Your Complete Home Cleaning Schedule: What to Clean Weekly, Monthly, and Seasonally

Your daily grind can make it challenging to keep your house clean and tidy. At the same time, it’s much more enjoyable to relax and unwind in a clean home. But where will you find the time to keep up with your housework throughout a hectic week?

How To Make A Daily Cleaning Schedule

Your daily grind can make it challenging to keep your house clean and tidy. At the same time, it’s much more enjoyable to relax and unwind in a clean home. But where will you find the time to keep up with your housework throughout a hectic week?

Believe it or not, it’s possible to incorporate a daily house cleaning routine into your busy weekly calendar. How? By creating a housework schedule. Assigning specific chores to certain days of the week allows you to break down what may seem like an overwhelming task, so that you’re left with manageable cleaning jobs.

Take a look that the following house cleaning checklist for an example of what a little strategic planning can do for you.

Monday: Clean the Bathrooms

Your bathroom probably needs a little TLC after the weekend, so go ahead and get this chore out of the way early in the week. Save the heavy-duty cleaning, like scrubbing grout, for the weekend and focus on smaller aspects of the bathroom. Clean your toilet and get rid of all the toothpaste marks on the sink and mirror. You may also want to freshen up the linens in your bathroom.

Tuesday: Dust and Vacuum Common Areas

Dust, dander and the pet hair can all build up if left unchecked, so be certain to make time in your daily housework schedule for fighting fluff and fuzz. Lightly dust surface areas in your living room, dining room and bonus room. Remember to hit ceiling fans and blinds, and don’t forget to sweep cobwebs from the corners. Afterwards, run the vacuum to bust any dust that’s fallen, using an upholstery attachment to clean drapes and furniture.

Wednesday: Scrub the Kitchen

Naturally, you’re making sure your countertops are wiped down after meal preparation and you’re washing dishes on a daily basis, so those are two things you’ve already worked into your daily house cleaning routine. Today you’ll also focus on the other areas in the kitchen. Wipe down the refrigerator door and handle, along with the stovetop and your cabinets. Additionally, toss any expired food that’s in the fridge, and check your trash can to see if it needs to be cleaned.

Thursday: Tidy Your Entryway and Bedrooms

If you’ve organized your mudroom, it shouldn’t take too long to clean it up. You’ll probably just need to do a bit of tidying, followed by a quick sweep or vacuum. That means you have ample time to fit the bedrooms in your daily house cleaning routine.

Ask family members to pick up their bedroom floors, making sure toys, shoes and clothes are all put away or deposited in the laundry room. Then, do some light dusting of surface areas as you tidy items on desks and dressers. Afterwards, have family members take turns vacuuming the floors in their rooms.

Friday: Clear the Clutter from Your Mind

You’ve worked hard all week and stuck to your daily routine. Take a night off to veg out in your tidy home. You deserve it! If you must clean, toss the bedding in the laundry. That way you can relax with a book or movie as it washes and dries.

If you live with roommates or family members, make sure you get them involved in the daily house cleaning routine. Don’t forget to check chores off your house cleaning checklist so you can enjoy a feeling of accomplishment. And if you miss a day every now and then, don’t worry. Life happens, and you can always pick up where you left off next week.

Your Complete Home Cleaning Schedule: What to Clean Weekly, Monthly, and Seasonally

Knowing what to clean and when is half the battle when it comes to keeping your home tidy—which is where our handy checklists come in.

Madeline Buiano is an associate editor at MarthaStewart.com, sharing her knowledge on a range of topics—from gardening and cleaning to home and pets. She has five years of writing and editing experience in the digital publishing industry.

There’s no better feeling than stepping into a spotless, clean home. But with a full work schedule and busy weekends, it can be difficult to keep a cleaning routine that keeps your space feeling tidy. Enter our comprehensive home cleaning schedule. By breaking down housework into manageable tasks sorted by day, week, month, season, and year, you can put cleaning on autopilot. This means you’ll never waste time wondering where to begin—or be caught off guard by a seasonal task that crept up on you. While that once-a-year deep clean is a rite of passage, for a more long-tail approach, our complete checklists tell you what you should be doing—and when to do it.

Daily Cleaning Checklist

Just a few minutes of daily cleaning can make a huge difference when it comes to how your home looks and feels. Plus, it keeps messes at bay so they don’t become bigger headaches down the road. For daily cleaning, think about things you can tidy up from the waistline down, like your floors and countertops. This is especially important in the kitchen, where food-contact surfaces that aren’t cleaned every day can harbor and spread germs that cause food-borne illness, says Mary Gagliardi, in-house scientist and cleaning expert for Clorox.

