Autumn days are long and lazy? Not for today's busy families. Between work, children's activities, and vacation plans, even breezy fall days don't seem long enough to get everything done at home.

There's a solution for busy times. Just as your body needs a "minimum daily allowance" of vitamins and minerals, an organized home needs a minimum of maintenance and attention to keep running smoothly.

Think of this as a Magic Minimum: a short list of essential household tasks. It's a bottom-line list of chores and activities necessary to keep things running at a basic level.

With a working Magic Minimum plan, the household stays afloat, even when time is short.

It's Autumn.

Pumpkins glow in golden fields. Shorter days, crisp mornings signal winter's approach.

Can the holidays be far behind?

Use Autumn's brisk and breezy days to conquer deep-cleaning chores for a clean and comfortable winter home, and wrap up summer's outdoor areas for the coming of cold weather.

Our Fall Cleaning Chore Checklist will help you prepare home and hearth for the coming of winter:

Summer's here, hot, high and sweaty. Vacations beckon. The garden takes on a life of its own.

Busy families don't have much time for home chores these months. School's out, travel's in and it's easy to let life slide on the home front.

Still, summer will run more smoothly if you keep tabs on these important areas in the Summer Cleaning Chore Checklist.

Our checklist list tackles hot-weather issues, summer health and safety:

It's Spring!

Warming breezes scour the last of winter from house and garden. Spring rain awakens the earth and calls forth new life.

Meet the rising sap with a new broom. Spring clean indoors and out to prepare home and hearth for the return of warm weather.

Our Spring cleaning chore checklist will help you take care of important seasonal chores and welcome Spring to an organized home:

Spring cleaning is on the horizon, and you could use some help. How do you get the kids to pitch in when it's time to spring-clean the house?

Try these five tips to involve children with housecleaning chores:

• Think teamwork. It's downright lonely to be sentenced to clean a bathroom on your own, but paired with a parent, even a 5-year-old can work safely and happily. While Dad wields the bowl cleaner and the tile brush, his helper can scrub the sink, polish the fixtures, empty the trash and trundle towels and rugs to the laundry room.
  
  
  
  

Who doesn't love commercial cleaning wipes? They're wickedly convenient--but also wickedly expensive and often contain harsh chemicals.

The alternative: make your own!

Homemade cleaning wipes are easy to make, economical, and contain only those cleaning agents you select.

Put homemade cleaning wipes to work for you in your organized home with our easy instructions:

Spring blows in with warm wind and the promise of ... spring cleaning? With the coming of spring, even the most casual home managers feel an inexplicable urge to move furniture, clean windows and vacuum baseboards to welcome the return of sunshine and warmer weather.

Certainly, there's a lot to be said for the notion of spring cleaning. It's a good time of year to rout out the dirt, dust and disorder that's crept into the home since the holiday season. By doing a thorough clean once a year, no area of the home gets too far removed from the results earned by energetic mops, vacuums and cleaning cloths. Longer days bring a new burst of energy for many of us, and using that bonus to deep-clean our homes seems like a good match for rising springtime spirits.

Then there's another point of view: that spring cleaning is unnecessary in an organized modern home.

Taken a trip down the cleaning aisle at the supermarket lately? If you believe the ad hype, you can't keep a clean house without loading your shopping cart with a different cleaner for each surface, floor and sink in the house.

Hogwash! Simple recipes using products from your pantry make effective household cleaning solutions. An added plus: these natural products are more environmentally friendly than commercial alternatives.

Stock your cleaning tool tote with these homemade cleaning sprays and solutions to make short work of household grime--without harsh chemicals or irritating fumes.

Try these easy recipes to clean your organized home faster, better and cheaper:

When wintry weather blows, will your family be prepared?

Take time now to review your family's emergency preparedness with our Winter Preparedness Checklist. It'll help you prepare your home and automobile for cold-weather hazards.

Out and About:

Will your home welcome winter visitors safely? Be prepared for snow, ice or rain on walks and driveways with:

Keeping a clean house ... and you're wondering. What's the best cleaning schedule to make short work of housecleaning?

Should you clean the whole house in a single day, or schedule cleaning chores each day? What about seasonal cleaning? When should you wash the windows?

Real Simple's got answers, with their Periodic Table of Cleaning. Based on Jeff Campbell's Speed Cleaning principles, and cleverly laid out as a model of the periodic table, this definitive cleaning schedule will answer your questions of when and how often to clean house.

In .pdf format, you'll need Adobe Reader to view and print:

Period Table of Cleaning