One of my favorite things about The FlyLady is the way she refers to cleaning as blessing our home and family. What a lovely way to look at it! So much better than the word “chore”. The weekly home blessing hour is an important part of the overall FlyLady method.
This post may contain affiliate links and as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Read more here.
Home Blessing Hour
Once a week – Mondays in FlyLady land – we set our timers and get busy blessing our homes!
This is not detailed cleaning. Rather, it’s a quick cleanup that restores order and helps maintain our homes. Monday is a great day to do this if it works with your schedule but you can do it any day that suits you. Or if your time is really limited you can break it up and do one task per day. Like any other part of the system, make it work for you.
Here are the seven Home Blessing tasks – ten minutes each:
- Vacuum – I know what you’re thinking. Most of us can’t vacuum our entire house in 10 minutes. But this isn’t a thorough vacuuming. Just vacuum the traffic areas and “middles” of each room. If you have little used rooms such as a guest room, skip it. Focus on the visible areas. Thorough vacuuming is done during zone work (there will be another post about that soon!).
- Dust – Again, this isn’t the sort of dusting where you take everything off tables and shelves, polish surfaces and replace everything. If you don’t already have a high quality feather duster, I recommend purchasing one. Start at the front door and zip through each room giving dust collecting surfaces a quick once over with the duster. After you’re done, take the feather duster outside and give it a good shake. Personally, I prefer to dust before I vacuum.
- Quick mop – Grab your mop and, like with vacuuming, give your hard surface floors a quick scrub, focusing on visible spots.
- Polish mirrors and doors – Wipe off dog slobber from glass storm doors, toothpaste splatters on bathroom mirrors and other visible spots on glass, shiny surfaces and on doors. I also like to wipe around light switches during this time.
- Purge magazines/catalogs – Keep things from piling up by recycling newspapers, catalogs and magazines each week.
- Change sheets – There is nothing quite like fresh, clean sheets. And if you want to take it to the next level, try ironing your pillowcases.
- Empty all trash cans – I highly recommend having a wastebasket in every room and even your closet. Train yourself and your family to immediately place trash in a nearby wastebasket and avoid that littered look that a room takes on when empty soft drink cans, used tissues, crumpled papers, etc. are left on tables or the floor. Then once a week during the home blessing empty all those wastebaskets.
That is the “official” FlyLady list of home blessing tasks. However, like any other part of the system, you can and should adapt it to your family. For instance, if you change sheets on a different day than your home blessing you can add a different weekly task, increase time on one of the other six tasks or shorten your Home Blessing Hour.
Here is a good video I found about the Weekly Home Blessing:
More FlyLady posts:
The FlyLady Method: Morning Routine
The FlyLady Method: 5 Minute Room Rescue
The FlyLady Method: Shine Your Sink
The FlyLady Method: Getting Dressed (Including Shoes!)
The Best (and worst) of The FlyLady
I’m Giving The FlyLady Another Chance
We usually do something like that on a Wednesday, because it’s the day bins go out to the curb for pick-up next day, so it makes sense to do it then.
That totally makes sense. Sometimes people get hung up on following FlyLady (or anything else, for that matter) to the letter rather than adapting to fit your own life and home. My daughter does her weekly cleaning on Sunday, in part because she and her husband both work from home. He is often on conference calls so she can’t be running the vacuum or making noise then. When I worked full time and had young children I cleaned on Saturday mornings.
Sounds sensible.
I’ve been doing this for years and it seems second nature. My mother-in-law even told me that my house is too clean. Get that!!
Too clean? That sounds like a compliment to me. 🙂