Clean Mama Working Routine
A Great Option for Working Moms
None of us want to spend a lot of our free time cleaning and having a flexible routine you can work on to keep the home under control is key. The Clean Mama working routine breaks down cleaning into smaller jobs so you don’t get overwhelmed.
Who Is The Clean Mama?
Becky Rapinchuk is a mom of three behind the Clean Mama routine. While she has been using this system since around 2000, she officially started her channels around 2009.
She has a YouTube channel, a website with printables and planners, apps and books. (If you are trying to stay more minimalist in your home, consider checking if your local library stocks her books, like Clean Mama’s Guide to a Healthy Home.)
There is a lot of free content on her website, but some content is subscription-based. She also does sell cleaning supplies and planners.
What Tools And Cleaners Do I Need?
Keeping it simple starts with her cleaning supplies. You need a good all-purpose cleaner, microfibre cloths, a good vacuum and scrub brushes or sponges. She suggests using a caddy to make it easier to move these tools from room to room.
She favours natural cleaners and mixes up her own in many cases using essential oils which requires glass bottles. Essential oils will degrade plastic over time.
She has many resources on her website if you need help with how to clean anything. How to clean couch cushions, how to make towels soft again and how to fold fitted sheets are just a few of the questions she answers. She will tell you which tools to use and the appropriate cleaners.
Is It Complicated?
The Clean Mama cleaning routine has four components: daily, weekly, rotating and monthly tasks. You don’t have to start it all at once.
What Is The Daily Commitment?
Becky makes it easy to get started with her plan. There are only five tasks you need to take care of every day. You can do these anytime throughout the day. If it sounds like too big a change from what you have been doing already, then stay with the daily tasks for a week before you add any weekly ones to your cleaning routine.
It should only take you 10-15 minutes to do these.
- Make Your Bed.
I do like her point that you should not do this one for your kids; teach them to make their own beds. Even small kids can pull up the blankets.
- Wipe the counters.
You will likely need to wipe your kitchen counters more than once a day, but you will probably only wipe bathrooms once.
- Check the floors.
If you need to sweep or vacuum, do a quick clean up. A cordless handheld vacuum is great for those small messes.
- Tackle clutter.
This is just a quick pickup. It can be five minutes of dealing with the mail or the paper clutter that accumulated on your kitchen table. It will make you more mindful of putting things away when you finish using them.
- Do one complete load of laundry.
Yes, this includes folding and putting away your laundry. No more waiting baskets of clean clothes! Consider timing how long your laundry takes. Many of us overestimate it.
What Are The Weekly Tasks?
This routine is really about being proactive and not reactive. She assigns a focus to each day of the week. It will take you 15 to 20 minutes tops. This is a basic clean, not a deep clean. Use a timer and stop when it rings!
You don’t have to wait to start. If you read this on a Thursday, you can start with the floors!
If you start to feel overwhelmed with doing both the weekly chores on top of the dailies, she suggests stepping back and adding one weekly task with the dailies. You don’t have to do it all at once! Go at your own speed and comfort level.
You can also rearrange the days if this order doesn’t work.
Monday
Start the week with a quick clean of your bathrooms. She says clean the sink, the tub or shower, toilet and mirror in each bathroom. If you don’t use that tub or shower on a regular basis, you can skip it.
You do not need to tackle the floor because there are specific days for floors when you will have those tools out.
Tuesday
This is your day for quick surface dusting. This is not a deep clean; she doesn’t require you to move things around. She prefers to do this late in the day.
Wednesday
Vacuum your whole house. She puts this the day after dusting as you may have knocked that dust to the floor the day before. She suggests taking care of this task early in the day.
If you use a robot vacuum, check if you can schedule it to run on a regular basis instead of manually starting it each time. Make this easy!
For best results, she suggests vacuuming carpets in one direction and repeat going the other direction.
Thursday
This is the day to take care of your hard floors. It’s time to wash floors, including your bathrooms.
Depending on the size of your home, she does suggest that you may want to break this up if that would work better for you. You could do vacuuming and mopping on your main floor on Wednesday and go upstairs on Thursday. This is very flexible.
Friday
This is your catch-all day. You can work on anything you didn’t complete earlier in the week. If you fall behind, you can always catch up.
Do what you can do. This isn’t supposed to add to your stress and you aren’t supposed to feel guilty if you have stuff left to do on Friday. Some weeks will be busier than others.
If you don’t get the job done, it will come again the next week and you will get faster at cleaning. Consistency is your key here. By cleaning more often, you don’t have to work as hard and your home is ready for those guests who might stop in for coffee.
