Zone Cleaning

We all have our strengths and weaknesses, right? Well cleaning is not one of my strengths. I feel like I spend 75% of every single day doing some sort of picking up or cleaning. And yet my house isn't clean. Yes, I have little kids. And along with little kids comes lots of little messes. But surely there is a way to have kids and a relatively clean house at the same time?

The issue I have is that I spend all my "cleaning" time doing the absolute necessities. For me, that is cooking, doing dishes, doing laundry, and picking up stuff and putting it back where it goes. I could literally make a job out of walking around my house and picking things up and putting them back where they go. But that's a story for another day.

By the time I finish the necessities, there never seems to be time to do any other sort of deep cleaning. Anyone else have this issue?

I was recently watching a woman on YouTube and she was describing her zone cleaning routine. She has broken her house up into 8 zones. She spends 1 week on each zone, and rotates through her entire house every 8 weeks. And she claims she only spends 15 minutes per day on her zone task for that day. (In addition to the day to day cleaning I described above) And by sticking with it, her house is generally cleaner overall. I thought to myself, I could find 15 minutes each day if it meant getting to those annoying deep-cleaning tasks.

So 2 weeks ago I began to tackle zone 1, the kitchen. Well the very first day's task was to clean out the refrigerator and freezer. And let me tell you, it took me an hour and a half. Not 15 minutes. But rather than just toss old food and give it a quick wipe down, I literally cleaned every square inch of the fridge. Top, front, inside.....I even sanitized our egg container. I continued on each day with the next part of the zone cleaning. It took me 2 weeks instead of 1 week, but my kitchen is now completely cleaned and organized! Every shelf and drawer got wiped out and reorganized. Every appliance was cleaned, including the inside of the oven. And it feels so good. It feels so good to have concentrated on 1 thing and done that 1 thing well. I'm usually trying to do 10 things at once and at the end of the day none of them are really finished or done well.

So this week I'm going to begin zone 2. Do any of you follow a zone cleaning routine, or any sort of cleaning schedule at all? Does it feel impossible to have a relatively clean house?