Many people believe they don't have enough time to maintain the cleanliness of their home. But if you can manage to incorporate cleaning as a series of small tasks that are part of your daily routines, you can manage to keep your house cleaner than you have kept it in the past.

This is less about doing things a specific way and more about finding opportunities to get things done. This is actually a lot easier in the bathroom than it may seem. Let me walk you through a week in my master bathroom.

My bathroom is about 6 feet wide and 10 feet long. It has a toilet, vanity/sink and shower stall. The floor is ceramic tile and there are two rather large windows even though the bathroom is relatively small. There is a mirror over the sink and a storage cabinet over the toilet. In the bathroom are a tall hamper that holds too many clothes, a garbage can, a scale and a toilet brush.

Under the sink I keep a sponge with a scrubbing side and my cleaning products. Sometimes I have a homemade mix and sometimes I have store-bought cleaners. But they are readily handy. I also have a small, plastic pitcher and an old washcloth that I use for cleaning.


Every day I use the bathroom. And every day I add 5-10 minutes to my time in there. On Saturday or Sunday once or twice each month, I may spend another 20 minutes in there to clean the shower stall. But each day, I am in the bathroom brushing my teeth, washing my face and brushing my hair.

When I see that it's time to clean the toilet, I pour whatever cleaner I'm going to use in there and let it sit while I brush my teeth and wash my face. Then I swish it around with the toilet brush and flush it down. I brush my hair and move on. The exterior of the toilet is a separate task. That day, I'm just doing the inside. Tackling the outside at the same time is more time and effort than I have available to spend on cleaning the bathroom.

Today, I finished brushing my teeth and washing my face and decided that the sink wasn't shiny anymore. I reached under the sink for the sponge, poured some cleaner on it, and quickly gave the sink a scrub. This extended to the countertop and faucet. The whole ordeal--complete with rinsing--took me less than 5 minutes. That's because it is so easy for me to do that it is done often and I don't have to scrub too hard.

My house defies the laws of nature with it's accumulation of dust. This problem is exacerbated in the bathroom by our use of powder. Once each week (usually on Friday) I pick up the scatter rugs, throw them in the hamper (if they will fit) and while I brush my teeth, my special cleaning washcloth is in the sink getting wet. I wring it out, throw it on the floor, and wipe the floor down. When I first started doing this, I didn't do it often enough. So I always had to rinse out the washcloth about halfway through the job. But now I'm usually able to do the whole floor with the cloth. But then, my floor is relatively small. If it were bigger, I would just do portions of the floor each day if I didn't have the time to do the whole floor.

Sometimes, while brushing my teeth, I wipe down the cabinetry or clean the mirror. I'll wipe the top of the storage cabinet. Occasionally I finish my grooming and then wipe down the exterior of the toilet. For those of you with four-year-old boys in the home, you know this is at least a weekly task. Then there are the Saturday or Sunday mornings where I take some extra time and clean the entire shower stall so that it sparkles. Once every few months, I might clean the light fixture.

Overall, in the course of about a week, my bathroom is cleaned. And then I might move to the main bath for a week ensuring that one is clean. I might not move my grooming to the other bath and just walk across the house to that bathroom for the extra 5 minutes it takes for the task of the day.

At night, I have another opportunity to perform these tasks. I'm not sure why, but I always seem to wipe the windowsills at night. Something about the lighting in my bathroom just makes the dust more obvious at night. This also manages to be prime mirror-cleaning time. Again, the lighting just highlights different issues. But I have two times each day, five days (at least) each week to tackle a small cleaning task in my bathroom.

I leave my bathroom pleased. I'm clean. The bathroom is clean. The bathroom is going to stay clean. It is perpetually cleaned and I barely feel a thing!