keeping a clean house

When my childhood bff texted to say she was going to be in Knoxville in a couple of hours, I could have gone into panic mode. Thankfully, I have this beautiful little cleaning schedule I've been following for a couple of weeks. Bathroom? Already clean. Dishes? Done. Floors? Vacuumed. Bed? Already made. I had even washed the mirrors! It felt awesome to not have to scramble around getting things ready. I just whipped up some chocolate chip cookies and chilled.

I thought I would share the little schedule with you. Who knows? Maybe you can tweak it and make it your own.

The "daily" portion is pretty self-explanitory, but I can see how Friday on the "weekly" portion might confuse someone. Every Friday is "deep clean day", but you do a different deep clean task every Friday. So, the first Friday you'll dust all furniture and cabinets and the second Friday you will scrub the oven. There aren't always exactly 4 Fridays in every month, so it doesn't matter what week you start on, do the first one. The next week you can do the second one, etc. I hope that makes sense!

Oh, and I don't "Declutter living areas with 'put away basket'" yet. My husband and I aren't that messy. But, I did buy a big basket {$14 at Marshalls, so that when the time comes, we'll be ready}. For now, it's holding our throw blankets.

I like the "almost" stripe horizontally splitting the basket in thirds. Maybe some day I'll make it official with a little color.

The visit went awesome, they raved about the cookies, and the house was clean. I know it'll be a little harder to keep it all clean once we have little munchkins running around, but at least these are good habits to be in.

What're your secrets? I know most of you have been keeping house way longer {or just as long} as me. :)