Simple Chore List {Free Printable}

The easiest way to tackle household chores?  Get caught up and stay caught up. 

I’ve been able to stay on top of things (more or less) by making a simple chore list to follow during the week.  Once you get into the groove, it won’t take you much more than 20 minutes to accomplish most days’ chores.  

Monday – Laundry, Groceries
Usually I’ll throw a load of laundry in, then head to the grocery store.  By the time we get home, it’s time to switch loads. 

Tuesday – Bathrooms
Wipe down all surfaces, clean all the places no one ever likes cleaning, make sure there’s toilet paper stocked – you know, all that glamorous stuff. 

Wednesday – Kitchen
Wipe down the inside of the microwave, clean out the crumbs from the toaster, de-clutter the counter, make sure that last week’s leftovers have been thrown out or frozen (if it’s not too late). 

Thursday – Dust, Sweep + Mop Floors
Dust the TV and bookcases, sweep the kitchen and dining room and give it a quick mop. 

Friday – Vacuum, Water Houseplants
Give upstairs and downstairs a quick vacuum, water houseplants. 

Daily – Dishes, Go through mail
Staying on top of dishes and mail is key!  They tend to be the worst culprits for piling up fast and bringing you down.  I try not to go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink.

Obviously some days are busier than others and a particular day’s chores might get skipped.  Sometimes I’ll try to make them up the next day, other times I may just skip those chores entirely for that week - but trying to stick to this schedule as much as possible means that even when you skip something it’s not hard to pick up the slack the following day or week and catch back up.  

DIY Mail Basket

This is an old project, and while I don't have photos of the process I'd still like to share it with all of you. 

Like most people, when it comes time to mail something we've got to hunt down the stamps, and the return address labels.. or maybe it was the thank-you cards we can't seem to find.  To combat this, I wanted to make a little catch-all to keep in the kitchen and corral all these necessities in one place.  

Materials:  

• basket
• scrap wood
• saw
• paint
• stencils
• Dremel tool or small drill
• wire

How-to:  

I already had a cute little chicken-wire basket I found at the dollar bins in Target (yes!), but you could use any kind of small basket or bin.  The bottom of my basket was slatted so I needed to make a new bottom in order for the contents to stay in, to do this I cut a scrap of wood down to size and painted it black to match the basket.  

To make the "Mail" sign, I took another small scrap of wood and cut it to size.  I painted it black and used some stencils (I used a Martha Stewart stencil set) to stencil MAIL in white.  

After everything was dry, I lined up the sign where I wanted it on the basket and marked where I needed to drill the holes for the wire.  Once they were drilled I threaded some wire through and twisted it in the back to secure the sign to the basket.  Done!