My house if full of active boys and cats and company on a regular basis and it often needs some tender loving care. Because I love being hospitable, but hate the three hours of mad cleaning that is usually needed before the company arrives, I’ve started developing a system to keep the house clean and near visitor ready at all times.

1. The first thing I do is make a plan. Using a book about all the jobs that need to be done or should be done and breaking them down into daily, weekly, monthly and special jobs, I make a chart. (I like charts). Include estimates of how long the job will take.

2. Be realistic. Make a schedule that works with your personality and life style. If you are the type that has to do it all at once, then plan a day for getting everything done at one. In our house, the goal is to spread out the work over the week because I work at home and have the kids with me all day. All day cleaning is NOT an option. I need a plan that breaks the work down into no more than an hour per day.

3. Enlist help. I took the daily chores (like picking up each room or feeding the pets) and made index cards. Once a month, we lay out the cards as a family and then take turns picking jobs for the month. When it is time for chores (once in the morning and once before bed) we know exactly what we need to do.

4. Purge, purge, and then keep on purging. This is where I confess that I was born a pack rat from a long line of pack rats and then I married into a family of them. Our home was only 1100 square feet, with two bedrooms and only two closets, but I had enough stuff to pack another house entirely. Then “Clean Sweep” came along, the television show about de-cluttering your home. I was inspired. Over the next couple of years I cleaned out every box from the attic and got rid of anything I didn’t need, love, or use. (This included the collection of about 200 stuffed animals that I had from the time I was a child – I have boys, so they aren’t something I can exactly pass down to them).

5. Give away and throw away – even if it was a gift from your husband’s grandmother. It is better that it finds a home where it will be loved and cherished. Besides, there might be someone in this world that actually needs an Auburn Tiger’s cookie cutter.

6. Put everything in a home. It can be a drawer or a cabinet or a closet, but it needs to have a place where it can reside. Because of limited storage in the children’s room, I bought under the bed storage containers for their toys. They know where their stuff is and where it needs to go when they are through with it. If it can’t find a home then it needs to be given away or thrown away.

7. Don’t walk past it. The rule is, if you kick it or trip over it then pick it up and put it in its home. It doesn’t matter who left it there in the first place. If you notice it then you take care of it.

8. One in and one out. That means when I get new clothes, I go through the old clothes and get rid of some things. When it’s gift giving time (holidays or birthdays) the kids go through their toys and get rid of anything they don’t play with or love to make room for the new gifts.

9. Do it now. Procrastination is the one way you can guarantee your house won’t get clean. Most of the time I find that if I just do the job, it only takes about five or ten minutes (way less than I would normally spend complaining that I needed to do the job in the first place).

10. It’s okay to pay. When I first started working at home, there was no way for me to balance the cleaning and the work and the kids. I had a friend who cleaned houses and needed some extra work. I met her needs and she met mine. Once a week, she would come and do the big jobs making it possible for me to focus on the little ones (and the job of kids and work).

11. Be consistent in following the schedule, but flexible enough for unexpected situations. If you wash the sheets every Monday, but can’t on just one Monday, I promise it will be okay. That’s the great thing about being consistent. If you miss one day, the world won’t stop – just make sure you get right back on track.

12. Enjoy your clean home. Don’t be so concerned about keeping things clean and in order that you miss out on living in it. If you stick to the rules, even after a tornado of a dozen kids runs through the house, you’ll be able to guide them to put everything back in its home and no time. The more organized and structured the home to begin with, the easier it is to get back to the organization and structure.

Even people who are not clean and orderly by nature can grow to a place where the home is inviting to guests (just ask my husband, the perfectionist, who married a devout slob). It requires some new ways of thinking, but a clean and organized home is a fun and functional place for the whole family.