A study found that the average person spends 1,140 days of their life cleaning their house. This equates to two hours of cleaning per day, which is excessive! There are numerous tips and tricks that can help you speed up the cleaning process, and there are numerous effective ways to keep your house clean throughout the week without spending all of your time doing housework.
Start with decluttering
Even though it may appear to be the most obvious thing to do, we often skip the decluttering step in order to get things done faster, which makes the cleaning process much more difficult than we realize.
As a result, the best thing to do is to begin decluttering. Begin by going into one room at a time and putting away anything that does not belong in a specific location. Put away your books, toys, and electronic devices until you have a tidy room in which to begin cleaning.
Use a trash bag
A trash bag during the decluttering process is your best friend. Always carry one with you when you are tidying your house to throw away any items that might be garbage and also empty all the bins around the house.
This will help you save time from going around the house later and picking up every bin to throw in the trash. In addition, try to get rid of items that you haven’t used in the past 10-12 months. This will help you keep your home clutter-free without everything piling up over the years.
Bring a cleaning carrier with you
Before you begin cleaning, you must first select the cleaning products that will work best for you. There is no need for expensive or overly complicated equipment. Remember that you’ll need a disinfectant for hygiene, bleach and limescale cleaner for the bathroom, glass cleaner, cleaning cloths, and a brush cleaner. To begin your cleaning process, place all of your cleaning supplies in a basket and carry it around with you in each room.
Dust first, vacuum last
Sometimes, because we feel that vacuuming can be a lot a fuss, we vacuum and mop the whole house first to get the hard part of the cleaning done and we leave the “easier” jobs such as dusting, cleaning surfaces, appliances, and etc for last. If you are doing this and you notice that your floor or rugs are always dirty, there’s a reason why.
When you dust and clean all the surfaces, all the dirt, crumbs, and garbage fall to the floor, so if you vacuum first, you clean the floor of all the previous dirt and immediately add new dirt. As a result, you end up with a dirty floor. As a result, it is critical to clean your entire house first, with the floors being the last thing to clean.
Do not scrub, just spray
When you use a spray as a surface cleaner instead of scrubbing, you can save a lot of time. Simply enter a room and begin spraying all the surfaces you can from the left to the right. Then proceed to the next room and repeat the process without wiping anything away.
Once you’ve finished all of the rooms and the product has absorbed everything that shouldn’t be there into a puddle, return to the first room you sprayed and begin wiping away. This will save you a lot of time while also leaving all of your surfaces clean and shiny without the hassle of scrubbing.
Don’t forget the baseboards
The baseboards collect a lot of dust really fast and it is one of the things that we tend to miss while cleaning our house, not because we don’t notice them, but because sometimes they are not important enough for us. If your house is clean and your baseboards aren’t clean, then your house looks dirty. Imagine going into a restaurant or a coffee shop and even though it looks clean, the baseboards are covered in dust. This will make you think that the whole place isn’t clean.
So, while you are wiping the surfaces around the house, take a damp cloth and wipe the baseboards from the left side of every room to the right. It will only take you one minute (at the most) for every room but it will make a huge difference in your house.
Vacuum upholstery
Upholstered furniture should be vacuumed once a week for hygiene reasons, rather than just once a month as is the case with the “roller-treatment.” More than 10,000 dust mites can live on the surface of couches and mattresses. These dust mites feed on dead skin cells that are left on the surface of the skin and multiply at a rapid rate. Even if you are not allergic to dust or mites, they can cause allergies in the future. As a result, it is critical to vacuum your furniture once a week to keep dust mites and bacteria at bay.
Use dish soap as glass cleaner
Dish soap can be used instead of glass cleaner. Dish soap can leave sticky surfaces sparkling clean, and it removes scale buildup on bathroom windows and mirrors more effectively than glass cleaners. Dish soap was created to remove food from plates, glasses, cutlery, and other items, leaving them extremely shiny and brand new.
This is because it contains detergent molecules that, when dissolved in water, form a supermolecule that absorbs any dirt, oil, or residue on the glass surface, resulting in sparkling glasses, windows, and dishes.
Clean appliances right away
To prevent chemicals from entering your food, it is critical to clean your appliances immediately after use, not two hours later or before. Appliances that work with heat and food spillage, such as toasters, stoves/ovens, and microwaves, can stain easily, and once the stains become too cold to clean, they will be a nightmare to clean.
Once a food spillage in the oven or microwave has been reheated, it is impossible to remove it without damaging the oven or microwave’s metal.
Bonus — A helpful schedule
We added a schedule that you can use in order to keep your house clean if you just keep up with these chores on a regular basis.
Daily:
- Make the bed.
- Clean kitchen surfaces.
- Clean bathroom surfaces.
- Do the dishes.
- Clean your workstation.
- Sanitize surfaces.
- Do laundry if necessary.
Weekly:
- Vacuum and sweep the house.
- Mop the floor.
- Vacuum upholstery.
- Vacuum the mattress.
- Change the bedding.
- Clean the bathroom tiles/shower walls.
- Clean all of the windows and bathroom mirrors.
- Clean kitchen appliances.
- Change the bedding.
- Wash the bedding.
- Wash blankets and pillows.
- Clean the baseboards.
- Wash the bathroom and kitchen towels.
Monthly:
- Dust and clean the light fixtures.
- Wash the duvet.
- Clean the dishwasher.
- Clean the vacuum cleaner.
- Throw out expired food.
- Clean the inside of the fridge.
- Descale the kettle and coffee machine.
- Clean the trash cans.
- Wipe down and inside the cupboards.
- Clean inside and outside the drawers.
- Wash furniture — chairs, tables, bed frame, etc…