How I'm Going to Keep My House Clean in 2023

Out of a desire to create and maintain a home that is comfortable, peaceful, and enjoyable for all who enter it, I resolved to improve my housekeeping habits. See how I plan to keep my house clean in 2023!

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I’ve never been great at keeping things clean. In fact, until I was a grown woman with my own home, I think the most appropriate word for my tidiness level would be atrocious. I was what some people (*ahem* my family members, friends, roommates…) might call “a slob.”

I have, thankfully, improved SIGNIFICANTLY since then. (So, moms of messy kids – there IS hope!) As I’ve gotten older, I’ve figured out that the chaos of clutter makes me anxious, and I do actually feel better in a tidy home. (Who knew?!)

But the actual reality of keeping a tidy home continues to be a challenge for me. (I mean… I realize it doesn’t help that I often choose reading over cleaning. But what can I say? A clean house just isn’t worth it if it means I can’t read my books!) Most days, I manage to keep our home from descending into pig pen status. But there’s still definite room for improvement.

So, when our family made New Year’s Resolutions for 2023, mine was to do a better job of staying on top of the housework. For three reasons:

I want our home to be comfortable and enjoyable for all of us (and anyone who comes over), so it can be a sanctuary of rest and restoration.
I don’t want to have to do marathon cleaning sessions every weekend. (As Gretchen Rubin says, “It’s easier to keep up than to catch up.”)
I want to feel comfortable inviting anyone into our home at any time.

While many of my blog posts are instructional, “how-to” posts created from research or my own experience, this one is different. In this post, I’m going to tell you about my plans to keep my house clean. And they involve systems, schedules, and habits.

How I’m Going to Keep My House Clean in 2023

Out of a desire to create and maintain a home that is comfortable, peaceful, and enjoyable for all who enter it, I resolved to do a better job of keeping my house clean in 2023. Over the last month, I’ve made some plans for how to do that, broken down into systems, schedules, and habits/routines.

** Important Note: “Clean” is a very relative term, and a “clean house” means different things to different people. My house will never be spotless (or even close to it!), and I’ll never be a “clean freak.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that — it’s just not my personality or my desire. My goal is to create an environment that is conducive to rest, relaxation, and productivity for our family.

Systems

Something you need to know about me is that I’m naturally very scatterbrained. I have a hard time keeping track of things in my brain, and left to my own devices, I’m kind of all over the place.

Knowing that about myself, yet also knowing that I don’t function well in chaos or “flying by the seat of my pants,” I’ve become a big proponent of systems over the years. Systems are my friend. They streamline tasks, keep my head on straight, and ensure that things run as smoothly as possible.

Back in 2020, I wrote a blog post about 5 Household Systems You Need for a Smoothly Running Home, so I know the systems I want to have in place. I’ve gotten away from some of them, however, so I’m going to work on re-establishing those while maintaining the others.

Resource Recommendation: I absolutely loved the book, The House That Cleans Itself: 8 Steps to Keep Your Home Twice as Neat in Half the Time. Unlike so many books on the subject, this one is for the chronically messy by someone who is one herself! It was the first book I read on the subject of housekeeping that actually fit my personality and tendencies. I kept thinking, “She gets me!”

Schedules

My other problem is that I forget about tasks… until they pile up and become impossible to miss. (I’m looking at you ceiling fans!) I just plain don’t even think about them!

And then I either get overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done, or I’m constantly anxious about getting them done.

So, the second part of my plan to keep my house clean in 2023 is setting up some cleaning schedules.

To do this, the first thing I did was brainstorm a master list of all the cleaning tasks that need to be done for each room. Next, I color coded the list for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly/seasonal, yearly, and “as needed” tasks. Finally, I sorted the tasks by those categories so I could see when/how often I need to do them.

My next step will be to lay them all out in an organized way so I can easily schedule and track each task.

** Important Note: While I did consult a few cleaning schedules I found online (google “cleaning schedules,” and you’ll find tons of them), I definitely did not follow them precisely. I’m following my family’s standards for cleanliness and what I’m prioritizing in this season of life. There is just no way I’m going to clean my bathroom mirrors every day, scrub my shower every week, or even wipe down my baseboards every three months.

Habits & Routines

Creating schedules is going to be incredible helpful in keeping my house clean, especially for the tasks that only come up once a month, quarter, or year. But for the daily and weekly tasks, I need to develop habits and routines. These will reduce the amount of decisions I need to make by essentially putting tasks on “autopilot,” and will make them much more likely to get done.

Some of the habits and routines I want to establish (or re-establish) include:

Cleaning up every night after dinner. I was really good about this habit for a while, and I want to get back to it.
Doing one (complete!) load of laundry a day
Cleaning (as realistically as I can) one “zone” a day. My zones are: Bedrooms, Kitchen/Dining Room, Living Rooms, Bathrooms, Laundry Room/Entryway. I have doubts about this one, but I’m going to try! I might have to change it to three zones a week, or even one a week.
Follow the 2-minute rule. This rules says, “If it takes less than two minutes, then do it now.” However, I have to be careful with this because a bunch of “2-minute tasks” can add up quickly, which can actually keep me from larger, more important tasks. So, I’ll have to use wisdom and moderation with this one.
Follow the “only touch things once” principle. This principle says, “If it’s not where it goes, then don’t set it down.” Don’t move items/piles around the house — put them where they belong.

A few resources that have helped/are helping me with creating household habits are:

Atomic Habits, by James Clear
Better Than Before, by Gretchen Rubin
The Lazy Genius Podcast, episode #298: “How to Keep Up With Household Habits”

If this all seems like a lot, that’s because it is. And there’s a 97.4% chance I won’t keep up with all of it. But something needed to change, and laying everything out and developing a plan is how I work best.

And I figure, even if I don’t accomplish (or stick with) my entire plan, I’ll at least end up keeping my house cleaner than I was before. Which is the whole point. This isn’t an “all or nothing” thing – any progress is always better than none at all.