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Build a cleaning rota from how often each job is really needed, spread over four weeks so no day is overloaded.
A cleaning schedule sets out which cleaning task happens when, based on how often each one actually needs doing rather than on how many days there are in a week. Daily, weekly, fortnightly and monthly jobs are spread over a repeating cycle so the workload is even and nothing rare gets done either far too often or never.
Wipe the kitchen counters, Wash up or load the dishwasher, Make the beds
Counted in the day totals below, not repeated in every cell.
| Day | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | Clean the bathroom50 min | Clean the bathroom50 min | Clean the bathroom50 min | Clean the bathroom50 min |
| Tue | Vacuum the living areas45 min | Vacuum the living areas45 min | Vacuum the living areas45 min | Vacuum the living areas45 min |
| Wed | Mop the kitchen floor40 min | Mop the kitchen floor40 min | Mop the kitchen floor40 min | Mop the kitchen floor40 min |
| Thu | Dust the surfaces40 min | Dust the surfaces40 min | Dust the surfaces40 min | Dust the surfaces40 min |
| Fri | Change the bed linen35 min | Change the bed linen35 min | Change the bed linen35 min | Change the bed linen35 min |
| Sat | Put the bins out, Clean the oven1 hr | Put the bins out, Clean the windows inside1 hr | Put the bins out, Wipe the skirting boards50 min | Put the bins out, Descale the kettle40 min |
| Sun | Scrub the shower properly45 min | Vacuum under the furniture40 min | Scrub the shower properly45 min | Vacuum under the furniture40 min |
| Total | 5.3 hr | 5.2 hr | 5.1 hr | 4.8 hr |
25 min between the busiest day and the quietest. Splitting the longest task or moving one to fortnightly closes most of that.
An .xlsx with four sheets: the rota to print, the load behind it, every task, and the jobs too rare to sit in a weekly grid.
1. Four week rota
One row per day and one column per week, with the tasks in the cells and the minutes along the bottom. This is the sheet that prints for a kitchen wall.
2. Minutes a day
The same grid as numbers, so an uneven week is obvious at a glance, with a live average across the four weeks for each day.
3. Every task
Task, room, frequency, minutes and what each one costs over a year, with the hours calculated by formula so changing a frequency in the sheet updates the total.
4. Deep clean
Everything quarterly or rarer, with a blank column to write the date it was last done. These are kept out of the weekly grid on purpose.
Frequencies are the whole point, so they survive the download. Change one on the task sheet and the hours a year follow it.
Excel
Double click the download. If Excel shows a yellow protected view bar, click Enable Editing so the formulas calculate.
Google Sheets
Upload it to Drive and open it, or use File then Import then Upload inside an existing sheet. Formatting and formulas both carry across.
Numbers on a Mac
Open it directly. Numbers converts the workbook and keeps the totals working, though the yellow header fill may shift slightly.
Formula
hours a year = minutes x times a year / 60 · a task goes on whichever day is currently lightesttimes a year = daily 365, weekly 52, fortnightly 26, monthly 12, quarterly 4, twice a year 2, yearly 1
four week cycle = the shortest span that holds daily, weekly, fortnightly and monthly at their real frequencies without rounding any of them up
rarest first = the packing order. A monthly task appears once and can go anywhere, so it fills the gap left over; a weekly task has to pick its day before the grid has anything in it
fixed weekday = each task keeps the same day every cycle. A rota that moves is a rota nobody memorises, and not having to think about it is the whole return
Worked Example
What a monthly oven clean actually costs
Did you know? The idea of a fixed weekly wash day predates plumbing. Monday was laundry across much of Europe and North America because it took all day, needed water heated from before dawn, and Sunday was the day nobody worked, so Monday was the first chance. Baking on Wednesday and cleaning on Saturday followed the same logic: the schedule was built around the fuel, not the dirt.
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