Finding the motivation is the hardest part. I have trouble with that sometimes and with time. I do part time housekeeping now so I'll share what we do, maybe it will help a bit. I posted in this thread already which is now anonymous32507. I have a very love and very dislike relationship with cleaning. It's either on or off.

I clean 5 star hotel rooms, some of which are over 2000 sq feet, and condos and houses that are in the million $ at a mountain resort, some are massive yikes. Right now we are deep cleaning them which is hard work, tedious, and they have to be show room perfect. I'll break down the chores to make it simple. We have to get through an entire home pretty quickly so most of it is about getting organized.

I use a duster on a long handle to clean the blinds, just run it down each side a few times, next the windows, sills and tracks. then the wood oil if you have wood frames, or furniture , which I will then move onto dusting the baseboards and spot washing the walls at the same time. then I dust the lamps, bookcases, frames, whatever needs dusted, and head to next room until all the dusting, spot washing, baseboards, doors windows etc are finished.

In the bathrooms I first put cleaner in the toilet bowl, then some on a rag and rub down the shower stall, and leave it. Next I dust the lights ceiling fan, clean the mirror, work down to the counter top and sink, wipe the cabinets out and throw away what ever needs done. Then onto the spots on walls, baseboards, then outer toilet. After the a little scrub to toilet bowl, a few jugs of water to rinse the shower and tub. give the taps on the sink and tub a little shine with a dry cloth. this actually only takes about 15-20 minutes in a fair sized bathroom.

The kitchen is the most time consuming for sure, but I have got a routine down that makes it much quicker. First I start with the oven, if you have self clean.. so awesome, other wise spray down, remove burners and soak. Run a cycle through dish washer with some vinegar. Put some vinegar and water in coffee maker, kettle, tea pot what ever you have and run through at same time. The empty the fridge ( throw out what needs to be. Wipe from top to bottom, remove drawers wipe and put everything back. Next pull the fridge out, vacuum back of it, and the floor, wipe sides and top down and push back. Start at the top of the cupboards and work your way down, wipe insides and doors, counter top, and then bottom counters and drawers. take garbage out, wipe down trash can. Spot wash the walls and baseboards, back splash. Empty the coffee maker. kettle.. next the oven and burners and pull the stove out just like the fridge. Wipe down microwave and dishwasher if you need. And the a little cleaner to the sinks rinse and polish up. ~ If you attack the kitchen in an order from longest job first to smallest last and multi task it saves tons of time. It take me about 1.5-2 hours to do the entire kitchen which are quite large, plus I have to polish all the silverware, and make sure the pots, glassware etc is spotless.

The rest of it is all pretty simple, dust the washer & dryer, hot water tank, furnace, vacuum around them. clean the closets and vacuum or sweep them. Next vacuum inside the couches, under the furniture and the room. Start at the top rooms and work your way through each one. After that mop what needs mopped, same thing work your way through top to bottom. Take out the trash and your house should be pretty clean.

Cleaning like this saves a lot of time, which saves tons of energy. I used to clean my house one entire room at a time. Which was not very fast at all. If you make sure you have every thing you need and group jobs together and do the same job in every room together it will be so much faster. A few rooms are better to do on there own like the kitchen and bathrooms. You can throw laundry in when you start one group of jobs and switch it when it's done and just sort of mutli task with it. The places I clean are pretty fancy yes, but they are also pretty dirty sometimes, some are also lived in. For regular cleaning just omit the things that don't need done to often, like the windows and tracks, pulling out appliances etc.

You can try doing this, breaking the groups of jobs down into days. doing it all in one day is a lot. I am not so great with the motivation part, except that when my house is messy is makes me down, which that motivates me a bit. I use the time I spend cleaning working on my mindfulness meditation and stuff like that. Might as well put the time to good use, I noticed that it is a great time to work on that because that is really a time the mind will wander off into places it doesn't need to.

I hope some of that might be helpful to someone. I have cleaning on the brain right now.. doing my own house on my days off right now. Sorry for the huge post.. oh brother.

Costello, I totally understand, my last home needs lots of repair and it was just ugh when you are cleaning. I pull out my fridge and stove about once a month, but I have three kids, they tend to loose stuff under them. With you and your son maybe every few months would be good enough. Or if you don't have a lot of dust or pets in the home maybe less.