End of Year Checklist for Cleaning Enthusiasts

It’s the most wonderful time of the year… for everyone except the parents, spouses, and caregivers working behind the scenes to make everything magical for everybody but themselves!

If you are your family’s “magic maker,” you’ve already been busy for weeks juggling gift buying, card sending, decorating, holiday parties, vacation planning, and more on top of your career and your family’s already busy routine.

If you’re a cleaning enthusiast, you’ve also been spending countless hours deep cleaning everything from guest bedrooms to dirty ovens to make your home picture perfect for the onslaught of holiday guests.

It’s all too easy to spend the entire holiday season focusing on everyone’s needs but your own, which is why we’re here to help. Consider this article your reminder and permission slip to set aside some time to focus on yourself and those that matter most, so you can start the New Year refreshed and strong!

As we know you’re time is limited, and you’re smart enough to know the basics, so we’ve curated a short list of the top 5 end-of-year tasks you might have missed:

1. 1. Clean your workspace
  2. Reorganize your supplies
  3. Make your fellow cleaners feel seen
  4. Create a Commitments Naughty or Nice List
  5. Give Yourself the Gift of Visualization

1. Clean Your Workspace

Just like the cobbler with holes in their shoes, cleaning enthusiasts are notorious for taking care of the cleanliness and beauty of everyone else’s space but their own.

Clean desk, clear mind is as important for you as it is for your family, so tackle your desk and your computer desktop files. Stacks of unopened mail, disorganized files, unanswered emails, and all the other procrastination piles will haunt you like the Ghosts of Christmas' Past if you don’t face them now.

Just imagine how good it will feel to walk into your office on that first Monday in January to a sparkling desk and no looming guilt.

2. Reorganize Your Supplies

In their endless quest to find the best, cleaning enthusiasts can quickly accumulate excessive dragon hordes of random cleaning products they’ve tested, most of which sit around collecting dust (appreciate the irony).

Overflowing cleaning cabinets are breeding grounds for expired product, accidental run outs, and over orders, as you can’t clearly see what you actually have. Challenge yourself to cast out all of your underperforming and worn out supplies until all that’s left is an organized assortment of your frequently used favorites. Don’t let yourself enter the New Year with a closet full of stained towels, half empty bottles of poor performing products, and cleaning tools that look like chewed up toothbrushes. You deserve better!

As a bonus tip, use this purge as a healthy reminder to buy a fresh batch of microfiber towels & mop pads to replace the stained and threadbare ones you discarded.

3. Make Your Fellow Cleaners Feel Seen

Whether you get help cleaning from your family or a hired cleaning professional, whoever fights alongside you in the war against clutter and contagion deserves your genuine gratitude. Cleaning is difficult dirty work where it’s all too easy to be so talented at keeping things looking great that everyone loses sight of all the elbow grease that goes into the beauty they’re taking for granted .

Challenge yourself to rise above just the basic gifts and holiday tips to personally thank your cleaning helpers for all their underappreciated labors. Write a handwritten note, make a quick impromptu selfie video, or even just pull them aside for a quick chat.

However you do it, just make sure it’s genuine and includes a specific compliment or story about something you remember them doing well this year… none of that generic “thanks for all your hard work” nonsense. If your housecleaner is good, they have options and if you want to keep “find better clients” off their New Year's Resolutions list, don’t let them leave for the holidays feeling unnoticed.

Even if your helpers are just your kids doing chores they can’t opt out of, you’ll be amazed how much their workmanship will improve when they feel seen and appreciated instead of conscripted.

4. Create a Commitments Naughty or Nice List

The danger of being a good, helpful, and reliable person is soon, everyone wants a sprinkle of your magic fairy dust. Part of valuing yourself is recognizing your limits and where your time and energy is best spent. End of the year is a great time to reflect on all of your commitments and write an honest list of which obligations are stressing you out or refilling your cup.

For the Nice list, take the time to call your friends, family, and teachers to thank them for being a joy to help or learn from. Most likely they’ll have wonderful things to say back, so you’ll both leave the conversation full of holiday cheer.

For the Naughty list, first challenge yourself to see if it’s your own lackluster attitude or passive aggressive communication about your needs and limits that have caused you to feel exploited and resolve to right the ships that can be repaired. For the genuinely unappreciative and unreasonable people in your life, make the resolution to take back your energy and stop wasting it on those that don’t deserve it.

If you don’t stand up for your own happiness, no one will.

5. Give Yourself the Gift of Visualization

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never figure out how to get there. While living a long, happy and healthy life bursting with personal and professional fulfillment is everyone’s dream, achieving that usually requires getting a tad more specific.

Pour yourself the soothing holiday beverage of your choice and gift yourself with a quiet hour to sit back, relax and visualize where you want to be by December next year. See yourself with some of your most nagging issues resolved, surrounded by happy friends, family, and colleagues, surveying the life you’ve always dreamed of with a smile on your face.

Ask yourself what stands out as most different in your vision versus your reality today and write it down. Notice what elements are in place that are lacking today and write them down too.

Finally, challenge yourself to admit what’s standing in your way and capture it on your list. Don’t let yourself get caught in the weeds of trying to solve everything you’re writing; get it all down on paper.

That simple piece of paper is now an invaluable tool to work backwards from to build the life of your dreams in the year ahead. This exercise will not only give you the visual inspiration you need to power through life’s challenges, it will reveal your highest priorities and unmet needs, so you know exactly where to apply your recaptured energy from #4.

Like all checklist articles online, there may be more great suggestions here than you have time for and some ideas may not even apply to you. Rather than taking an all or nothing approach, spend even just a little time in the final days of this year prioritize your and your loved one’s happiness. Share gratitude with people that have earned it, and save some energy to do a little cleaning for yourself instead of everybody else. Following these tips will give you a clear pathway to enter 2023 far more refreshed than if you simply resigned yourself to the same old same old.

Remember, magic makers get to sprinkle a little fairy dust on themselves every now and again too!

Written by

Melissa Homer
Content Contributor at
Microfiber Wholesale

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Melissa Homer is a professional cleaning expert with over 20 years experience in the commercial and residential cleaning industry. She is a highly trained cleaning professional, business consultant, and educator that specializes in cleaning product testing and research, premium surface care, cleaning safety, cleaning procedure efficiency, training documentation, and cleaning damage repair. Melissa has worked for some of the biggest names in the professional residential cleaning industry, including P&G Professional and MaidPro. She has been interviewed and quoted in numerous leading publications such as Martha Stewart Living, Real Simple, Consumer Reports, Better Homes & Gardens, U.S. News & World Report, and The Washington Post.

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