The Four Simple Habits That Keep My Home Clean as a Busy Homeschool (and Type B) Mom

It can be so tough to stay on top of housekeeping when homeschooling. For me, as a stay at home mom, taking care of the kids and cleaning our home is enough to stay busy all day. Add homeschooling to the mix and it seems like our house goes to chaos. There are the four foundational things to focus on everyday to ensure your home stays cleaned and running well, especially while raising your children and homeschooling.

The key to keeping your home clean are doing these four basic things: dishes, laundry, beds and planner. That’s it. That’s all you have to do. Once you have these foundational things down and you are in a habit and routine of doing them every single day, your home will be in order and running smoothly. So let’s get started!

1. How to Keep Your Home Clean When You Homeschool – Do the Dishes Everyday

At the very basic necessity of life, everyone needs to eat. And a sink full of dishes is a major deterrent to want to cook, and just get take out instead. This is so essential. Clean the dishes after every meal.

It doesn’t matter if your countertops are cluttered and you have crumbs on the floor. Focus on getting this done no matter what. Put your blinders on and when you feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start in your house, start with the dishes first, to make sure it gets done every single day.

After every meal, put all the dishes in the dishwasher that you can. If there are dishes you hand wash, save those last and then do them all together. Get your kids to help out.

Assign one child to a meal time of loading the dishwasher. My older daughters are 10 and 8. My 10 year-old is in charge of loading the lunch dishes into the dishwasher, and my 8 year-old loads the dinner dishes.

Last year, it was reversed and my oldest daughter did the dinner dishes and my middle daughter did the lunch dishes. Every school year, they get a new assignment for chores so they can eventually learn all the household duties.

I hand wash our pots and pans after each meal, and I’m in charge of the breakfast dishes. My 6- and 4- year old work together to unload the dishwasher every morning. This is great way for them to learn responsibility, but even more important they are learning how to work together and building their relationship.

Run the dishwasher every night. If you have to use paper plates for a while so you can keep up with washing all your dishes, then do that. Just make sure this gets done every day and you go to bed with an empty (or nearly empty sink).

If you are able to unload the dishes at night, even better. For me personally, I am so exhausted that I just make sure I run the dishwasher every night. Then in the morning my younger ones unload it. Not only will you have a clean sink and dishes ready for every meal, you will save money! This helps curb those last minute and unplanned times of eating out due to a messy kitchen.

2. How to Keep Your Home Clean When You Homeschool – Do Laundry Every Day

Another major priority is making sure everyone has clean clothes to wear. There’s nothing like getting ready to take your girls to ballet to realize you don’t have any clean ballet tights (true story!).

Doing laundry every day makes it so much more manageable, keeps you on top of it and ensures you always have clean clothes to wear. We have seven people in our family and therefore, if I keep up with laundry every day, then we wash seven shirts, seven pants or shorts, seven underwear, seven pairs of socks every day.

The loads are small and so much quicker to do and put away. Even if I come home late from some event or outing, I can easily put it away in 10 minutes.

When you have piles and piles laundry to put away, it is so much harder to put away. You realize it’s going to take you a good amount of time and you just don’t have that big chunk of time to put it all away.

Then you are constantly digging through the clean piles trying to find something to wear. Doing it every day saves you so much time and stress.

Get your children to help out with laundry too and work together as a family. As we take turns with dishes, we also take turns doing laundry.

Again, my older 10 and 8-year old girls, take turns putting in a wash. We have a schedule and they know what days they put laundry in. I also do a wash every Wednesday and either me or my husband does Saturday.

We put the load in the washing machine in the morning. After lunch time and our afternoon clean up, we put the clothes in the dryer. We do this because I used to constantly forget to put the wash into the dryer. Doing this along with something else that is already habit has helped us so much to remember to put the clothes in the dryer.

Then, after dinner and washing dishes, the kids get the hangers and I dry the clothes for 5 minutes to do a quick dewrinkle of the clothes. I get them out and lay them flat. The girls take turns choosing something to watch on tv and we set the time for 15 minutes to get all the clothes put away.

They do the folding, hanging and putting away by themselves, while I finish handwashing any dinner dishes and getting their snack ready.

After 15 minutes, I turn off the TV and help them put whatever is left away. We work together as a team and the burden is not on anyone person. Plus they love getting to watch TV while doing this.

Sometimes if we have an activity and are out late, I will put the clothes away by myself while the children are getting ready for bed. I usually listen to a podcast or watch a video I like. Do something you enjoy while putting laundry away, it’s a great motivator!

The only exception to doing laundry every day, for me, is Sunday. Sunday is my rest day, and one of the ways I rest is by skipping laundry. We have a little more laundry on Monday due to this, but because we are doing it all the other days, it is still very manageable.

3. How to Keep Your Home Clean When You Homeschool – Make Your Bed Every Day

Your bed makes up 70 percent of your room. Since it takes up the majority of your room, making your bed instantly gives you a cleaner looking room. Your bedroom is also you and your spouse’s sanctuary. With your bed made and a cleaner room, you will have a more relaxed and peaceful retreat.

