Inside: When you’re living in crisis mode, cleaning your house quickly moves gets shoved to the back burner. Doing these five “bare minimum” cleaning tasks can keep your house at an acceptable level of clean until you get out of crisis mode and back to your regular cleaning routines.
My house is currently my version of a disaster. It’s been that way for about a month now, and I’ve accepted that it’s going to be that way for a while.
Every family has those years that they cannot wait to say goodbye to. 2024 is one of those years for us.
Several family members have gone through stressful health situations of various kinds, some of which are still ongoing.
My time is currently monopolized by scheduling and getting kids to doctor appointments, filling out a bajillion forms, getting diagnoses and finding the right therapies and doctors, calling insurance companies for the thousandth time, filing appeals to insurance decisions and applying for financial aid with hospitals.
All of that on top of normal life stuff, well, it’s A LOT.
Cleaning the house is at the very bottom of my list of priorities at the moment. And that’s ok! We all have seasons like that – new babies and moves and job loss and deaths and illness.
But here’s the thing: sometimes having a semi-clean (read: clean, NOT tidy) house in difficult seasons is the difference between losing it completely and staying somewhat sane.
So I recently came up with this list of “bare minimum” cleaning tasks to prioritize during stressful seasons.
This list helps me remember exactly what I need to give my limited cleaning time to and keeps the house in a semi-clean state until I can give it the usual deep(ish) cleaning.
“Ish” because I’m a work-from-home homeschooling mom of five. Most cleaning schedules are unrealistic for us.
5 Bare Minimum Cleaning Tasks to Prioritize in Stressful Seasons
THIS POST PROBABLY CONTAINS AFFILIATE LINKS. AS AN AMAZON ASSOCIATE, I EARN FROM QUALIFYING PURCHASES. YOU CAN READ OUR FULL DISCLOSURE POLICY HERE.
My cleaning routines have shifted since I wrote THIS post about cleaning routines for working homeschool moms.
I typically spend a few hours on Sundays cleaning bathrooms top to bottom, watering plants, gathering and taking trash to the dump, changing sheets and washing towels. Vacuuming and/or mopping is fit into other days of the week as I have motivation.
I usually hand wash pots and pans and clean kitchen counters nightly.
As we’ve shifted into survival mode again in the past month or so, here’s what I decided were absolute necessities to keep our home going.
(Note: If you feel like you’re constantly living in survival mode, KC Davis’s book How to Keep House While Drowning will be your new cleaning Bible. It’s soooo good!)
You Might Also Like: A Realistic Homeschool Mom Cleaning Schedule (Because It’s Different)
1. Dishes and Kitchen Counters
Usually, the kids all have one dishes-related daily “chore”. But again, with things being so difficult right now, we have multiple kids struggling.
Thankfully, one child still loads the dishwasher and runs it every night. I pick up the slack by hand washing pots and pans and whatever dishes can’t fit in the dishwasher.
I wipe down the main kitchen counters. The kitchen table occasionally gets cleared and wiped down, but more often it doesn’t (we stopped forcing family dinners years ago).
Again: clean dishes are a must, as are the pots and pans to cook the food in to put on the clean dishes.
Also, while I love to reduce waste as a family, there is absolutely nothing wrong with paper plates during stressful times!
Related: Why We Ditched Chore Charts (And What We Do, Instead)
2. Trash
We have to take our own trash to the local dump. Yay for rural living!
Gathering that trash once or twice a week and driving it there is a must to keep the house from literally overflowing with trash (we could put it in our detached garage…but I’d forget about it).
We try to take the kitchen trash and recycling mid-week. Then we empty the rest of the house’s trash cans on the weekend and take additional kitchen trash and recycling.
This is definitely one task that cannot be ignored.
If you’re lucky enough to have your trash picked up, it still needs to be gathered and put in the trash cans. And those trash cans need to make it to the curb on time.
3. Sinks and Toilets
Cleaning the bathroom is exhausting, but it’s usually one of my most rewarding tasks. I love lighting a candle when I’m finished.
But in difficult seasons? Sinks and toilets only.
Floors can wait. Showers can wait. Tubs can wait. Mirrors can wait.
(See what can’t wait in the bathrooms in #5…)
Related: The Only Minimalist Cleaning Supplies You’ll Ever Need
4. Laundry
Clean towels and clean clothes are the only priority right now.
Towels get done on Sundays after bathroom cleanings. Clothes get done as needed, but often on Wednesdays because we have a homeschool co-op on Thursdays we need to have clean clothes for.
Does everything get folded and/or put away? Nope. Those clean clothes and linens can live in laundry baskets for a while in times of crisis.
And changing sheets? Unless it’s absolutely necessary, forget about it. They can wait!
Related: A No Fold Laundry System (For Adults Who Are Tired of Folding)
5. Anything That Will Break Your House If You Don’t Do It
Earlier this year, during another stressful time, we put off cleaning the gutters.
You know what happens when you put off cleaning the gutters? Big rain storms bring water into your house: NOT FUN.
So now, I’ve learned to make time for these kinds of tasks. Things like…
- Dryer vent cleaning
- Bathroom fan cleaning
- Gutter cleaning
All of these things can be dangerous and/or cause more expensive and time-consuming problems if you don’t do them.
Bonus: Watering Plants
I’m a typical houseplant-loving millennial I guess because I have over 15 house plants!
Unfortunately, most of them won’t survive if I put off watering them, so I have to make this happen.
I usually pair watering plants with other cleaning tasks, like bathrooms.
Your House Will Be Clean Again One Day – Promise
Eventually, life will settle down again.
You’ll adjust to the new baby. Make it through the early stages of grief. Unpack most of the moving boxes. Adjust to the diagnosis.
Your house will be waiting for you when you make it to the other side, only a little bit worse for wear.
Ditch our culture’s impossible expectations of perpetually squeaky clean houses (because women should be able to do it all) and accept that “good enough for right now” really is enough.
Again, if you are completely overwhelmed at the moment like I am, the book How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis is excellent. I cannot recommend it enough!
Read Next: How to Stop Obsessing Over a Clean House (and Reclaim Your Time!)
