The main thing is to have a ROUTINE. When I was in college full-time, we lived within walking distance of campus. At least once a week, I had a block of about 3 hours worth of spare time on afternoons when the house was empty. I'd scoot home, clean the whole house from top to bottom (2 hours total), put a chicken and potatoes in the oven for dinner, and then head back to my late class. When I came home, all I had to do was take the roasting pan out of the oven, make a salad and some veggies and dinner was ready.
After dinner, the leftover chicken would get separated from the bones, the bones would go in the slow cooker overnight with some water to make broth, and the meat would go in the fridge to make soup, chicken pot pie and sandwiches. The next morning I would have cut up celery and carrots ready to go in the broth the next morning and it would simmer all day in the slow cooker. At the end of the day in time for dinner, I'd just toss in some noodles or rice and some of the leftover chicken for homemade soup.
Working night shifts, I still use my slow cooker all the time to make soup, stews, roasts. I can take a pot roast out of the freezer in the morning and pop it in the slow cooker before I go to bed, add a packet of onion soup mix and a can of mushroom soup and have an amazing dinner ready when I wake up at 4:30 or 5pm.
We had a bedtime tidy up routine with the kids every day too. Nothing creates stress like clutter, so we made a point of putting toys away, clearing out piles of loose paper and straightening up every evening before bed. The kids learned that a little time tidying every day spared them a huge unpleasant clean up on the weekends when they really wanted to do fun stuff.
Multi-tasking is a great way to accomplish tasks while you're doing something else. Before I hop in the shower, I'll spray the bathroom mirror and sink with Windex, and spend a minute cleaning the loo. When I'm in the shower, I use one of those microfibre cloths to wipe the soap residue off the tiles - another couple of minutes while my conditioner is working - and then when I'm done in the shower, I wipe the mirror and sink down. It only takes an extra 5 minutes and I've showered and cleaned the bathroom. On the weekends the tub gets scrubbed and the floor gets washed, but overall it's always clean.
Laundry is my nemesis. I hate it. The only way I can manage it is to do a little of it every day. I can tolerate folding and putting away one basket a day (throw in a load of whites in the morning, come home and put it in the dryer and start a load of darks, fold the whites and put the darks in the dryer at bedtime) over doing a whole week's worth of laundry on the weekend. I'd rather shove wet bamboo skewers under my toenails than spend a Saturday or Sunday doing 7 days' worth of laundry for the whole family.
This is one of my favorite websites: www.flylady.net The site owner helps people create routines for housekeeping, and her "trick" is to take otherwise overwhelming tasks and break them down into 15-minute chunks. Even kids can do this - put on a timer and see whether they can "beat the clock" at a certain task. It even works when they need to do homework. Her motto is "you can do anything for 15 minutes."
