Household planner

Here’s a sample of my own daily and weekly household management plan. This schedule is just an outline of things you might like to remember. That doesn’t mean that you’re a failure if you don’t. We are all so busy nowadays that perfection on the household

Daily

Put dishes into dishwasher/wash up. Tidy away newspapers and magazines. Make the beds. Open the post and check what needs to be done that day and what can wait. Wipe the countertops and cooker just a quick wipe with a damp cloth. Put dirty clothes in the laundry basket. Make lunches — get your children to do this as soon as they are able, and to put their lunchboxes in the dishwasher when they come home from school. Sweep the kitchen floor. Sit down for 20 minutes and have a cup of tea and a read of a magazine or book. This might seem a bit odd to add to a planner, but sometimes we need to remember to make time for ourselves. So, now you have it scheduled in and you are more likely to do it.

Weekly

Cook a home-cooked Sunday dinner and get all of the family around the table. Another surprise in a planner, but with family time at a premium, maybe it’s worth reminding yourself and everyone else to get together once a week. Even better, schedule in your teenager or your older child to cook a meal; it may not be haute cuisine, but it will broaden their repertoire — start them with simple things like chicken fajitas, which are easy-peasy, and then suggest that they try spaghetti bolognese, meatballs, etc.

Select and allocate daily chores: making the beds, tidying bedrooms, putting yesterday’s newspaper into the recycling, filling and emptying the dishwasher, walking and feeding the dog.

Hoover. How often you do this depends on a lot of things. If you’re out at work all day, you won’t need to hoover more than once or twice a week; if you’re at home, or if you have pets, you might well find that hoovering is a daily task — or certainly in busy areas, like the kitchen and living room. Clean the bathroom. Compile the weekly shopping list checking cupboards, fridge and freezer to see what you have first. Mop kitchen and bathroom floors. Do the recycling/put out the bin. File correspondence. I used to do this every few months and found that I had to spend a whole afternoon at a job I hated, so now I do it once a week.

Call a friend/send a birthday card/buy a present. Again, it might seem like nonsense to schedule in a phone call, but we know how busy we all get nowadays. I certainly find a reminder to call someone helpful, and the same is true for reminders for birthdays, Mother’s Day and other occasions. I put everything in my smartphone calendar and it reminds me by buzzing all the time — annoying, but I don’t forget the important things!

Water and feed plants, lift weeds and do a little tidy in the garden.

Wash bedlinen and towels — weekly is a bit of a big ‘ask’ for this, so I always try to change the sheets and wash towels fortnightly.