What is Zone Cleaning?

 

What does it mean to work in “Zones?”

The basic idea is to conceptually break your home down into a number of “zones,” each containing a few rooms or limited areas.

Then, you make a simple schedule that cycles through one zone at a time. I’m not talking about toiling for hours! Instead, deciding to apply a very short burst of your powerful hyper-focus to just one small task in one area of a zone.

(I’m talking 2 minutes or 5 minutes or 10 minutes. Set your timer and see how much you can do in that time!)

Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the knowledge of All Possible Tasks, you can check your zones. If the schedule says you’re in the kitchen, find a task or two on your list and spend 10 minutes with those. For instance, wiping out a couple of fridge shelves, or checking your pantry for expired cans.

Example of Zones

Here’s an example zone setup. This is based on a house where Tim and I used to live, back in the day.

Zone	Rooms/ Areas
1	Front door, living room, hallway, study
2	Main bedroom, second bedroom
3	Kitchen, dining room, pantry
4	Bathrooms
5	Laundry, closets and clothing storage

There’s no right or wrong way to divide up your space into zones! In the one above, I’ve grouped (roughly!) by function but there are many other ways to do this. Mix and match!

Here are some ideas:

• Group by function (wet areas like bathrooms and laundry, food areas, work areas, private sleep areas, storage)
• Areas visitors will access, then more private areas
• Balancing effort so there’s one “big” area in a zone, and then one that is less work. For instance, in my example I’ve grouped our well-used kitchen with the dining area, which is pretty much just a table and chairs.
• Areas also don’t have to be actual rooms – you could decide that you want to do a lot of windows at once, for example, or focus on the concept of decluttering

Schedule ideas

There are lots of different scheduling concepts out there, for example:

• a zone of the week, looping continuously
• a zone belonging to each day of the week
• a month broken down into chunks
• moving from the “public” areas of the house through to the “private” areas each month

Home Routines can work with any of these sorts of schedules. We’re amenable.

Starter tasks

The app includes some starter tasks and rooms, but you should edit and add task to suit your own lifestyle and priorities. The lists are called “Rooms” but feel free to use them for a sections or area in your place. (I know there are a lot of people living in studio apartments, or who have a washing machine that lives in the kitchen or bathroom)

Plus, there’s no reason you can’t use a “room” list for something more conceptual (eg “Decluttering” or “Hard floors”)

Anytime you notice something that needs to be done, add that the task into the appropriate zone. That way it will be there to remind you next time round.

Important note

Seriously though: if everything is too overwhelming, zones can just add to the overwhelm. If that’s the case, ignore them now and work on getting some very simple Routines in place first.

Then consider setting up Zones lists with some very basic core tasks:

• Fill a trash bag with rubbish
• Collect up your dirty washing
• Regroup clean washing into baskets
• Take any dirty dishes to the kitchen
• Pick up some stuff off the floor
• Vacuum or sweep in clear areas
• Think about what you can declutter

You can build up later. There is really no point in making long, detailed lists that make you feel worse.