Cleaning Day

Having just finished cleaning bedrooms, I'm happy to say that it only took us an hour. We've designated Thursdays as cleaning day. Some people say that children's rooms are their own and as such, should be left to their own discretion as far as how and when they should be cleaned. I could go along with that and have a much easier life, but my husband has mentoned that if we allow them to be lazy with cleaning up after themselves, even in their own room, then they will view this as the norm.
So because of this we are cleaning rooms to Mom's satisfaction on Thursday. Because we did it last week, and got all the closets cleaned well, today we were able to do some work on drawers. I am choosing not to inspect all areas every week at this point. There will be a time that all areas are easy to clean and therefore can be inspected each and every week in order to maintain a certain level of cleanliness.
My method is this: I send all children to their rooms to start working on cleaning. We start at 8:00 as we need to prepare to leave for Bible study at 9:45 at the latest. I go to my room and dust and clean up all the clutter that has been thrown there during the week and vacuum. When I am done there, I had to the little boys' room, then the little girls' room and then the older boys' room.
My policy is that if I get to your room and there are things hiding under your bed or stuffed in corners, I reserve the right to take anything from the room that I deem is unnecessary. If you can keep your toys and "junk" put away in the proper place (they each have a drawer or box for these things that I really don't think need to be kept but they do), then they will be left alone by Mom.
I don't allow clothes in all different drawers, but rather each drawer is to be specified for a certain type of clothing and the junk drawer also keeps an extra set of sheets for their bed.
Because of this, today, when I made it to the boys' room after only about 20 minutes of cleaning they were 'done'. And I was impressed with the state of the floor and behind doors and in the closet, but because of this we had drawer inspection. I will go and check another room (i.e. the big boys' room) ahead of schedule so they have a chance to clean up things that I find before I actually get there. So they had plenty of time to work on drawers. I noticed their closet was getting a bit messy, but let that go this time. What a wonderful feeling to be able to see the floors in the rooms at least once a week. :)
We also thoroughly clean the main floor and the basement on this day as well. But I will save that for another post. Let's challenge ourselves to the next level.