What's Your Cleaning Schedule?

There are a few things that I know for sure. Each day that I am blessed to wake up and get out of bed, I will breathe air, I will eat chocolate, and I will clean the house. Every. Single. Day.

My kids help out a lot. They pick up after themselves which takes care of lots of clutter lying around everywhere. They clean their messes after showers and they clear their places at the table after eating... my husband is a super handy house guy as well... so why am I cleaning so much? What's left? Oh yeah... laundry, floors, and laundry again.

One thing that I have managed to figure out about keep up with house work is that I have certain things that must happen every day. EVERY day. Laundry is one of them.. then dishes... and floors.

I try to do a load or two of laundry every day - and I do mean from washer to closet. That's tough for me for some reason. I really have to gear myself up to get anything from the dryer to its designated place in the house. If I don't follow this schedule, we will run out of something. It never fails. With as many clothes as we have, there are never enough clean blue jeans, socks, or underwear. How is this so? I cannot wait for them to wear flip flops EVERYWHERE soon so that I can lay off the whites for a while.

Dishes are a given. I don't know anyone with kids that doesn't run their dishwasher at least once a day. I have a once a day rule here. It gets filled, it runs, and that's it. I don't empty it until the same time the next day, and I don't worry about the dishes in the sink until then, either. If I load the dishwasher and only two bowls couldn't fit, those bowls will absolutely sit in the sink until the next day. I don't wash by hand. Ever. (My husband has so sweetly taken this on as his job. My cookwear that isn't dishwasher safe gets scrubbed by the man in the house - or it sits in the sink until I HAVE to clean it to cook again.) I figure that cleaning counter tops goes hand in hand with doing dishes...

Floors. Oh boy the floors.

I admit that I have a slightly unnatural obsession with clean floors. You'd think that the kids that we have in and out of this house would have broken me from it, but no luck. I vacuum once or twice every day. I cannot handle dirt showing on my floors. I sweep almost every day - which is a bigger job but I hate feeling crumbs and grit on my bare feet so I make it happen. (sometimes not until 10:00 at night... but at least it stays clean for a few hours that way.)

Do you have jobs around the house that you feel you HAVE to do each day to function? What is your general cleaning "schedule" to make things run smoothly around your house?