Sunday Home Cleaning, Organizing, and Prepping for An Easy Week
I absolutely love Sundays. Friday is a close second, but Sunday has my heart. We do wake early for church, and sometimes getting everyone dressed and out the door can be a little stressful. But when we get home, it’s my day. I spend it at home cleaning, organizing, and prepping for the next week. Then as a family, we relax and enjoy the evening.
Some may find a Sunday at home cleaning to be boring, or possibly a horrible way to “enjoy” the afternoon . . . but I love it. Judge me if you may. I think God gave me a love of cleaning because he knew we’d have a busy, happy, very filled home.
I wouldn’t change a thing
I’ve never wanted to live in a sterile-ish environment. Messes mean memories. I’ll take the dirt and grime and all the goodness that comes with it. (P.S. Bruno contributes to a lot of that, but we love our big boy!)
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As much as I enjoy our home being lived in, I also like cozy decor, pretty things, and the feeling of a clean and fresh house.
And this is how I do that.
Below I’ll write out the list I go off of, and then share how it actually all comes together.
To be clear, I do laundry throughout the week, and spot clean and vacuum daily. But, Sundays are the day I go all out, and can sit down at night knowing my house is as clean as it can be, and that we’re ready to start the week off right.
Home Cleaning To-Do’s each Sunday:
- All laundry done and put away
- Indoor plants watered
- Animals stations cleaned
- Deep clean all bathrooms
- Deep clean kids rooms
- Dusting all the things
- Floors vacuumed and mopped
- Plan out dinners for the week
- Plan out blog tasks
Sundays are for Crockpot Dinners
When we get home from Church, what I do first is put a roast in the slow cooker. This way I don’t have to worry about stopping to make dinner in the middle of cleaning. A couple hours before it’s finished, I’ll cut up potatoes, onions, carrots, and celery, and place it in with the meat to soften and soak up some of the yummy juices. With that out of the way, it’s time to……
Get down to Business
Kids rooms
Once lunch is finished and dinner is cooking, I start on the list.
The kids know Sunday is their deep clean room day. I’m pretty lenient with their bedrooms throughout the week. All I ask is that dirty clothes be placed in the bathroom hamper and that they keep a clean path from the door to their beds so I’m not tripping over toys in the middle of the night.
But on Sunday . . . they make their rooms spotless. Desk and countertops are cleaned and items put away. Nothing on the floors so they can easily vacuum them. Mirrors are wiped down and cubbies organized. This takes about 20 to 30 minutes. When they’re done, they come get me and I inspect the rooms. There’s just something about clean kids’ rooms that makes me sigh in relief.
We gave our son a Baseball themed room over the summer for his birthday! And it’s still looking great. For details on that project, check it out here!
While the kids are doing that, I gather all the laundry and start the first loads.
Laundry
As I mentioned about, I try to run at least one load of laundry a day to keep on top of everything. Even with that though, I’m still probably catching up with three or four loads on Sunday. If I start them right when we get home from church, I’m done mid-afternoon. Every household has their designated folding area, and ours is my bed.
Side note: Do you know about dryer balls instead of dryer sheets? If you’re looking to keep your house clean from chemicals, it’s the only way to go. I have a whole post about then, and what’s in dryer sheets here. Spoiler, there’s animal fat in them, and so much more. Gross.
I dump all the clothes on my bed, and try to fold them while still warm to avoid wrinkles. There’s no ironing in my home friends. It’s pretty much my least favorite chore in the entire world. After about six years of marriage, I just stopped doing it. Instead, I purchased a steamer and will give a once over to an item as needed. I have this one and it works great!
I fold the laundry, and the kids are in charge of putting their items away. When I’m done, they head to my bedroom, grab their items, and put them in their specific drawers.
Animal areas
This is really just a nice way for saying litter boxes and cat food and water. The dog eats and drinks outside, so it’s just the cats to tend to indoors. We have two litter boxes for our three cats. I clean the boxes every day, but on Sundays, I pull the boxes out, dust them off and take a rag to the outside, then vacuum and mop the floors under them. We keep a box in the laundry room and the upstairs bathroom. Owning a few old cats, and I was finding they were too lazy to head downstairs whenever they needed to use the litter box. Yeah . . . . another gross. So we had to accommodate that. Enough said.
Bathrooms
We have three. A guest bath, the kids, and our master bathroom.
Below is a photo from our kids bathroom. We redid it over the summer and it’s the most stunning by far! You can find the whole process and some crazy before photos here.
