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Constantly cleaning your house or apartment can be very struggling. Even worse, the pandemic has caused it to become more frustrating than ever to always keep your home clean. Despite everyone loving the sight of a neat and clean house, consistently keeping your house clean is not a walk in the park. Doing so requires a great amount of time, patience and hard work.
If your motivation to clean your home is at its lowest and the whole cleaning process gives you the heebie jeebies, why not make cleaning a part of your daily routine to make it feel like less of a chore? By following some simple tips and tricks, you can easily incorporate it into your daily routine without it looking like a bothersome all-day task.
Keeping a clean and tidy home is less about the time you spend cleaning and more about developing good habits that will become a part of your personality. In fact, you will actually start following them unconsciously.
Here are the top 25 ways to always keep your home clean that will completely change how you handle cleaning your home. Whether you live in a house or an apartment, these tips will help you get up and take steps towards a cleaner home that is ready to welcome guests anytime.
- Make a Schedule for Cleaning
If you have a super busy lifestyle, making a cleaning schedule can be your secret weapon that always keeps your house clean. Setting a small amount of time aside for cleaning each day allows you to spend more time to handle life’s other pleasures. By spending just 15-20 minutes every day, you’ll notice some great cleaning progress without losing valuable time with your kids or spouse. You won’t have your long-awaited weekend swallowed up by an entire day of built-up cleaning chores. There are a couple of different ways to make a schedule for cleaning such as creating a timetable or a daily cleaning checklist to make sure you don’t forget anything.
- Have a Morning Routine
To keep your house clean on a consistent basis, have a morning cleaning routine. This routine doesn’t need to be complicated and could be just 10 to 15 minutes. Every morning spend a couple of minutes cleaning your kitchen counters and tidying up the living room while waiting for your coffee to get ready.
- Make your Bed After Getting up
Making your bed in the morning can make a lot of difference in how clean and tidy your room looks in just a few minutes. Plus, nothing beats the feeling of slipping into your cleanly made sheets at the end of a hard day.
- Follow the Same Cleaning Order
To cut your cleaning time in half, clean your house in the same order every day. When you repeat tasks in the same order each time you clean, it becomes a routine which turns into a method. Inherently, this is a much smarter way to clean. Additionally, starting and finishing at the same spot every day will increase your work efficiency and prevent you from wasting time running back and forth.
- Keep Your Cleaning Tools Ready
Always keep all your cleaning products and tools ready at arm’s reach to save time walking back and forth to go under the sink. You can wear an apron or carpenter’s tool belt to put small tools in the pockets. Shift the cleaning products into smaller and easy to carry spray bottles, and place other cleaning supplies in a container or a bucket to stay organized and save time.
- Get Rid of the Unnecessary Stuff
It gets extremely difficult to keep your house tidy when you have a whole load of clutter and stuff you don’t need. To make cleaning easier, get rid of all this unwanted stuff by selling them or giving them to charity. Decluttering your house will not only make your house look much more organized, it will also make the cleaning process much easier and faster.
- Put Things Back Where They Belong
One of the best tricks to always keep your house clean is making sure that everything is put back into its designated spot after being used. Failure to put everything back in its place is often the main culprit behind an untidy house. Develop a habit of putting things back to where they belong to prevent those tiny piles from turning into a huge mess. This trick also reduces the workload for you and your family.
- Remove Your Shoes Before Going Inside the House
Taking off your shoes outside the house can save you hours of cleaning and also protects against dirt and bacteria getting inside the house. Take off your shoes at the doorstep and don’t wait until you step inside or the purpose will be defeated. Removing shoes before entering your home is essential for keeping your carpet clean and germ-free.
- Clean Your High Traffic Areas
Each day, touch up any areas of your home that are high traffic. This will stop the spreading of dirt, dust and dander to the rest of your house or apartment. Have a dedicated area for shoes and put small rugs at doors to trap a lot of any incoming dust. A quick 5-minute vacuuming in those areas daily will help you keep your apartment or house clean without doing much work.
- Wash Dishes After Every Meal
This might look like a simple cleaning hack but it is really effective and does the trick. Wash your dishes as soon as you are done eating and don’t let the greasy cookware and cutlery pile up. These “pile ups” make your kitchen look unorganized and messy.
