I Tried The 6/10 Cleaning Method And Now I'm A Believer
But with a few edits.
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New cleaning methods to me are like buying a fresh pair of leggings to renew my enthusiasm for working out. Sometimes it works and my leggings are dutifully laid out each night, ready for my early bird sweat sesh. Other times, the leggings end up taking the tail end of the word “athleisure” to heart and provide my legs with the emotional support I need to stand staring at an unfolded pile of laundry for the better part of an hour, wishing I could bibbidi-bobbidi-boo it.
Recently, after a string of hectic weeks where my floors started to resemble the linoleum of a grade school cafeteria, I decided I needed to freshen up my housekeeping strategy. Enter the 6/10 list. Not new, but new to me, this cleaning practice that was created by Organized Chaos, features a breakdown of tasks organized by daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly cleaning to-dos. It's designed to make keeping a clean and tidy home more manageable, focusing daily tasks on high-impact areas and jobs (i.e. the kitchen, floors, beds, and laundry) while the weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks tackle deeper cleans and also items that don’t require quite as much regular attention.
The 6 Daily Tasks
Make the beds
Run a load of laundry
Wash the dishes
Scrub the sink
Wipe the counters
Vacuum
When it comes to the daily tasks, you’ll see a lot of the usual suspects. Many of these things were already on my daily to-do list, even the load of laundry as my mom has always instilled in me the importance of “keeping the laundry going.” One thing I used to do every day but recently surrendered to is vacuuming. I still tend to hit the high-traffic areas daily like the back entry hall, kitchen, laundry room, and living room, but the bedrooms, bathrooms, and other ancillary spaces tend to be an every-few-days type of thing.
When I gave this list a go and put vacuuming back on my daily list, I had a renewed sense of how impactful it can be to keeping up the house, but also how it affects my mental state. With a shedding dog and two young children, the daily floor messes are many and definitely noticeable if I let them go for even a day or two. Staying on top of this task helps keep me from feeling the house is in constant disorder.
The 10 Weekly Tasks
Clean bathrooms
Clean sink drains
Dust
Wash bedding
Mop
Tidy the pantry
Wipe down microwave
Wipe down fridge
Tidy up the cars
Clean pet bowls
Here’s where I started to diverge with the 6/10 cleaning list. One of the things that I do religiously every week is clean the showers and tubs. I wipe down the bathrooms most every day (again, small children). We would be ground zero for strep, stomach virus, and the common cold if I let this daily task lapse so, for the benefit of every child at our school, I went ahead and made some edits to the plan. It would have been ideal to swap some of the other daily tasks to the weekly list in order to keep the ratios the same but, during this season of little kids, I have resigned to the fact that I just have to deal with a few extra cleaning-related to-dos.
The Monthly Tasks
Scrub the showers and tubs
Clean the garage
Deep clean appliances
Vacuum cars
Thankfully, two of these tasks are on my husband’s radar instead of mine since he leads the charge on garage cleaning and vacuuming the cars. He’s a keeper. While I had not been deep cleaning my appliances monthly, I do keep up with items like the coffee pot and washer and dryer. New appliances I added to my monthly cleaning list include the oven, dishwasher, and garage freezer.
Related: Old-School Cleaning Tricks That Southerners Stand By
The Quarterly Tasks
Wipe down cabinets
Wipe down baseboards and doors
Clean lights and fans
Wash windows
Clean furniture
Change air filter
The quarterly tasks are where I think the 6/10 method can really shine. These are those often-forgotten tasks that can sometimes be completely disregarded until their mess is so apparent it screams for attention. Just as with a few of the weekly tasks, there are a few items here that I have to do more frequently due to our family’s active, always-outdoors, in-and-out-all-day-long lifestyle.
Cabinets and doors, in particular, receive a lot of love with smudges, finger prints, and the like. Our cabinetry is also all shades of white and/or navy blue, the latter of which is not nearly as mess camouflaging as one might think. My strategy there is to just wipe them down as I spot messes, though I do a more thorough wipe-down about once a month.
Related: 15 Mistakes To Avoid When Cleaning Your Bathroom
6/10 Method Takeaways
I will always be here for a new cleaning strategy. While I love testing out new ways to make my daily, weekly, monthly, and even quarterly tasks more efficient, I think the real benefit of the 6/10 cleaning method is ensuring nothing gets forgotten. That’s one of the reasons I love zone cleaning. I can ensure an entire space is cleaned from top to bottom regularly, moving my way through the house like a reverse tornado. Where once there was chaos and disorder, now there’s nothing but peace and solitude—for probably the next 4.5 minutes.
The thing that I found most appealing about this cleaning strategy is that it keeps the house pulled together at all times. If you keep up with your daily tasks, you’re just about always ready for company drop ins, no matter what quarterly or monthly tasks you’re also working to tackle.
In order to make this method truly work, though, I think the key is to make your own 6/10 list. Consider how your home is used, your trouble spots, and high-traffic areas. While many, if not all of the daily tasks are likely the same house to house, the less frequent items might require a shuffle in order to best work for your home and lifestyle. That being said, there might also be items not on your list that should be. Create a fluid, unique-to-you strategy and I bet you’ll find, like I did, that this strategy can eliminate the overwhelm of where to begin when tackling a messy house, or maybe even help avoid the messy house scenario altogether.
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