Motivate your family: Borrow a technique from the commercial cleaning world to do the best, most efficient cleaning job possible. Laura Dellutri explains how in the following excerpt from Speed Cleaning 101: Cut Your Cleaning Time in Half!

 

article continues below ↓

Team Cleaning®

This involves one person being responsible for one specific job task at a time and completing only that job. When Team Cleaning you typically divide the team into four cleaning specialists.

 

• The Bathroom/Kitchen Specialist: Specializes in bathrooms, kitchens and floors — mainly the wet work.
  
  
• The Vacuum Specialist: Vacuums. Period.
  
  
• The Utility Specialist: Removes trash, sweeps the floors and deals with any special tasks.
  
  
• The Dusting Specialist: Responsible for high dusting, mid dusting and low dusting. This job typically also includes glass cleaning.

For big families sharing the cleaning tasks, Team Cleaning is a winner. The workers are not as overwhelmed as when cleaning alone, and they tend to do one thing and do it very well. The team approach works even if you only have two people; the trick is in how you divide the work. For example, one person does all the dry work in a room; the other person does all the wet work.

Wave Cleaning

This creative cleaning method is a variation of the Team Cleaning method. You need a team of two to six people. This is a particularly popular method for families that work well as a team.

Think of being in the stands at a ball game and everyone does the wave. In this variation, each person represents a wave of cleaning. The process starts at one end of the house. One example of the division of labor involves four team members: The high duster goes through the room first, then moves on to the next room. Next up, the trash pickup and wall-washing team member comes through. Team member three, the floor washer and bathroom cleaner, takes up the action. And finally, the vacuuming and tidying player finishes the room and shuts off the lights.

This process makes the work go quickly, and each person can inspect the other person's work. You can adapt cleaning duties to the needs of the job and the capabilities of the family members. For example, you could have a laundry person, a bathroom person, a vacuum and dusting person, and a floor-washing person. Whatever works best in your home is fine.

 

Team Cleaning® is a registered trademark of ProTeam, Inc. (used with permission).

 

 

 

About Laura Dellutri

Laura Dellutri, The Healthy Housekeeper, is an author, cleaning expert, speed cleaning consultant, radio and television personality, and entrepreneur and owner of the professional janitorial firm America's Cleaning. For more information, visit www.HealthyHousekeeper.com.