Happiness is a clean house

Can you imagine the heartbreak of a little girl when she realizes that snapping her chubby fingers at her strewn out Barbies will not cause them to leap into their designated storage tub à la "Mary Poppins"? Times that by 10 and that's how I feel looking at my house and coming to the same realization. Snapping my fingers will not do the laundry, wash the dishes, clean the bathroom, etc. While Mary Poppins claims to be "practically perfect in every way," I sometimes think she should add liar to that list — but that's just bitter housecleaning Jennifer saying that.

I am a self-proclaimed Type B personality. As Wikipedia so aptly describes, "People with Type B personalities are generally patient, relaxed, easy-going, and at times lacking an overriding sense of urgency." It is that "lacking an overriding sense of urgency" that gets me when it comes to cleaning and really gets my Type A husband whose whole life seems to be one big sense of urgency.

In an attempt to bring harmony to my marriage and cleanliness to my home, I created a cleaning schedule. You may be tempted to call it a "chore chart" like you used to have when you were five and you would get to place a sticker beside Wednesday when you brushed your teeth. But this is no chore chart. Stickers are not involved, sadly, and I no longer get credit for eating a S'more Poptart, which I'm pretty sure I penciled onto my chore chart when I was younger. 

So I put my Type A hat on (which is a very serious-looking and practical black bowler hat, much different from the brightly colored Type B sombrero) and created this two-week calendar of clean. 

This is not a steadfast chart. I don't have to clean the bathroom every other Tuesday or else the world falls into complete and utter disarray. I have a few cushion days to make up for things like Bunco, nights out, or just nights where I just don't want to. 

I'm one week in to my cleaning schedule, and so far so good. The bathroom got pushed back to Friday night (I'm quite the party animal, cleaning on a Friday), but it all got done. If you're scratching your head as to why Saturday is completely dedicated to towels, let me explain. One, the Hannigans go through an unusually high number of towels in a week, and two, I don't want to have to do a whole lot on a Saturday. And dishes are tended to as becomes necessary.

Do you use something like this to keep yourself on top of housework? Or are you Type A enough that it never would come to this? I'm interested to see how others tackle this issue. 

[Side note: I got a new comments system. It shouldn't be a problem for those who have already been commenting, but it'll open it up to others who may not have a Google account. And it'll let me reply to your comments, which I've been aching to do. So go test it out and let me know what you think.]