Every domestic goddess worth her name knows that the secret to an always fairly representable home is “Routine, Routine, Routine!” Well, I always have high flying plans and intentions, but this time, I astonished myself.

One of the many mantras of cleaning is the morning routine. Mine for example is swishing down the tub and basin, doing the dishes, making the bed and tidy the kitchen as much as time allows. Because it is so much nicer to come home to a sparkly kitchen. I also try to do at least one other tidying related thing like picking up stuff in the living room, putting away laundry, etc, but that depends on how much time I still have left before I have to make the dash to the busstop. I’m usually pretty knackered in the evening, so doing little things in the mornings helps to keep the place looking decent.

Since a few weeks I also have an evening routine. The list is a bit longer as I don’t have to catch a bus, only the train to Dreamland. It’s more cleaning and preparing related as the morning routine and it’s main focus is too keep the kitchen from turning into a pigsty. As I have recently learned, a cluttered messy kitchen literally drives me mad. And that’s a place I don’t want to go to. It took me some time to actually drag my lazy self into the kitchen and return it to it’s prestine glory. It took me even more time to get used to it. But now it’s like second nature and mornings are less stressful. Also: doing the dishes every time goes much much much faster that doing one massive pile every morning.

Those two routines do a very good job in keeping the place together. A little goes a long way during the week until I have time to do some deep cleaning at the weekend. But routines do not have to stop at those two. I have also a list of weekly stuff that I want to get to (but not always do, to be honest) that I have devided evenly across the seven days. Like watering the plants1, vacuuming the heavy traffic areas, dusting, filing papers, … Gosh, that sounds all so well organized, but with my brain all over the place it’s more a necessity.

As I don’t want to spend the bigger part of my weekend with cleaning – as much as I like it, I want to play, too – I declared Wednesday Morning as my “Half way through the week” Cleaning day. Meaning, I go into the office half an hour later and instead do some vacuuming/dusting/picking up stuff. But I never thought that would actually be insane enough to let the vacuum roar at 8am. Well – I am. Looks like I really turned myself into a freak.

And how do you organize your household? Am I insane or an overachiever? Tell me!