Simplify Your Cleaning Schedule With Loop Planning
Cleaning is an essential part of maintaining a comfortable home. We all strive for that spotless living space, but the hard part is actually putting in the work to get there. When it comes to achieving a clean home, one of the biggest challenges is sticking to a consistent cleaning schedule. Life is busy, and it often feels like everything else is more important than cleaning. But guess what? I’m here to tell you… you’re probably right. 😉
Cleaning is not time-sensitive
Life is full of priorities. Some of those have actual deadlines—purchasing and wrapping the gifts before Christmas; potty training your kid before preschool starts; and even exercising for a certain amount of time each week. If it’s important to you, then it likely needs to happen within a given timeframe, or it’s simply not effective.
I believe that cleaning does not work this way. Cleaning is important, but it’s not urgent. Which means that cleaning schedules are essentially arbitrary deadlines. So why hold yourself to one? Instead, I urge you to consider a new way of planning and tracking your cleaning tasks: loop planning.
What is loop planning?
Loop planning is the process of working through a list without deadlines. Once you finish working through it, you loop back around and start it again. Instead of working from a schedule, where a certain amount of work has to be done every day, loop planning gives you flexibility for the days when you just can’t get it done. It’s a fantastic tool to try if you’re struggling to be consistent.
Examples of loop planning cleaning schedules
Here’s what a cleaning-schedule-turned-loop-plan might look like:
- Dust
- Vacuum
- Wash floors
- Clean toilets
- Clean showers
- Clean windows & mirrors
- Wash sheets
- Bonus task
- (Start loop over…)
- Dust
- Etc.
For your bonus tasks, you could work through another loop:
- Dust light fixtures & ceiling crevices
- Dust blinds
- Clean walls
- Clean baseboards
- Clean carpets
- Clean out kitchen cabinets & drawers
- Deep clean dishwasher
- Deep clean fridge
- Deep clean freezer
- Deep clean oven
- Deep clean washer
- Deep clean dryer
- (Start loop over…)
- Dust light fixtures & ceiling crevices
- Etc.
Alternatively, you could loop through different rooms in your house, and do everything that needs to be done in that room all at once:
- Kitchen
- Family Room
- Living Room
- Dining Room
- Bathrooms
- Bedrooms
- Laundry Room
- Mud Room
- (Start loop over…)
- Kitchen
- Etc.
How to break out tasks for loop planning
You can break out your loop planning tasks however you would like. The divisions don’t have to be even, because with loop planning, time doesn’t matter.
Let’s say it takes you three times as long to do the bathrooms? Not a problem. Just finish it up whenever you can, and move on when it’s time to move on.
It doesn’t matter if you get through multiple items on one day and only half of an item on another day. So this yet another advantage loop planning has on cleaning schedules: the tasks don’t need to be evenly distributed.
Say goodbye to cleaning schedules
With loop planning, good habits still matter. If you want a clean house, you still have to do the work to clean it. But the deadline-free approach takes the pressure off. It provides structure without the guilt.
(For tips on how to build good habits, I encourage you to check out James Clear’s Atomic Habits. I also recommend time blocking.)
Be honest: is your cleaning schedule actually working for you? If not, give loop planning a try!
