Zone cleaning is a technique that breaks up the cleaning of a home (or building) into "zones". For instance, the kitchen is one zone, the living room is another zone, etc. When referring to the home, this methodology of cleaning is promoted in a way that says you need to focus on a single zone each week and getting it clean top to bottom. Since you have an entire week to do one zone, it seems possible. Each day you do a few cleaning tasks in that zone and after several days of cleaning--that zone should be completely clean. Depending on the size of your home, you will cycle through every area of the home once every 3-6 weeks. Each time you return to that zone, you clean it top to bottom.

The alternative is to break up your week such that you focus on a different zone each day. In other words: instead of spending the week focusing on the kitchen, perhaps Monday is "kitchen day", Tuesday is "living room day", etc.

There are pros and cons to each; and it may take you some time to find which way works for you (if zone cleaning works for you at all).

Week-long focus on a single zone works best in homes where regular cleaning tasks are a way of life. So you can leave the kitchen for 3-6 weeks because your daily living incorporates keeping the counter clear and your floors aren't dirty enough to require weekly cleaning. Your bathroom sinks don't need to be scrubbed that often because each person rinses the sink after use, etc.

But if this is not your way of life, you may find that week-long focus on a zone creates a disaster in all the other zones of your house--and you'll quickly toss zone cleaning into the garbage heap.

On the flip side, assigning a zone to each day of the week can present a problem if your schedule varies greatly and you could wind up skipping cleaning tasks (and other things) for a day. So if Monday is "kitchen day" but your schedule is so chaotic that you can't do ANY cleaning on Monday--you are now going to go two weeks without cleaning the kitchen (because you already hadn't cleaned it in a week).

Neither method guarantees that a particular zone will be cleaner, either. Some people believe that week-long focus on a zone will ensure that the area will get a more thorough cleaning; but if you don't have enough time during the entire week to do those kinds of tasks--then really, it's not getting any cleaner than if you spent all that time dedicated to that zone one day each week for 3-6 weeks.

Zone cleaning is not for everyone. Even if you enjoy this method of cleaning, it may not be the be-all-end-all to your cleaning. You will still have daily routine tasks and you may still have the monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and/or annual "big cleaning" tasks to do. If you keep that in mind and alter your expectations, you may find that zone cleaning can be a helpful PART of your overall cleaning methodology.