• Make the bed
• Wipe down kitchen counters
• Sanitize high-touch surfaces
• Wipe down bathroom counters
• Sweep floors
• Clean dirty dishes
• Put away clothes

Weekly Cleaning Checklist

Just like daily cleaning, weekly home maintenance chores prevent your home from building up with dust, dirt, pet dander, and general mess. “Areas to tend to weekly are still your more high-traffic areas and most commonly used rooms,” says Melissa Poepping, founder of The Chemical Free Home. Some of these spots might be taken care of daily, but they should be on your weekly cleaning list, too, since they can’t wait a full month for more in-depth attention.

• Change and launder bath mats, towels, and washcloths
• Clean toilets, bathtubs, showers, and sinks
• Dust surfaces, including furniture, objects, and light fixtures
• Empty trash bins and wipe the insides and outsides
• Vacuum and mop floors
• Vacuum upholstery
• Wipe mirrors
• Change and launder sheets and pillowcases
• Discard magazines and catalogs; store those you want to keep
• Fluff pillows and comforters
• Launder machine-washable throw rugs and runners
• Sort through inboxes: pay bills, file paid bills, and paperwork
• Flush the kitchen drain with boiling water
• Wipe kitchen counters, sink, ventilation hood, refrigerator, and cupboard doors
• Wipe the inside of the oven, microwave, and toaster oven
• Wipe hand and pet prints from windows and glass doors

Monthly Cleaning Checklist

Monthly cleaning is your chance to tidy the sometimes neglected, but frequently used areas of your home. “Once each month, dive deeper into the out-of-sight, out-of-mind areas that, if left unattended, become laborious [to clean] or even shorten the life of some of your household items,” says Poepping. Also use this time to examine upholstered furniture for stains, so you can tend to them and keep your items looking new, she adds.

• Scrub grout
• Wipe insides of medicine cabinets
• Wipe tub and shower surrounds
• Launder pillow protectors, mattress pads, and shams
• Dust shelves and storage bins
• Vacuum floors and baseboards
• Discard food in the freezer that’s past its prime
• Wash ventilation hood filters
• Vacuum fireplace screen
• Wipe insides and outsides of trash and recycling bins
• Buff waxed stone, masonry, concrete, and wood floors
• Dust portable and ceiling fans
• Flush drains with vinegar, boiling water, and baking soda
• Vacuum window treatments, moldings, and windowsills
• Wipe interior and exterior doors and trim
• Wipe switch plates
• Wipe telephones

Seasonal Cleaning Checklist

Making a seasonal cleaning checklist is critical for keeping your home in tip-top shape. “This is where you think ‘floor to ceiling, and everything in between,'” says Gagliardi. “Semi-annual or seasonal cleaning is going to put the focus on your major appliances, help you to catch any potential issues, and prolong their life.”

• Launder pillows
• Turn mattresses
• Vacuum mattresses, box springs, and bed frames
• Clean hanging pot rack and polish copper cookware
• Deep clean oven
• Organize and wipe down pantry
• Remove contents of kitchen cabinets and wipe clean
• Discard expired food items
• Wipe kitchen ceiling
• Wipe the inside of the refrigerator
• Rotate stacked books to prevent warping
• Clean leather furniture
• Sweep out fireplace
• Clean baseboards and moldings
• Wash filter on washing machine
• Swap out seasonal clothes and store what is no longer needed
• Donate old clothes
• Clean out makeup drawer and throw away expired items
• Clean shower heads and faucet filters
• Vacuum and mop floors

Annual Cleaning Checklist

Some areas of your home are a major undertaking to clean—and you likely won’t have time to tend to them after work or in between weekend errands. However, these chores shouldn’t be neglected entirely, since failing to clean things like your gutters or air vents can create bigger issues down the road. “Every surface eventually needs a good cleaning,” says Gagliardi. “But for hard-to-clean spaces that take a lot of time to deal with, it’s reasonable to wait and [handle] them just once a year.”

• Remove contents of kitchen cabinets and clean interiors
• Remove contents of food pantry and clean interiors
• Throw away expired food items
• Deep clean oven
• Deep clean refrigerator and freezer
• Clean the water tray and filter on the refrigerator
• Clean out garage; donate items you no longer use
• Clean gutters
• Dust air vents; have a professional inspect air ducts
• Clean behind large appliances
• Have upholstery and window treatments professionally cleaned
• Vacuum and mop floors