The First Daily Checklist (Master Bedroom Daily Checklist) Printable

I am documenting my own journey of cleaning up my house after an illness, but maybe there are others who will want to join me (now or sometime in the future).  So, I decided to make a printable at the end of each week.  These can be printed based on what week you are at in your journey, or by room.  I will be adding them as I complete them in my journey.

This week's is a list of the things to work towards if you are first starting, and then to maintain daily after completing the cleanup of the master bedroom.

This one is short.

1.  Make the bed

2.  Get dressed

3.  Start at your bedside and walk around to the other side of the bed.  

• Pick up all trash, clothes, and things that should not be on the floor.  
• Clear surfaces of all items that don't belong.  
• Make anything that does belong look good.

4.  Close the closet doors

5.  Complete one load of laundry (wash and dry)

This same list can be printed here:  Daily checklist #1 printable.

I also rewrote this list leaving off the laundry (and getting dressed) if you would be interested in daily checklists by room.  Master bedroom daily checklist printable.

For now, these are very basic, covering only the things I have discussed in my progress.  I will add more detailed ones as I get farther into my journey (but these will stay the same, I'll add the harder ones separately).

Hope they are helpful!

God Bless,

Lisa

Cleaning the House After an Illness: Finishing the Master Bedroom

Finishing the master bedroom took me 2 additional days.  Each day began with the prior day's work.

I made the bed.

I got dressed (with shoes).

I checked the bedside table, the area beside the bed, the dresser, the entertainment center and the floor in front of the bed for clothes, trash, and things that didn't belong there.  5 minutes (max) to do all of that.

On day 5, I cleaned up the area by our changing table (we keep it in our room because I do not like to climb up and down the stairs to change a diaper).  This area stayed pretty clean since DH would change DD while I sick, so it just took a couple minutes to straighten the clothes and shoes on the shelves below.  

Next to the changing table is our closet.  With past cleaning plans, I would have started pulling everything out to organize it.  Of course, it would have taken me DAYS to complete the job and created so many other additional jobs that it would take a long time to actually clean out the closet.  

I would have had to find places to store the things we were keeping, and (most time consuming) sell the stuff we didn't want anymore.  The selling would require me taking pictures, listing the items on eBay or Facebook swaps, and generally spending a TON of time 'cleaning' the closet while the rest of my house fell down on top of me.  Side note...YES, I do donate a lot of stuff we don't want anymore, but I pay for our kids' new clothes by selling the old, so it is important that I at least sell the very best items.

I DO think it is very important to reduce clutter in the house.  But, I realized that if I decluttered the closet and had a dirty house, no one would call that cleaning except me!  I needed to start doing things that would clean the house BEFORE I could declutter.

So, I picked up the area next to DH's side of the bed (in front of the closet) and I.....CLOSED THE CLOSET DOOR.  Was it cleaner behind the door?  Nope.  Did the room look cleaner?  Yep.  Did I create a bunch of more projects?  Nope.  I was not trying to ignore the closet forever.  I was simply being realistic about my current situation.  I needed to get the most noticeable results with the least amount of energy spent.  Project success.

At that point, my bedroom was actually finished!  Not clean (as in dusted or vacuumed) and not decluttered, but still finished.  It was completely picked up!!  It only took 5 days to get there, lol!  The me before I was sick would not have been proud of that 5 days, but I most certainly was!

On day 6, I considered my various options, but decided to go ahead and complete the clean.  I washed the comforter and sheets, did a basic feather duster dust of the surfaces that were clear, and I ran the vacuum.  

6 days and I had it generally clean.  Not decluttered, but it still looked 100% better.  And the best part?  I could get it back to looking that way in less then 5 minutes.  I was a very happy camper!

The laundry, however, was still backing up.  I'll explain how I dealt with that tomorrow.

God Bless,
Lisa

If you would like to read my house recovery from the start, check out my first post here.

Cleaning the House After an Illness: Days 3 & 4

I started out the exact same place that I did on days one and two-the bed.  

I made my bed. 

I got dressed.

I looked at my bedside table and bed area.  I picked up dishes, trash, clothes, and anything else that didn't belong there.

I looked at my dresser.  I hung up anything that needed to be hung up and put away anything that would fit in my dresser.  I cleared the floor and closed all the drawers.

