Everyone loves a clean house but most people hate cleaning it. The only way to make it feel less like a chore and more like a triumph is to have a well-developed system that helps you clean your home quickly and efficiently.
Here are several tips to help you clean your home.
5 Ways to Clean Your Home
Develop a strategy
Cutting the cleaning time in half starts with a good system. This means you need to clean your home in the same order every time.
Take one room at a time, start and finish at the same place in the room so that you don’t waste time going back and forth. Repeat the same thing until it becomes a routine.
The routine then becomes your proven method. This is what will add momentum to your cleaning instead of making it last for hours on end.
Get properly equipped
A simple hack that will help you clean your home much easier is to have quick access to all the equipment and supplies you might need. A storage caddy is a great idea or even a simple bucket that can hold all necessities in one place and you can carry it from room to room.
Typically, you will need a sponge with an abrasive side, cotton rags (old T-shirts or towels), microfiber cloths, cleaning products (most of which you can make yourself), furniture polish, rubber gloves, and last but not the least, a decent vacuum cleaner.
Set up a quick cleaning strategy
An efficient cleaning strategy to clean your home is usually a 30-minute routine, up to an hour. Certainly, the 30-minute session won’t go as deep as a one-hour clean. But if you’re in a rush and the house needs to look decent, 30 minutes will give you that.
With the shorter routine, you need to prioritize – the hallway, kitchen, living areas, and/or bathroom(s). Start by clearing out the clutter from each room by putting them away in storage. Straighten the cushions, covers, and curtains.
A quick clean of the kitchen and bathrooms would involve stacking up your dishwasher, wiping down counters, a quick vacuum over the floor followed by spray-mopping. Make sure to use eco-friendly detergents.
With an hour to spare, you’ll be able to squeeze in washing the toilet and sink (not scrubbing with a toothbrush!), dusting baseboards and shelves, and scooping up cobwebs in corners.
What about bigger issues?
Most homeowners dread the thought of cleaning bigger things in the house such as all the windows, kitchen grease, mold, rugs, and carpets. Particularly the latter. Nothing beats a professionally cleaned carpet with all the stubborn stains removed leaving your carpet smelling lovely and fresh.
If you feel you’re not up to the task of cleaning your carpet – leave it to the professionals. In this way, you’ll have more time to tend to other matters such as the windows.
Cleaning windows can get frustrating if you can’t get the shine you want or you keep leaving visible streaks. Cleaning experts recommend a professional-grade window squeegee and a drop of dish soap in a gallon of water.
Use this to wipe your windows generously with a cloth, then squeegee it all off. Move from top to bottom wiping the blade each time you finish – this will leave your windows streak-free.
You can also use a glass cleaner and a microfiber cloth. Use horizontal strokes from top to bottom and don’t rub in circles as this will leave streaks. Also, avoid wiping the glass with paper towels or newspapers to avoid residue.
At some point, grease will end up on your kitchen cabinets. But you need not fret, removing it shouldn’t be an issue.
If you get an orange oil cleaner or a standard grease-cutting detergent and you make an effort to clean the cabinets and grout regularly, you will avoid this build-up.
If this does happen, the best solution to clean your home is a mix of baking soda and water and a good scrub with an abrasive sponge.
Mold appears in poorly ventilated bathrooms where water residue remains on the walls due to the damp environment. The solution lies in using hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle. Simply spray the spots, let them sit for about 5 minutes and the fungus is history.
To keep the mold from reappearing, turn on an extractor fan (if you have one) when showering and after you’re done, squeegee the water off your shower doors and walls.
Be smart about it
To clean your home isn’t only about brawn, it’s about brains as well! Be smart about it and you’ll actually work less. For instance, start dusting from top to bottom.
You’ll avoid dust falling down on coffee tables and shelves you’ve already cleaned. Also, go left to right meaning you’ll systematically cover the entire room rather than darting from spot to spot.
These two strategies will ensure you don’t go over the same spots twice and will eliminate redundant work.
The key to clean your home correctly is organization and consistency. If you stick to a cleaning routine and do it every week, you will find out that it will take you less time than before.
And thanks to this, you’ll be able to catch up on other tasks that need doing, or simply get that extra-long nap you’ve been craving.