In the final cleaning related episode (many of you have found these really helpful, which is awesome, but truth be told, Brooke is looking forward to not thinking quite so much about cleaning as of next week!) Ben and Brooke look at their rhythms. Specifically the rhythms they’ve developed at home that allow them to stay on top of the home maintenance and ensure things never get overwhelming.

It might seem like over-engineering, but this is the rhythm that Brooke has been using in some version or another for years, and while it’s changed as circumstances have shifted and the kids have gotten older, it’s served her well and means they can minimise:

• the amount of time they spend thinking about cleaning
• the overwhelm that strikes when there’s a build-up of jobs that haven’t been done frequently enough. (A bathroom left for a month takes much longer to clean than a bathroom that’s cleaned once a week, for example)
• the stress and willpower factors involved in cleaning - there’s no need to think too much about housework at all, but simply go through the rhythm that’s in place
• the chance of things ever getting truly out of hand which in turn means cleaning takes less time, less energy, less product, less of everything.

In order to work out a rhythm, Brooke simply wrote down all the weekly housework tasks and split them up over the days of the week that make sense (for their home). For you it might be a matter of doing all the housework on a Saturday morning or a Thursday afternoon because your schedule doesn’t allow for it to be split over days. Whatever works is the order of the day here!

If you head over to the blog at http://www.slowyourhome.com/147 there is a simplified version of Ben and Brooke’s rhythm outlined there, as well as links to the other episodes in this mini series.

Enjoy!

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