What had taken me 20 minutes on each of the days before took me just a couple of minutes.  I decided to allow 20 minutes of cleaning on top of the repeat work, which meant about 25 minutes for each day.

Next to my dresser is our laundry basket.  It was full.  Overflowing full.  Unfortunately, the laundry room was pretty backed up, so I had to keep moving on for now.  

My goal for day three was to clear all the area in front of my bed.  It's a pretty large area, so it took a lot of time.  

Behind along the wall is our TV area and it had collected a lot of things that didn't belong in the room (but DID have a home elsewhere) and that was the goal for day 4.

Again, my goals where to 1.  throw out trash,  2.  put dirty clothes in the basket, 3.  hang up clean clothes, and 4.  put things that didn't belong in my room in the correct rooms.  Any thing that didn't belong in my room-but didn't have a home-went into a new pile right near the bedroom door.

25 minutes later (50 combined for the days) and you could see the floor of nearly all the room!  You could walk in without tripping over things!  It was great.  

Other then the fact that it was the room I was spending most of my time in, there were 2 reasons I chose to start in the Master Bedroom.  First, is that it is MY room.  Not a high traffic area, and my children (other then Explorer who sleeps in there) are not generally in there.  So, I knew it would stay clean.  

The other reason, is that I read somewhere that you should make your Master Bedroom your first priority since it is where you and your husband sleep.  That it is good for your marriage.  

I can tell you that after those first 4 days of work, I was so excited with the results.  And, my husband actually noticed, too.  It was a great start.

Oh, I forgot to add that I had done a load of laundry on each of the days.  I had dried them, but not folded them.  The laundry was clean, but backed up.  I had to figure out my plan, but that was for another day.

God Bless,
Lisa

Cleaning the House After An Illness: Day Two of 'The Plan'

Day two looked a lot like day one, to be honest.  

I got out of bed.

I made the bed.

I got dressed (with shoes).

Then, I looked at my bedside table and the floor next to my bed.  I checked for dirty clothes, trash, and anything that didn't belong there.  Yes, I found a few things, but instead of taking me 10-15 minutes like it did yesterday, it took me about a minute tops.  And, since I got them all out yesterday I knew where everything went away at.

This means I had time and energy to continue on.  After my bedside area, the first thing you come to is my dresser.  This means there was another surface that had been an easy dumping ground while I was sick.  So, my goal for the day was to pick up the dresser and area in front of it.

I closed all the dresser drawers and put away the clothes on top of it that would fit into the dresser.  A few items were things that needed to be hung up, so I hung them up.  I took things out that didn't belong in my bedroom, and threw out any trash.  

After doing this, I had a number of clothing items that were supposed to be in my dresser, but wouldn't fit.  I had 2 reasons for this.  One, I was in between sizes since I was 20 weeks pregnant.  The other was that it was warm when I got sick and had turned cold while I was sick.  This meant there were 2 seasons of clothing trying to share the same space.

While I was still NOT decluttering, I did go ahead and pull anything from the pile that I knew I absolutely wasn't going to wear until the next year.  Those items I put on the bottom of my closet (where I could close the door on clutter) and the other items remained stacked (folded) on top of my dresser.  

I also removed the load of laundry from the drier (from yesterday) and put a new load of laundry in the wash.  Yesterday's laundry did not get folded.  It was just in a basket.

Now, you may wonder why I didn't just go ahead and take the items out of my dresser that weren't working.  The fact is, that I didn't really have anywhere to put them.  There were a couple of items on top of the dresser, but a lot more in the dresser that needed to be put away (in storage).  And, I knew this.  

If I had started going through the drawers, this would have created the need for extra projects.  I would have had to find a bin to put the clothes I was keeping in.  I would have had to decided what I was doing with things I didn't want or need anymore.  I would have had to figure out where to PUT the things I was donating/selling/etc.  

There is nothing wrong with doing the things I just said, in fact it's usually good to do these things as you go about cleaning, but when you are recovering from and illness, and doing housework for only the 2nd day in 2 months, it is not the time to start large projects.  I had to let myself start with the minimums and work up to the bigger projects.  Remember, there was still stuff laying on the floor of my bedroom.  Getting those picked up was more important then sorting through all my off season clothing.  I had to learn to prioritize in order to get the house back on a limited amount of energy.

