Big Goal Part 4 – My House is Always Company Ready

For the month of May (and slightly into June – what’s new?), I am writing about a huge goal has been on my goal list longer than any other, and it goes like this: 

My home is completely decluttered, decorated, organized and always company ready. 

For part 1, part 2, and part 3, I described what I was aiming for with the “decluttered” piece, the “decorated” piece and then the “organized” piece. Now, it’s time to tackle the “always company ready” piece. 

This goal is a little painful for me to admit to needing. My house just seems to always be in such a disarray. My home is never “gross”, except for maybe a spot or two on the (white, ugh) kitchen cabinets that I don’t get to and maybe some syrup under the island that my kids hid from me.

For the most part, I can keep my house from getting disgusting. So what is the issue?

Crisis Cleaning at Its Finest

The panic. The complete and total panic I feel when someone plans to visit my home. If I have a week’s notice, great, I panic for a week. If I only have an hour or minutes, those are very difficult minutes.

My version of crisis cleaning includes (but is not limited to):

• Stuffing lots of papers and random things into bags and hiding them in my room
• Sticking dirty pans into the oven until they can come out and play later when no one is around.
• Yelling at my kids to pick up a week’s worth of a mess in under 60 minutes.
• Running around like a crazy lady with several Lysol wipes and a prayer.
• Closing most of the doors in my home in hopes that the visitor won’t need to access that room.
• Frantically cleaning the microwave because for some reason, that damn thing is never clean.

This list really is just the bare minimum to the tasks I hurry to complete before someone visits.

I’m so tired of this repeating process. I dream of someone stopping by unannounced and not feeling like we have to chat out on the front porch (true story – my husband has done this several times when neighbors drop by for things).

Is this fantasy destined to remain an unattainable dream? If my past attempts are any indication, then yes, yes it is.

My Past Failed Attempts

Back in college, I found The FlyLady system. I have to admit, I thought I had found the solution to my problem. Looking back now, it’s almost laughable that I thought I even had a problem in my one room apartment living with just myself (no kids, husband, dog or 40 hour/week job). Oh those were the days.

I followed The FlyLady’s cleaning system off and on for years. However, my small apartments and less-busy life made it easy for me to miss tasks and still keep my place looking decent. No small tornadoes were following behind me to undo every cleaning task I accomplished.

Now, with a family and a home with many more rooms than one or two, I can’t seem to get this system to work for me. I really enjoy the “Zone” aspect of it, where you break your home into five different zones and focus on one each week of the month. However, I still find myself struggling to achieve all the tasks.

Another cleaning system I have attempted and failed was the system from Clean Mama. I was never able to fully implement her system, but I tried to use the idea of tackling bathrooms on Monday and other tasks on specific days.

I especially enjoyed the idea that if you didn’t get around to a task, you simply tackled it the next week. However, that was a little too open ended for me and I definitely take advantage of that idea. How many weeks can you let a task go by until it’s now too dirty to ignore? Not very many, unfortunately.

My Hybrid System

For the last year or two, I have been attempting a combination of the two systems. I have kept the idea of the Zones. In addition, I like to follow the Clean Mama system but focus the tasks on the specific Zone we are in that week.

For example, if we are in the master bedroom/bathroom zone for FlyLady, then on Mondays I will clean the master bathroom as my Clean Mama bathroom cleaning. If I get extra time, I will try to complete a cleaning task in the guest bathroom or kids’ bathroom, but I won’t be too frustrated (at least I try not to be) if I don’t get to it. When I am in the zone for the Living Room, then the bathroom I focus on that week is the guest bathroom.

I have attempted to do this in the past, but the biggest differences I plan to implement is a better way to track.

What To Track

Currently, I am loosely tracking these items in my task manager. Each week, I have a Clean Bathroom task that occurs on Monday. On Sundays, I edit the name on the task to include the bathroom that I plan to tackle that week from that zone.

I would like to create a Trello board to actually track the tasks that I need to complete each week in each zone. Then, on Sunday, I can pull up the Trello board for the new zone and have all the tasks I need to complete ready.

Since I have over 150 tasks that appear on my task manager to do list every day, I am trying to find ways to move reoccurring or reminder tasks off my list. With this Trello board, I can track my cleaning projects separately from my to do list.

I have started on the board and mostly I just need to get in there and dump my tasks:

What’s Next

Now, I need to get the Trello board built and start finding time each day to clean. I will report back on my progress. I’m very interested to hear how you keep your home clean, so please leave a comment below. Let’s do this!