We also refreshed our guest bathroom, but have yet to do our master. But that’s beside the point!
Bathrooms are wiped down top to bottom, counters and toilets cleaned, toothpaste removed from the front of the kids sink cabinets. (Why kids why!?!) And items in drawers tidied and organized. Lastly, floors are moped, trash is taken out, toiled paper restocked, and fresh towels put away. Again, there’s just something about a clean bathroom that makes me smile.
Water those plants
I was always seeming to forget to water my plants. I’d walk by and notice one wilting, check the soil, and it would be dry as a bone. Quickly I realized if I planned to keep all the plants in my home alive, I needed a schedule. You can learn more all about my favorite indoor plants here.
Once I put the watering on my Sunday list, they all got a bit more happy. Every now and again one of them doensn’t need watered on Sunday, but I always check the soil and mostly give them a few drops. The fiddle leaf fig I do every other week. And once every two months I’ll include fertilizer into the mix. This has lead to very healthy, happy indoor plants.
Once the bulk of the cleaning is done, it’s time to put on the finishing touches!
Dusting
Dusting is another thing that’s not a favorite of mine. But throughout the week if I spot an area that really needs attention, I’ll add it to my Sunday list.
Once the dusting is complete, I’ll vacuum, and finally, mop.
Vacuuming and Moping
I do have a eufy robotic vacuum, which you can read about here. It’s been going strong for two years and I’m not sure I could function without it. Even with it going daily, I still need a handheld. Our home is four stories and having a vacuum with attachments is a must. We got the eufy HomeVac S11 Infinity cordless and its been an absolute dream.
Again, I vacuum daily. Having three cats and a huge hairy dog doesn’t leave any other options. If I don’t vacuum daily, you can tell. Instead of tumbleweeds blowing in the desert, think dog and cat hair blowing through my living room. It’s one of the reasons we installed beautiful HEWN Stoneform Flooring. We didn’t want dander and allergens getting caught in carpet all the time. HEWN is easy to maintain, and our home is much cleaner and beautiful with our new flooring. To read all about this durable, beautiful flooring, check out this post on installation, and this post when we added more six months later and how its held up.
For moping, and dusting, and cleaning, and for a lot of things actually, I use the Norwex brand. I’m not associated with them in any way, but I do purchase their products and love them. Like mentioned above, I don’t use a bunch of chemicals in my home. To mop my floor, I simply use hot water and the Norwex mop. The microfiber grabs all the grime and gunk off my floors and they feel so soft and clean when I’m done. Moping the whole house takes less than fifteen minutes.
For other great cleaning items for the home, I use Grove Collaborative. They always have my favorite Mrs. Meyer’s products, and other items I use often!
Physical work done, it’s time to plan out meals
I’m not a super crazy meal planner. Generally, we eat the same standard breakfasts, lunches, and snacks. But dinners I like to put more effort into. It’s our largest meal of the day, and I like to have a little fun with it. I keep a huge binder of my favorite printed recipes, but also surf Pinterest or my go-to bloggers sites for new and yummy things to try.
Taking my desk calendar, I’ll write out each meal on the date I plan to make it. If needed, I’ll submit an online order for any ingredients I don’t have. I’ll also check the freezer and pantry, pick out items that need to be used soon, and plan meals arounds those.
Lastly, My Blogging schedule
I know that not all of you are bloggers, but it’s basically just planning out work stuff for the week, and most of us have that in some version. As well as appointments, shopping, etc.
For blogging I’ll sit down with my constantly updating list of projects and recipes to share, and see what works best for the next seven days. Some branded content is planned out further in advance, but mostly on Sunday I decided what to share for the upcoming week. My creative brain cant think out much further than that.
Done! Now We Relax
That’s it! If I’m not distracted much, I can finish it all in about three hours. Just three hours, and the week is set up for success. I’d call that a good use of my time. Once everything is complete, we’ll dish up dinner, pour a glass of wine, and enjoy an evening catching up on our latest shows, or if its summer and the weather is great, we’ll relax on the patio, taking in the beautiful sunset.
Do you like to batch things like home cleaning, or are you more of a little bit a day person? Whatever way you do it, I hope it works well for you and that you’re able to enjoy a clean and happy home too!
More on Home Cleaning: Party Prep!
If you want to know how I clean and prep for a party, make sure to check out this post where I share my secrets to always being party ready!
