A 15-Minute Challenge

I got this idea from the truly KIND and INSPIRING Janet at Slice of Pink. One of her New Year's Resolutions was to spend 10 minutes each day cleaning her home and her husband would also spend 10 minutes. Together that would give them 20 minutes of cleaning per day or 140 minutes per week or 600 minutes per month. You get the picture. Janet's plan is to have her cleaning out of the way so she can spend her Saturdays in a coffee shop reading Vogue. Sounds like a plan!

Well, I decided to also implement this cleaning plan except I read it wrong originally and so I decided to do 15 minutes of cleaning each night and Eric will also do a matching 15 minutes. Together we will get half an hour in each night.

Well, we started this on Monday night and so far I have dusted, cleaned all of the counters and surfaces in the kitchen and both bathrooms, threw away a bunch of beauty products & old lotions, scrubbed the sinks, cleaned the litterboxes, sorted through mail & bills and Christmas cards, did a few loads of laundry, etc., etc. With the exception of the litterboxes, these would have been things I may or may not have gotten around to doing over the weekend.

Eric has cleaned the second bathroom, shredded paperwork, folded towels and sheets, emptied the dishwasher, Swiffered, vacuumed the furniture, etc., etc.

It really doesn't take much of a chunk of time out of my evening to get these tasks done & it is amazing the stuff you can accomplish in 15 minutes. And when the 15 minutes is up, I am done. I can then work out or veg out in front of the TV guilt free and the house looks respectable!

Our townhouse is not really big--I think it is oh, 1,500 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 stories, with a full basement, but we have a multi-cat household with a pug, too, so when you add pets into the mix, it is a constant effort to keep things neat.

I think this could be a good plan to keep things in order during the week though so it is not so overwhelming on the weekend. I would like to start spending either Saturday or Sunday mall walking - that is walking around the mall before it opens to get in some exercise. I will try to get Eric on board for that, too--since it will probably be MARCH before I can walk outside again and I miss my walks!

So what do you think? Do you prefer doing a few things here & there, or spending a couple of hours on the weekend doing your cleaning?


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