Pre-Spring Deep Cleaning

Since we moved into this house when Lily was 2 months old (because we are insane), I've never really felt settled and the house has seemed to be in a state of perpetual chaos.  Now that I'm home full time, I've been working on making it a priority to really settle into our home and get everything cleaned/organized.  While I was working on coming up with a chore list, I remembered that an awesome mom I know had blogged about her family's chore schedule at one point.  She directed me to the link and some documents that she'd found.  (Her name is Catherine and you can find her at The Life I Need - definitely check it out!)

In her blog, she linked back to a website that has become a goldmine for me: Organized Home.  They have a great 14 week plan to deep clean the whole house.  I love it because you focus on one or two rooms per week.  They have a suggested outline with various checklists here.

Since I'm an excel junkie and their list didn't exactly meet my needs, I decided to make my own calendar with specific rooms and change up the order a bit.  I also took into consideration my other daily chores (dishes, vacuuming, etc.) to determine what I wanted to do each day.  My spreadsheet for January and February looks like this:

I'm a big fan of color coding.  I used white and grey alternating fill for the months, and then different color text for each day of the week to make it easier to follow.  It was presumed that I would be doing most of the chores, but anything that Matt and I would need to do together I filled with purple.  If you're interested in using my spreadsheet, you can access an editable version here.  You may need to adjust the dates, but that should be easy enough.  If you need help editing, I'm always happy to help however I can!

Week 1 has gone absolutely swimmingly (granted, it is the easiest part of the house to clean) but I am really looking forward to the rest of this challenge and can't wait to have a cleaner, more organized house just in time for spring!