A gentle ADHD cleaning planner (free printable PDF)
A 4-page cleaning planner with no dates to fall behind on: small chores to pick from, the bigger weekly jobs, a “last done” list instead of a calendar, and a reset for after a break. Free, no email.
The short answer
A cleaning planner that still works on a hard week has no dates on it. This one gives you a menu of 2, 5 and 10 minute chores to pick three from, a “last done” list for the monthly jobs, and a short reset for the days after a break.
Download the PDF (US Letter) A4
4 pages, about 290 KB. Print it, or fill it in on a tablet.
What’s in the planner
- Pick three. Small chores sorted into about 2, about 5 and about 10 minutes, and a box for today’s three. Below it, a row of Days of care boxes: tick one for each day you did anything at all.
- This week, if there’s room. The bigger weekly jobs, like the floors, the sheets and the bathroom, with their minutes. Cross out what your home doesn’t have.
- Last done. The jobs that come round monthly or less often, from the dishwasher filter to the dryer vent, with a space to write the date each time you do one.
- After a break. Five things in a fixed order, about 30 minutes, then stop.
The planner was made with ADHD in mind, from the way people with ADHD describe cleaning in their own words. It isn’t a medical tool. It works for anyone whose week doesn’t go to plan.
Why it has no dates
Most cleaning schedules are a grid: days across the top, chores down the side, a box for every one. It looks calm on the first Monday. By the first Thursday you missed, it’s a page of empty boxes, and the empty boxes become the reason not to start again.
People describe the same pattern again and again: it slides until it can’t be ignored, then a whole weekend goes to one big catch-up, then it slides again. All or nothing. A schedule built around days of the week makes that worse, because a Monday-is-bathrooms chart is broken the first Monday you skip.
So this planner plans by minutes and energy instead. Nothing on it has a day. Page 1 is a menu, not a timetable. Page 3 asks when you last did something, not when you should have. And the Days of care boxes only count up: there’s no date on them, so a skipped day leaves no gap to look at.
KC Davis, who wrote How to Keep House While Drowning, says care tasks are morally neutral. A messy kitchen says nothing about who you are. We built the planner around that idea: it never shows you what you didn’t do.
Pick three: chores by minutes
42 of the 115 chores in CozyHaus take 5 minutes or less. That’s a lot of chores you can finish before you’ve had time to talk yourself out of them. Page 1 has 30 of them, in three columns:
| About 2 minutes | About 5 minutes | About 10 minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Make the bed (2) | Wipe the counters (3) | Put the laundry away (6) |
| Swap the dish towels and cloths (2) | Load the dishwasher (4) | Wipe down the shower and tub (6) |
| Fresh towels out (2) | Sweep the kitchen floor (4) | Clear out old food from the fridge (6) |
| Switch the laundry (2) | Clean the toilet (5) | Change the sheets (10) |
| Take out the compost (2) | Empty the small bins (5) | Clean the microwave (10) |
How to use it: on a low day, the first column is plenty. On an okay day, one from each. If you finish and there’s more in you, go to page 2. If there isn’t, you’re done, and that counts as a day of care.
A tip
Write your three in the box before you start, even if you’ve already picked them in your head. Three lines on paper are a finish line you can see.
How much a home really asks
It helps to know the size of the job. When you set up a home in CozyHaus, it starts you with the basics: the everyday kitchen and bathroom care, the bed, the floors, the laundry, the plants and the bin. For a home with a dishwasher and one bathroom, those 20 chores add up to about 4.5 hours a week, by the app’s own times.
| Part of the home | What’s in it | Minutes a week |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen | Load and unload the dishwasher, the counters and the stove every day; sweep, mop | 139 |
| Floors elsewhere | Vacuum all floors | 25 |
| Bathroom | Toilet and sink twice a week, the shower, fresh towels, the whole bathroom every 2 weeks | 40 |
| Bed and laundry | Make the bed, change the sheets, run a wash, put it away | 50 |
| The rest | Cushions, small bins, plants, the garbage bin | 19 |
| In all | 20 chores | about 272, or 39 a day |
Two things stand out. About half of it is the kitchen, every day. And three small picks a day, around 10 to 15 minutes, won’t cover all of it. They don’t have to: page 2 catches the bigger jobs when there’s room, and a week where page 2 doesn’t happen is a week where the kitchen still worked. That’s the point of starting small.
After a break: the reset page
Coming back after a few days, or a few weeks, is the hardest moment for any plan, because everything looks due at once. Page 4 is a short list in a fixed order, so there’s nothing to decide:
- Take out the trash and the recycling. 5 min
- Gather the dishes, and load the dishwasher or wash what you’ll need tomorrow. 10 min
- Wipe the counters and the stove. 5 min
- Start one load of laundry. 5 min
- Clean the toilet. 5 min
Then stop. Floors, dusting, windows and everything on page 3 can wait a day longer. Tomorrow you go back to page 1, not to the pile. Starting with the trash and the dishes, in an order you don’t have to think about, owes a lot to KC Davis’s Five Things method.
If you find yourself on page 4 every week, that’s a sign the plan is too big, not that you’re doing it wrong. Cross out more of page 2. Keep the three.
Making the start smaller
If starting is the hard part, these help more than a better list:
- Pick by energy, not by room. “Something from the 2-minute column” is easier to say yes to than “the bathroom”.
- Set a timer and put music on. A song is about 3 minutes, which is most of the first column.
- Get the first thing out. The cloth on the counter, the laundry basket by the bed. Half of starting is having the thing in your hand.
- Clean while someone else is around. A friend on a call, or someone at home doing their own thing in the same room. People call this body doubling. It makes starting easier for a lot of people, and it costs nothing to try.
- Stop when the three are done. Stopping on purpose is what makes tomorrow’s three feel possible.
If you share your home
Share the menu, not a rota. Print page 1 once, and let everyone pick their three from it. Nobody is assigned the bathroom forever, and the chores that nobody picks for a week are easy to see and talk about.
Questions people ask
How do I make a cleaning schedule I’ll actually stick to?
Make it smaller than you think it should be, and take the dates off. A plan you can do on a bad week beats a better plan you can only do on a good one. Three small chores a day, picked when you’re ready, is a schedule you can come back to.
What’s the bare minimum to clean each day?
The kitchen is where things pile up fastest: dishes and the counters. By the times in CozyHaus, loading the dishwasher takes about 4 minutes and wiping the counters about 3. If those happen, most days are fine.
How do I catch up after weeks of not cleaning?
Not all at once. Do the five things on page 4 in order, about 30 minutes, then stop. The next day, go back to picking three. Catch-up weekends tend to start the cycle again.
Daily, weekly and monthly lists, or one room a day?
Room-a-day plans tie a chore to a day, so one missed day breaks the week. Lists by how often, with no days on them, bend better. That’s how this planner and CozyHaus both work.
Sources
- KC Davis, Struggle Care, and her book How to Keep House While Drowning (2022): the idea that care tasks are morally neutral, and the Five Things method.
- Chores, minutes and how often: the CozyHaus chore catalogue (115 chores) and the basics it starts a home with.
Let your phone keep the schedule
CozyHaus plans the chores that fit your home, a few small ones a day, and shares them with everyone who lives there.
Coming soonon the App Store