dust and wipe down surfaces. Put on your headphones, press play on your favorite podcast, and get to dusting!
With this step and the next two steps, we will be working in just the main living area of the home, not the whole house. Remember, we’re not going for perfection, just progress!
Here is the order in which I do this:
- Clear surfaces of clutter. (You can’t dust your coffee table if it’s covered in books and tea mugs!)
- With a Swiffer duster, I start from the top, dusting walls and ceiling corners moving down to lamps and lamp shades.
- Next, I dust low, using my Swiffer duster to brush dust off my baseboards.
- Then, I spray my flat surfaces with a little all-purpose cleaner, like Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day, and wipe them clean with a microfiber rag.
Step #6: Vacuum.
The key to getting the weekly home blessing vacuuming done is to only vacuum the main living spaces, and within those living spaces, only vacuum the main and center parts of the room. This isn’t a deep cleaning session where we are getting every last dust bunny from every nook and cranny. We just want to get the basic main areas clean.
Vacuum for ten minutes per room and move on to the next task. There will be time for deep cleaning later.
Step #7: Mop.
I’m going to give you the same advice for mopping as I give for vacuuming. This should be a relatively quick task, not an all day affair. I love my O Cedar spin mop. I fill the bucket with some Murphy’s Oil soap and hot water, and I get to work giving my main living space floors a quick mop.
Conclusion
The FlyLady Weekly Home Blessing was designed to be easy to achieve but also thorough enough to get your home sparkling clean. I love being able to bless my home every week. Try this cleaning routine, and I think you will love blessing your home too.