- Invest in Storage Boxes
Storage boxes are a great way to maintain a tidy house on a daily basis. You can use these boxes to store different sorts of items that are more likely to clutter and disorganize your home. Whether you want to organize your pantry, study room or kid’s room, storage boxes are the best way to organize pretty much everything from utensils to craft supplies.
- Clean as You Go
Putting things away while walking around the house can make a huge difference between a tidy house and a messy one. Hang any clean clothes in the closet immediately after you change. Load dirty dishes into the dishwasher immediately after eating rather than having them pile up the sink. Clean the kitchen countertop while you are actually cooking. All these small habits will save you from tons of cleaning up at the end of the day.
- Give Everyone a Separate Laundry Basket
Having a dedicated laundry basket for each person in your house is really important because one hamper is just not enough for the whole family and the dirty clothes will end up strewn all over the house. To keep the clutter to a minimum, give each person their own laundry basket for dirty clothes and an extra one for towels.
- Nightly Power Clean
Spending five or ten minutes on a powerful clean-up before calling it a day can help you prevent “clutter piles” from growing in your home. Focus on the areas that see more traffic and clean the items that you think can cause the biggest mess. It would be even better if you can involve your family members in the nighty power clean. After all, they help make the mess!
- Speed Clean Regularly
To cut down your cleaning time, do it more often. Once you’re done with the daily cleanings, give it a catch-up cleaning every week to keep the house looking clean. You will also avoid the excruciating job of doing months’ worth of cleaning in one go.
- Dust Your Home Every Two Weeks
Dusting can help to keep every nook and cranny of your house clean and free of dust. Feather dusters work incredibly well for routine dusting as well as for cleaning blinds, pictures, knick-knacks and other small areas. For the heavy dust build-up, use a vacuum cleaner often and dust your castle every two weeks.
- Let the Lemon Work Magic
You can use lemon to clean sinks and toilets as it is one of the most powerful natural cleaners that won’t cost much. The citric acid inside lemons helps eliminate rust stains on floors and toilets. Lemon really helps keep your sinks and toilets super clean and shiny.
- Remove Kitchen Grease
Grease can inevitably end up on the kitchen cabinets above or next to the range and looks really disgusting. Immediately clean your cooking area after cooking to prevent grease from building up on the range and hood fan. Use a good cleaner or use detergent or lemon to cut through the grease and then rinse it off with a sponge and warm water.
- Clean Plumbing Fixtures Regularly
Mineral deposits can stain the faucets and other plumbing fixtures in your home. Clean off those deposits regularly with vinegar or lemon to make them sparkle and make your kitchen or washroom look super clean and tidy.
- Teach Your Kids to Maintain a Clean Bedroom
Instill into your kids’ developing mind to clean up after themselves. They will thank you later. This includes their toys after playing or any mess after doing a craft activity. Teach them how to keep their rooms clean and organized, putting their shoes and coats away when they enter the house and putting their toys away after each and every play session so it becomes a habit to them. Doing this will not only lessen the work burden for you, it will also help keep your house always looking clean and tidy.
- Get Decent Cleaning Equipment
Having decent cleaning equipment can save a lot of the time and energy you spend cleaning things manually. For example, a high-quality vacuum cleaner is a must-have item to truly clean carpets, surfaces, couches and pet fur.
- Clean Your Toilets Regularly
To keep your bathrooms glossy clean, wipe the surfaces daily to kill bacteria and go for deep cleaning weekly before the build-up of stains and germs. You can use bacteria-killing solutions like bleach, vinegar and antibacterial cleaners to clean the surfaces of toilets, sinks, bathtubs, faucets and handles.
- Do Laundry Every Day
Instead of piling up clothes for the weekend, make a habit of loading the washer first thing in the morning. Having a fixed laundry time every morning while you have your breakfast will make laundry feel like less of a chore. It would also further keep your house clean and tidy.
- Polish Your Sofas
If you have leather sofas, wipe them down with some leather polish every day to make them look new and shiny. It might sound weird but this trick works every time and won’t cost you a more than few bucks.
- Keep a Junk Storage Area
Having an area dedicated to junk storage is another quick way to keep your house clean and organized. Also, junk storage is very handy to hide unwanted items when an unexpected guest suddenly pays you a visit. This area could be in a specific closet or in your garage.