Any fellow night owls out there? I have been a night owl for my entire life. I love to stay up late and honestly feel more productive and energized while everyone is winding down or already snoozing. This has become even more prominent as I have become a mother. After everyone has gone to bed, even my husband most of the time, I have time for myself.

I know what you’re thinking. How do you go to bed late when you have young kids waking you up early? However, my children go to bed later than most, and this means they wake up later than most. Before becoming a stay-at-home mom, my job started in the afternoon and I could sleep in. So, this is what has been working for us, which we know will have to change once the kids are in school. 

If you may not be a night owl, you could use this same routine at a different part of the day where you may have some time to yourself or even split it up throughout the day.

My nighttime routine has become quite therapeutic for me and I really look forward to it. If I skip my routine on days I’m feeling tired and want to go to bed earlier, I honestly feel a difference in my emotional state the next morning, mostly because it might mean the house was left as if a tornado came through. Does anyone else’s house look like this at the end of the day? It is also so nice to wake up to a clean home and it sets the day off so nicely.

Let’s get into it!

1. Put the kids to bed

If you’d like to know all of the details of my kids’ bedtime routine, you can find it here, so I’m not going to go into great detail on this post. But to be brief, we give the kids a bath, brush teeth, read books, pray, nurse the baby, and then they go to sleep. I say “we” because when my husband is home at bedtime (he is sometimes on night shift), he is very helpful at bedtime, especially with our oldest.

2. Pick something to listen to

After the kids are in bed, I usually spend some quality time with my husband. However, on nights before he works, he tends to go to sleep around the same time as the kids. Once he’s in bed too, I know it is time to begin my cleaning routine.

I first pick something to listen to in my AirPods while I am doing all my tasks. I listen to different podcasts, YouTube videos, music, and even TV shows while I’m working. I set it up on my iPad and bring it around with me as I move from room-to-room in my house.

Listening to something that I enjoy makes the routine so much more enjoyable and goes by faster. I look forward to listening to my latest podcast while I am doing dishes or folding laundry.

3. Reset upstairs

I am going to be using this term “reset” quite a bit in this routine, so let me tell you what I mean by this. Everything in my home has a place it belongs. So, basically when I reset areas of my home, I am just putting everything back where it belongs. 

Upstairs, this involves picking up dirty laundry off the floor, putting toys back where they belong, collecting dishes, and bringing anything down from upstairs that belongs downstairs. We have a three-story home and throughout the day, things that belong downstairs make their way upstairs and vice versa. I make a pile of these things by the top of the stairs and bring it all down once I am done and ready to go down there. 

If you have a one-story home, you could just tidy the bedroom/bathroom area of your home for this step.

I am very much a completionist, so it is very satisfying for me to fully finish a task. As I move through the areas of my home, I complete the reset in each area before moving on to the next area. 

4. Reset living room/dining room

My living room and dining room are all one room. By the end of the day, there is trash, dishes, blankets, throw pillows, and toys everywhere, especially if I haven’t done a midday reset. I do encourage my oldest to clean up some toys before heading up for bedtime, however he is still so young that it usually turns into him singing “clean up” while making a bigger mess.

Typically, that is the order I pick everything up; trash, dishes, blankets, throw pillows, toys, and then whatever else has made its way into there. I put trash in the trash can, dishes by the sink, and then everything else goes back to where it belongs. For things that need to go upstairs, I pile them on the stairs and bring them up when I have finished downstairs.

5. Reset car/garage/frontyard/backyard

Now, these are areas I usually reset during the day. When we are playing outside, I reset before we come back in. When we come back from somewhere in the car, I reset as we are getting out of the car. However, life happens and this sometimes does not happen. So, I typically just double check before moving on to the next area just to make sure nothing like sippy cups or food got left. If needed, I put dishes by the sink, everything else back where it belongs, and then move on.

6. Reset kitchen

It may seem to be getting a bit repetitive, but remember I reset every area of my home to completion before moving on to the next. So, it is the kitchen’s turn and this is the area I do last. This usually involves throwing away trash, putting dishes by the sink (but not doing them yet), and then picking up toys and anything else that has come out of place and entered the kitchen.

7. Do the dishes

By this point, there is quite a pile of dishes next to the sink and now it is time to tackle them. Before I start running that water, I see if there are any clean dishes that need to be put away, either in the drying rack or in the dishwasher.

Once those are all put away, I start loading the dishwasher with all of the dishwasher safe dishes. In our home, we only run the dishwasher when it is full. I know there are some households that run their dishwasher every night no matter how full it is, but I find this to be wasteful of soap and water, especially on those days we may have not used that many dishes. If it is full, I run it.

Next, I do the hand wash dishes. We have quite a small drying rack so I fill as much as I can and towel dry the rest. I usually end up only needing to towel dry the big things like pots and pans. Once all of the dishes are done, the house is all picked up and reset, but there is still a little bit more to do! 

8. Wipe down surfaces

Now, I wipe down all of the downstairs surfaces with homemade multipurpose spray and a microfiber cloth. This includes the kitchen countertops, dining room table, coffee table, and side tables. Since everything is already picked up and put away where it belongs, this task is quite simple.

9. Clean kitchen sink

I have a white porcelain sink that I clean with either Ajax or Comet and the microfiber cloth I used to wipe down the other surfaces. If this is not a constant in my cleaning routine, my sink starts to turn yellow, so I keep up on this step to keep my sink shining and white!