Teach your kids to do the same. When they are 3- and 4-years old, teach them to make their bed by helping them. There are four stages when teaching your kids to do something. First show them how to do the chore. Next, do it with them. Third, allow them to do it on their own. And last, evaluate their efforts from time to time.

When you are in helping stage, you can help them make their bed after you have made yours. Teach them to take off all the toys and stuffed animals. Pull the blanket over the bed and tuck it in on the sides. Then, put all the pillows back on the bed with a few stuffed animals of their choice.

Have them do this as part of their morning routine. For us, they have a set of chores, including getting dressed, brushing their teeth, reading their Bible, praying, cleaning up their toy pile and making their bed.

Once they finish their morning chores and if they do all of them by a set time and with a good attitude, they get privileged screen time for 15 minutes.

This helps motivate them to do it by themselves and I don’t feel like I am constantly asking or nagging them to do their chores. When they are 3-and 4-years old, I still help them with some of their chores. But even my 4-year-old is doing more and more of these chores on his own and often makes his bed by himself.

Besides, an instantly better looking room, making your bed keeps you stay motivated to keep things clean. When something is already messy, we tend to just add to the mess and have zero motivation to put things away or keep it clean. Because it already seems like an overwhelming mess, why try to put things back right now, until I can really get in there and clean the whole mess.

So when my bed is made, I am much more motivated to keeping my room clean and that snowballs into helping me keep the rest of my house clean. I put things away right away, pick things up more and overall just helps keep our place more organized and orderly.

4. How to Keep Your Home Clean When You Homeschool – Do Your Planner Every Day

A man’s heart plans his way,

But the Lord directs his steps.

Proverbs 16:9

Start off with prayer. We can plan our day, but God is in control and directs our steps. We want to surrender to His plans more than checking off our list. He bought us with a price and we are no longer our own. I am learning to pray this way every day:

“Lord help me submit to your plans, help me follow your will. You bought me with a price and am no longer my own, I am yours.”

With that said, it is also wise to have a plan.

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”

Benjamin Franklin

Whether you have an actual physical planner or you keep everything on your phone, you need to have a plan for each day.

A method called time blocking has helped me immensely. Time blocking takes a chunk of time and assigns something you plan to do during that time.

I used to make a to do list, but without really considering how long things would take me. Then I was left with a bunch of unfinished to do’s and felt overwhelmed.

Now with time blocking, I can realistically see what I can do each day. This helps me prioritize the most important things, and remove things that aren’t necessary or that I know I won’t have time to do.

Some things to remember when time blocking:

• Give yourself extra time for each thing. If you read your Bible for 15 minutes, add a time block of 30 minutes. Take into consideration your children, interruptions and how long it realistically takes you.
• Don’t multi-task your time blocks. I am guilty of this one and need to work on it. For example, don’t time block cleaning kitchen and making lunch at the same time. In reality, you probably are multi tasking some of these things, but if you try to squeeze in too many things, you end up feeling stressed and behind. Schedule a separate time for cleaning and making lunch.
• Be realistic about what you can accomplish. You only have 24 hours in a day and can only get so much done in a day. Being realistic helps you prioritize the most important things. You can put everything else into a dump list and plan those out accordingly.

Time blocking helps keep my home cleaned and running smoothly because, I always get more done and stay more focused when I time block.

Sundays is my big planning day, and I time block for my whole week.

Then each day, I refer to my time block schedule on my phone, and it helps me stay on track. When I get to a point in the day, where I lose focus or feel overwhelmed, I simply check my time block schedule to see what’s next.

Here is an example of a time block day for me. Keep in mind, this is just what works for me and my family during this season of our lives. Our children are a bit older and are able to help out at home a lot.

Monday
6-6:30 wake up, get dressed for workout
6:30-7 walk, pray
7-7:30 workout at home
7:30-8 breakfast
8-9 morning devotional – family Bible, memory verse, pray, worship song, geography
9-9:30 kids do chores, help with little ones
9:30-10 kids tv time, work on blog
10-12 kids school core subjects – math, english, penmanship, spelling
10-11 help kids with school, take turns
11-12 dishes, laundry in – Rachel’s turn, make bed
12-1 lunch, read aloud
1-2 David nap, clean up
2-2:30 nap, kids tv time
2:30-3 budget, 15 min declutter
3 – 4 play with kids, take turns, start dinner
4-5 cook dinner – sausage, potato and veggie soup
5-6 eat dinner, Bible reading
6-7 kids put laundry away, clean up kitchen
7-8 kids snack, potty, pjs, brush teeth
8-9 bedtime for all kids
9-10:30 relax time

In conclusion, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming or take a ton of time to keep your home clean as you homeschool. If you implement and keep up with these four foundational cleaning habits of doing the dishes and laundry, making your bed and planning your day, your home will be cleaned, organized and running smoothly.

You will have more time to enjoy your family and things you love that God has blessed you with. As you are cleaning, do it with joy as unto the Lord, as we do all things unto the Lord. And also clean with joy and thanksgiving, knowing it is a privilege that we get to clean our home.

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

1 Cor 10:31