Saturday
She sets up Saturday as your day for washing sheets and towels. You can have this going in the background while you do your usual Saturday activities. A timer can be helpful to remind you to switch over those loads from the washer to the dryer.
On Saturday, you are also more likely to have family around who can help with folding, putting away and remaking beds. Even small kids can help fold washcloths and towels.
Sunday
This is your official rest day other than your daily 5. Spend the day with your family, your friends, your hobbies or your church. Whatever refills your cup and gets you recharged!
If you can stick to this seven-day schedule, you will see a noticeable difference within 1 to 2 weeks! That’s not a lot of time to wait to see results.
Once you’ve mastered those dailies and weeklies, it’s time to add the Rotating Tasks.
What Are The Rotating Tasks?
These are bigger cleaning jobs. Some of these are the ones you probably don’t really want to do and procrastinate about doing. This is the deeper cleaning than you do day to day.
You can add these tasks on Fridays with your Catch-Ups, but you can fit them in where you want. For example, washing baseboards might pair better with washing floors on Thursdays.
She doesn’t generally recommend doing these on the weekends since your family is likely to be home. Weekends are not about marathon cleaning.
Some of these are done every month but only in one room. If the month focuses on the master bedroom, then you might clean the light fixtures (both lamps and ceiling fixtures) in your master bedroom, but not throughout the house.
Some of these you might only need to take care of once or twice a year, but this gets them onto your radar. She puts cleaning the oven as a quarterly task and cleaning the fridge/freezer as a summer task. And it’s so easy to forget area rugs will need cleaned!
There are specific tasks for different rooms, but here’s the basic list. You can get an email reminder each month.
- Vacuum and wash baseboards.
- Clean light fixtures.
- Wash or vacuum throw rugs or area rugs.
- Launder bedding. This is your blankets, pillows and other bedding that you aren’t washing on a weekly basis. For example, maybe you don’t take your duvet cover off each week because you use a top sheet.
- Polish wood furniture. This pairs well with Tuesday dusting.
- Change filters. We have lots of these in our home for water, vacuums, furnace, air and range hood among others. Some are washable. Others are not and need replaced periodically. For replaceable filters, use a Sharpie to write the date on the edge to help you remember when to change them.
- Wipe down appliances and fronts of cabinets.
- Wash windows.
- Wipe frequently touched surfaces, like remotes, phones, switches and charging cords.
What About The Monthly Focus?
This is about assessing and organizing each area of your home. When you are doing regular cleaning, it is easier to keep your whole house clean. That leaves you with time to do her seasonal home organizing challenges.
This breaks the job down into more manageable chunks you can spread over the month.
It allows you to focus on one area and finish it within the calendar month.
You can be thoughtful about what needs to stay and what should be removed in that space. You will find things you need to re-home where it belongs in your home, donate, sell or throw away. It’s unavoidable. Decluttering comes along when you are living your life and doing other things.
If you are following her group, she has a set monthly focus. This year, March is spring cleaning and April will be bathrooms.
What If It Still Seems Like Too Much?
If you are having trouble getting the routine in place, she suggests that you might need to declutter and organize first.
She has a preferred order to decluttering the house which doesn’t quite work for me. I think I’d run into sentimental items earlier as her order is by room. I like to deal with sentimental items last because those are tougher decisions.
I do like her suggestion that you do what works for you in decluttering: one task per day, 15 minutes per day or 2-3 tasks per day until finished. She is very open to adapting her program to your own home.
If you are doing fine with the Clean Mama cleaning routine, you will still run into a month of whole home decluttering in January’s monthly focus. If you are looking for more tips and ideas on how to start to declutter, you can check out my post on decluttering here.
But What About?
When looking around her website, there are some things that seem to be missing and I had to look around for a bit more detail. Some chores don’t naturally show up.
While her dailies include wiping the counters and checking the floor, that doesn’t guarantee a clean kitchen. In a blog post, she mentioned that she wipes out the kitchen sink at night as part of wiping the counters. Obviously, she empties the dishwasher and does dishes although that’s not in the daily list.
This routine will help keep your home clean, but you may need to add extra steps that aren’t listed. I suspect these weren’t skipped on purpose, but she is so familiar with her own process, she doesn’t realize others may not group things the same way, like wiping out the sink alongside doing the counters.
The Clean Mama cleaning routine is a good one for busy people because it’s very flexible and adaptable. She doesn’t have a lot of steps and there are no major marathon cleaning sessions. Whether you just got home from work or just finished chasing your little ones to bed, it’s not a big job before you can sit down. Give it a try!