10. Take out trash, if needed

Just like how we only run the dishwasher when it is full, we also only take out the trash if it’s full. Some days our trash can doesn’t fill up during the day and I feel like it is wasteful when I throw out a trash bag that is only half full. So, if it ends up being full by the end of night, this is when I throw it out. Most of the time, it gets thrown out at some random point in the day though. Then, I make sure everything is locked up and set our alarm system.

11. Run vacuum/sweep & mop, if needed

On most nights by this step, I just push start on our iRobot Roomba vacuum and go upstairs. The vacuum runs on its own for about 90 minutes while we are sleeping. By the time you walk upstairs, the noise from the vacuum is very minimal. I highly recommend this vacuum since it does the work for you and it does a great job. If you are interested, you can find it here on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, but I wouldn’t recommend anything to you that I don’t use and enjoy myself.

Before we had the Roomba, I used the Shark Sweeper and vacuumed the whole downstairs. I use this now for pickups that may need to be done during the day. This is another product I highly recommend for vacuuming hardwood. If you are interested, you can find it here on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, but I wouldn’t recommend anything to you that I don’t use and enjoy myself. However, a broom and dustpan works great, too!

One day a week I do a sweep and mop of the downstairs. In our house, this is on Thursday nights. So if it is Thursday, I don’t run the Roomba and I use the broom to sweep and then mop after that. We don’t have any pets so I don’t really feel the need to mop more than once a week. If some spills happen throughout the day or if under the dinner table looks a little messier than normal, I do a quick clean up of that right away.

12. Bring up piles on stairs

Since the downstairs is completely done, it is time to move back upstairs. I bring anything that accumulated on the stairs during the resets upstairs and put them where they belong right away. Since the upstairs is already reset, it makes it easy to just not move the pile upstairs and leave it. You don’t want to mess up your clean rooms! Put it all right where it belongs!

13. Finish weekly task, if needed

For some weekly cleaning tasks around my house, I separate it so I only do one task a day. I don’t really have a set time to complete the tasks, so some days I never end up getting to it until this point in the day.

I have discussed this here, but I will give a brief description of what I mean by this.

• Sunday – Trash – I empty all of the trash cans around the house and put the cans on the curb for the trash trucks that come Monday morning.
• Monday – Water plants – I water all of the indoor plants in the house.
• Tuesday – Vacuum carpet – We have carpet upstairs in the bedrooms. This is something I have to do during the day because I can’t vacuum while everyone is sleeping.
• Wednesday – Laundry, including sheets/towels – I do all of the laundry throughout the day and save the folding for this point in the day.
• Thursday – Mop – I have already mentioned this in this post and have already done it at this point in my routine.
• Friday – Bathrooms – I clean all of the toilets, wipe the sinks/showers/tubs, and clean the mirrors.
• Saturday – Laundry – I do all of the laundry throughout the day and save the folding for this point in the day.

Most of these tasks end up getting done during the day, but the one consistent one I do at this point is on Wednesdays and Saturdays and it’s folding the laundry. I used to do laundry once a week, but ever since our family grew to 4, I have needed to split it into two days a week so I am not folding clothes all night.

I like folding at night because trying to fold clothes with young kids around is almost impossible. My oldest loves to “help” and he usually picks up something to “fold” that I have already folded, undoing my work. He will learn eventually, but at the moment he is still too young and this is easier and better for my sanity.

If you want to implement this into your own home, you can most definitely change the days you do tasks. If it would be easier for you to do laundry on Tuesdays, then move it to Tuesday! This schedule is just what has become more and more permanent in our household and I have shifted things around until I figured out what worked best. Clearly, things come up and the tasks either don’t get done one week or get shifted a day or two.

14. Shower

Everything is done and it is time to rinse the day off. Everyone in our house bathes before getting into bed and this helps keep our bed a nice, cozy, and clean space to end the night in. 

I only wash my hair a few times a week and on the days I do wash my hair, I take my shower right after putting the kids to bed. I do this because I hate going to bed with wet hair and my hair can air dry while I am going through the routine. I also tend to wash my hair on the same days I am going to be up a little later folding laundry, Wednesdays and Saturdays, just so my hair has even more time to dry. 

15. Journal

Finally, right before bed I do a short journal entry just writing down some significant things that happened during the day. I know this has nothing to do with cleaning, but I love it so much I just had to share.

I have a 5-Year Journal that I absolutely love because each page has the date at the top and then five sections underneath where you write the year and have space for just a short journal entry. It is very easy to keep up because it only has space for a few sentences.

It is really fun every time a new year comes around and I can read what happened on this day last year or even the year before that. I usually write about milestones my kids have hit or something funny they said. I really love it and it brings me so much joy right before I go to bed.

If you are interested, you can find it here on Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, but I wouldn’t recommend anything to you that I don’t use and enjoy myself.

It typically takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to finish all of this. This really depends on how the house looks before I start.

Some days we are out and about most of the day and the house still looks great by the end of the day. Some days my oldest decides to get out every single toy he owns and bring them all over the house. 

For days like this, I try to do a midday reset as much as I can. Usually if my oldest decides to take a nap, this is a good time to do it. On days where he doesn’t want to take a nap and I notice a lot of toys are out, I encourage him to help me clean up about halfway through the day or right before bed, just so it’s not so much to do at night.

I hope you found something in here that you can implement into your own cleaning routine. This is a routine that I have been tweaking overtime and I feel like I have recently perfected what works in our house and for our family. Don’t be afraid to try something just to see if it works and if not, you can always tweak it to make it work for you. 

With love,

Victoria O’Brien