Cleaning Playlist

So... it turns out that I'm not great at keeping the house clean.  I think I am.  But I'm not.  Especially here on the farm where we actually spend time in our house.  We not only sleep here, but we eat here all the time.  And we hang out here.  And we work here.  And supposedly we clean here, but not so much.

For years I've kept a cleaning playlist on my iPod, and now it is more necessary than ever.  I'm not going to claim that it helps me keep things perfect, but at least it helps things from being horrendous.  Most of the time. I need to do it every day although on good weeks it only gets done about 5 times.  Fine.  4.  Ish. 

In our last house, the playlist was an hour long and could be done just once a week because we weren't actually home a lot.  Also it covered every room in the house.  Now, it's just 30 minutes and doesn't include our offices upstairs.

Here's how it works:

I made a list of each room and then added the dreaded task of sweeping (which I HATE and will invent every excuse to avoid):

Bedroom

Bathroom

Living/Dining

Kitchen

Floors

Each room gets a song that lasts close to 5 minutes.  On iTunes I just organized my songs by time instead of title.  That helped me know what songs I could choose from.  If you need more time in one space, give it a longer song.

Here are three tricks to really make this playlist work:

1.  You have to really - really love these songs.  I have a crazy, silly, fun one to start out with.  I think it traumatizes Husband a little to see my techno dancing moves... but it does encourage him to leave the bedroom so I can get to work.  The rest are worship songs that get my mind moving in the right direction.

2.  You have to put a one minute spacer song in between each of your cleaning songs.  This is so important.  I have a lot of movie soundtracks so it was easy to choose my one minute songs.  This helps me finish up fast and move to the next space.

3.  Create your playlist on what you will actually use.  I have an old school iPod.  But maybe your phone will work for you, or a centralized sound system.  You can create playlists on almost every music listening site.

So, give it a go.  Have fun.  And feel free to stop by. I'll show you my techno dancing moves.  

As for the house?  Well, it may or may not be clean.