15 November 2019

Free For All Friday No 575 by Laurie

I'm trying to get on a better house-cleaning and home maintenance schedule. I don't enjoy cleaning and don't feel any satisfaction from it (with kids and a dog, cleaning seems like a pointless Sisyphean task), so I'm not self-motivated to clean. As a result, some jobs go undone way longer than they should. (How long have those cobwebs been in the ceiling corner??)

So I'm trying out some different ways to keep track of what jobs need to be done each week, and whether they get done or not. I've been hand-drawing trackers in my weekly pages with things that need to get done each week (bathroom, vacuum x 2, water plants, dust, etc). Then for monthly jobs I have a series of sticky notes where I have written zone work, similar to the Fly Lady system, of rooms to focus on for a deeper clean (like bleaching the shower tile grout, etc.). I have the jobs listed for that Zone on each sticky note which I then stick to the pertinent week when they should get done, then when that week is over I move the sticky note forward in my weekly pages. That way the Zone jobs (should) get done every month.

Some things need to be done seasonally, like making an appointment for the chimney to be cleaned, changing the batteries in the smoke detectors, etc. I try to do these in the same month every year, and move them forward in my new weekly pages each year.

Something I haven't quite gotten a handle on though are the random home things I need to do someday, like look for a new cabinet for the bathroom, minor repairs, looking for new lights for the hallway, etc. I have listed them on a page in my Filofax, but that is too easy for me to ignore. Maybe I should create these as project steps in my weekly or monthly pages?

How do you manage/ track home chores and projects?

And as always on Fridays, feel free to discuss anything Filofax related!

2 comments:

  1. The old Daytimer planning system had "grasscatcher" as one category, along with work, family, social, etc. The items you mention would go on this list. Each time you did a review (monthly, quarterly, etc.) you reviewed each category. At that time look through and move a grasscatcher item to your action items. You could either make it into a project and follow your process for that, or, I just put the first action I needed to take on a date in my planner. When I completed it, I added the next action to my forward planning so that eventually that project was done.

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