If you find yourself falling behind on housework and loathing the home cleaning process you are not alone. Keeping a tidy house with a busy family can seem overwhelming but you don’t need a full time maid to manage housework on the go. Take heed of our real mom tips and develop a few strategies of your own that makes getting housework done in a hurry, no big deal.
10. Clean As You Go
To risk sounding like your mom, it really is easier to clean as you go. Applying this logic to cooking, weekly meal preparation, decluttering, and dressing can add up to quite a bit of time saved at the end of a week. Simple tasks like emptying the sink of dirty dishes, throwing away older leftovers in the fridge and wiping down the counters and stovetop after meal time ensures you are ready to cook in a clean kitchen the next time you come in for meal prep. Oftentimes, cleaning during an activity does not add much additional work time to the task.
9. Establish a Rhythm
Getting in the habit of performing certain cleaning tasks at certain times helps me think of them less as cleaning. Each day during my lunch break at home I empty the clean dishes from my dishwasher while my lunch heats up in the microwave. Making use of the dead time that I would normally be standing around, ensures that I don’t have to unload dishes before I can begin cooking when I come home from work in the evening.
8. Do Small Tasks First
I am guilty of putting off easy tasks because they are easy and can be done anytime/ don’t take long to complete. How silly is this? Knocking items off your to do list (regardless of how simple they are) is empowering. So go ahead and start with the easy tasks first if that helps you power through your cleaning list quicker.
7. Recruit Help
If you don’t live alone in your home, you don’t have to clean your home alone. Recruiting help from a spouse, children or roommates will cut the tidying time in half. Helping out with the cleaning helps other housemates realize how to clean as they go to avoid having to allocate time to clean later. Kids that help load and unload the dishwasher will probably take notice of the need to load plates directly after using them and not let them sit in a stinky pile in the sink. Regardless of whether you choose to divide chores among individuals or all just pitch in to help whenever a task needs to be completed, more manpower cleaning is always a good thing.
6. Change the Culture of Cleaning in Your Home
If we all make the mess, we all clean the mess. By changing the culture of cleaning in your home you can establish that cleaning is not mom’s job. Make keeping a tidy house about having a space you can take pride in and enjoy to its fullest potential. I feel happier and calmer when my kitchen is clean and the counters are free of clutter. The satisfaction I feel in a clean house, is worth the effort it takes to clean.
5. Make Your House Cleanable
Ok, while there may not exactly be a well-known definition for “cleanable” most of us can recognize it when we see it. Maintaining a clean house is key for people that hate heavy cleaning jobs. If you take care of jobs around the house often you rarely have to have a crazy cleaning day that involves hours of dust and grime. Maintenance makes your house cleanable and doesn’t leave it feeling like a hopeless case or a lost cause when you dive in to tidy up.
4. Have the Correct Tools Handy
Know what cleaning tools and products you need to get the job done right. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to clean up a monster of a pet hair job with a weak vacuum cleaner or tackle shower mildew without a good scrubbing brush.
3. Have an Organization Plan
Tidying up only works quickly when there is a plan and a place for everything. If you are a clutter bug like I am, it’s easy to fall into the trap of accumulating things on counter tops and in closets. However, a quick tidy up job will never happen until you have an organization plan for items.
2. Be Strategic
Make the most of your tidying time by making a plan and a list. Divide up jobs strategically based no time they will take to complete or logistics. I start laundry loads as early as possible on my Saturday cleaning days to allow extra drying time and factor in breaks for laundry folding between other tidying tasks.
1. Stagger Larger Cleaning Tasks
By staggering larger cleaning tasks like closet organizing, whole house mopping and bathroom care you reduce the chance that you are spending hours on end tidying up your house. Knocking out large tasks on a different day keeps you from feeling discouraged and overworked when you are cleaning your home.