That was the end of my second day of work.  It was probably about 20 minutes start to finish.  I tried to keep my work time to about that at first.  But, after just 2 days I had a nice, clear, path to my bed and it was noticeable (at least to me) that I done something.  I knew I was off to a good start.

I am going to continue blogging my progress-possibly daily-for awhile.  So, I hope I don't bore those of you who are already healthy and have a clean house too much.  I will still blog about our school, so don't worry.  I just really wanted to document this because I know I am not the first person to be sick for a long period of time and have a house to reclaim.  I'm also not completely done.  Once I get done telling you how I got started, I'll fast forward to real time, and it would be nice to have some accountability for what I'm doing now :).

God Bless,
Lisa

Cleaning the House After An Illness: Finally Starting

Okay, enough talking and planning, let's start talking about what I did.  I am pretty sure I built it up to be way more then I should have, lol!

Day One

The very first thing I did was to GET OUT OF BED.  I promise it gets more exciting.  But, when you are sick that is sometimes a big deal all in itself. 

My next step was equally as exciting...I made the bed.  

I know many of you are thinking-well duh.  But, if you happen to be {like I was} recovering from a long illness, or simply trying to start out on a new cleaning routine, this really is a big step.

I wanted to start my cleaning journey right in the room where I was.  I wanted to SEE the changes and have them affect me.  I hoped it would motivate me to go farther.  I also didn't want to have to walk ALL THE WAY across the house to get to the place I wanted to clean, because on some days that would take a large chunk of my energy.  

I got dressed after making my bed.  I even put on shoes.  I don't like to feel dirt and clutter under my feet when I clean up.  It discourages me.

Then I turned to my bedside table area.  Like I said, I started right by me.  Being in bed for awhile means that lots of things accumulate next to the bed that shouldn't be there.  A few plates, a few cups, some trash, empty medicine bottles, books, I am sure you can imagine.  

I didn't take any photos, but below is the current space.  This isn't an after photo.  This is a today photo.  Even after I picked up that first day, it looked nothing like this.  But, I wanted to show you how small of an area we are talking about.

My goals were to 1. Pick up any trash in the area.  2.  Pick up any dishes and take them to the sink.  3.  Pick up anything that didn't belong there and already had a home.  

Number three is very specific.  If an item already had a place it was supposed to go (for example a book that belonged on the bookshelf) then I would pick it up.  I made a pile of the things that had places to go.  I was NOT, however, decluttering.  

Specifically, there was a bag of items that had no home in the corner and a pile of Christmas gifts (this was before Christmas) right next to my dresser.  Neither of the clutter items belonged in that space, but finding them a space would have created another level of work.  Trying to take care of those items may have derailed the entire plan, so they stayed there.

I was also not cleaning.  What I mean by that is my bedside table and lamp had dust on it and the floor could have used a vacuum.  On this first day of recovering the house, I was doing neither one.  I was simply picking up and straightening the area.

Oh, and there were some books on top of my bedside table that belonged IN my bedside table.  However, my bedside table was completely full of other stuff.  I, again, was NOT decluttering, so they were stacked neatly on top of the table for now.

Believe it or not, it looked a TON better just by picking up the junk, trash, dishes, dirty clothes, and throw pillows of the floor.  No it wasn't completely done, but there was a noticeable difference.  The items that needed to to be put away I asked the kids to take to the right rooms.  And the bits of clutter that remained were placed in an orderly pile next to the wall.

And, that was the end of the first day's work.  

I know you are likely thinking that wasn't a days worth of work.  But, it was. I think it took as much as 20 minutes from when I got out of bed until when I had finished picking up the last item next to my bed.  

One thing I also did from day one was to put a load of laundry in the washer.  There was already tons of laundry in the laundry room, so I didn't have to drag anything in there.  I simply put one load in, and when it was done I put it in the drier.  I didn't fold anything.

It was hard to stop there.  The entire house was in need of cleaning, but I knew if I kept going I would get too tired or too sick and it would end in failure.  I had to remind myself that I hadn't done ANYTHING for almost 2 months, and that the house could wait a few more days.  

If I haven't bored you yet, come back tomorrow for day two.

God Bless,
Lisa

If you would like to read my plan from the beginning, start here.